Letters in issue 6

Tips for healthy eating
I really enjoyed the Dec-Feb edition of byronchild. There was great stuff on Bullying, Boredom and TV. I often buy a magazine for one good article; byronchild is a great read from cover to cover. 

Layla Iselm’s Q&A segment on eating healthy food was great, particularly as eating disorders are such a concern.  As Layla said, it’s so important that mealtime is for eating and enjoying each other’s company — not power struggles. 

Some other ideas that I have found helpful for encouraging healthy eating and happy mealtimes are:

Involve the child/children in preparing the meal:

• They could pick vegetables from the garden or select them at the supermarket and put them in the trolley.
• Even very young children can help cut up vegetables etc. (eg: a banana with a blunt knife).
• Setting the table (don’t worry if the cutlery is in the wrong place — this will come in time).
• Picking some flowers, lighting a candle or making placemats (maybe just decorating a sheet of paper for each person).
• From around 10 children can prepare a simple meal of, say, pasta and bottled sauce.
• Involve children in preparing a menu for the week.

Make mealtime special:

• Turn off the TV.
• Make time so the meal is unhurried.
• Add little rituals like a thank-you verse, or each person says something nice that happened that day.
• Set up the dinner table somewhere different — on the verandah, at the bottom of the garden or in the lounge room (put an old sheet on the carpet to contain spills).
Give small children very small servings and let them ask for more if they want, or have all the food in bowls on the table and let people help themselves.
Once again, congratulations Kali on a great magazine.

Jill Benham
Early childhood parenting instructor
Mullumbimby


Fraudulent diagnoses of ADHD
The Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights has been exposing psychiatric abuse in Australia for 29 years and we are currently working on a campaign to expose the fraudulent diagnosis of ADHD.

We would very much appreciate you putting the following announcement into your magazine as we are looking for like-minded people who want to document their children’s and patient’s cases and expose the fraudulent diagnoses of ADHD.

Kim Cullen
Director
CCHR Sydney


We are looking for practitioners and parents with cases of children who have shown improvement in problems of attention or behavior (so-called ADHD symptoms) by using herbs or other natural methods. We are campaigning to free children of the burden of psychotropic drugs and psychiatric labelling. If you can help please call:
Michael Woods on: 9211 4787 or 0425 242 473

Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
Email


The ‘Is it Good for the Kids?’ campaign
I was thinking about your great sticker ‘Is it good for the kids?’

It is interesting, that the world community and even the most obtuse politician will agree that our children are our greatest: asset, treasure, gift, wealth, natural resource, joy, commodity, hope. Interesting that I did not ever see the word ‘teachers’.

Mind you, many of these same politicians were the same ones that said, ‘Of course we all want peace’, even as they committed troops to a gross violation of human rights, and herein lies our challenge. To create a world where our actions are congruent with what we say. 

If our Prime Minister really did want peace then clearly the present course of action makes a lie of that statement.
If our government actually believe that children are our greatest treasure then many of the policy decisions make a lie of that. Economic rationalism does not support a world where children are treated as our greatest treasure. In the world of economic rationalism family and community are distant losers to work and playing the corporate game.

Strong community is very difficult when the ‘workers’ are gone before it is light and get back home only after it is dark. They are often strangers to their families and to themselves. They have so little time for their own family, and themselves, that they often have no time to help with community projects or school working bees. Clearly this is not balanced. Strong thriving communities seem to me the only path to live the truth that our children are our greatest treasure. As we live this then we will have no choice but to reallocate funding away from killing to creating. We will be unable to allow crises that create millions of orphans as in Africa to be unaddressed. Surely a world such as this would be a world we would be proud to pass on to our children? Each of us, as we take joy in being and playing with our own children, help to bring this world into being.

Clearly we can’t wait for the government to start to create this new world. As a community it is up to us to take actions that are consistent with our knowing of the value of our children and to create a community that supports and nurtures them. In the end I believe that this will also be economically more effective.

How do you cost unhappiness, despair and what figure do you place on a youth suicide? How can you cost child abuse? We only know some of the costs associated with putting bandaids on after the damage has been done. The great thing is that we are seeing people getting on with doing just this from teaching about ecstatic birth and birth education, to strong mum’s groups, to the Uncle and Auntie projects, to Pathways to Manhood. It is starting to happen and as more people think and act this way so will the wheels of government start to turn to support what is now largely rhetoric. I believe byronchild is one of the voices for helping to create this kind of world. Good on you.

Daniel Prokop
email


After reading the editorial (Is it Good for the Kids? Dec. 2002) by Kali Wendorf I would like to pass on my appreciation. While having a touch of humour, the editorial had its feet firmly on the ground, pointing out paradoxes of our Australian lifestyle which we all partake of but few of us seem to realise. I am taking the chance to write you and thank you and other people involved with the byronchild publication. Keep the good work up.

Justin Montefiore
Email


Free Natural Therapy Services 
First of all I wish to congratulate you…a GREAT magazine!!!!
I am founder and President of a non-profit organisation called House of Light Projects for Children. Our focus is free natural therapy consultations and workshops for children, young people up to age 25 years old (unemployed) and pregnant women. We have subscribed to your magazine since it began and we find it a valuable resource for our practitioners and clients.

I am just so impressed with your publication. Your mag is read by lots of people in our organisation and it has opened the eyes of many. 

Your readers may be interested in knowing about our services available to the community. We have a web site wwwhouseoflight.org and with that lots of stories. Love and many blessings, keep up the great work!

Maggie Landman
Email


Circumcision, and lots more
The last few days we have been reading your outstanding ‘zine, byronchild. By we, I mean, my home-schooled teens, Quinn and Halley, and yours truly.

Both of our youngest kids, our son Quinn and daughter Halley, are into it. Each share their synopsis of the various articles. They both especially liked the article, Shining Sun — Running Water (March 2002). For years our family has conducted similar events in the wilderness — Family Vision Camps. They thought it was cool to read about these experiences from Australia, where we have also facilitated such gatherings in the past.

Nowadays I am a grandmother with four adult children launched into the world, as well as the two teens still living at home with me, and I am blown away by your magazine. This is what I always hoped a glossy could be — fun and (r)evolutionary at once! Congratulations on your awesome magazine — Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia — indeed the whole world has been waiting for you.

I cannot begin to tell you how honoured I am to be included in your love-child, byronchild. My friend and colleague, who I met first in Victoria and then again in Tasmania, Sarah Buckley, introduced your readers to my work in her spectacular contribution, ‘Healing the Earth, Healing Birth’ (Sept. 2002).

Then my friend and intactivist ally, George Williams, who I first met in the USA, then again in Oxford, UK, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and several times in Sydney, hooks you (Kali) and I up, at long last. Where have you been?

There is no magazine I’ve seen yet that approaches what you do with such abandon of conformity on the subjects I hold most dear. You address controversial topics on behalf of the Earth and I found myself cheering as I read your first year’s worth of work in four magazines.

One such hot topic I commend you for revealing is circumcision. It was with keen interest that I read Dr. George Williams’s careful article on circumcision (March 2002). Then from a reader in response, the predictable/subsequent letter to the editor, who made himself upset with the good Dr. Williams’s conclusions (June 2002). This dialogue is so important!
After over 30 years of educating parents to let their sons stay intact, I agree with the writer to the editor, Les Einhorn (June 02). Circumcision is beyond a rational or ‘factual’ matter. If it were just about the facts, it would have stopped long ago in such a compassionate place as Byron Bay, or anywhere where children’s bodily integrity is honoured, for that matter. In other words, wherever people are rational, the cutting of children’s genitalia would stop in a heartbeat.
Circumcision is an emotional issue (as well as spiritual, political, medical, and economic, etc.) and that is precisely why it persists. How could it be sustained otherwise? Imagine cutting off the end of a baby’s genitals — is it any less brutal for being an emotional decision by the parents?

All that your irate reader, Einhorn, brought up in terms of ‘facts’ does not hold up within the medical, bio-ethical or scientific communities. Einhorn cites two anthropological studies to shore up his theses that by circumcising babies, even those born in Australia, Canada, and the USA,  men will not get AIDS.  Why? Because of two studies out of anthropological research in Africa.

Your readers can refer to ww.nocirc.org for more research about circumcision and the alleged health risks of the foreskin — such as increased risk of AIDS. This is a myth!

Once more, we welcome the fresh beauty of byronchild into our home and beyond — our caravan now has a new bumper sticker — Is it good for the kids? My answer is YES — your magazine is great for the kids!

Jeannine Parvati Baker
www.freestone.org
Author Prenatal Yoga
Hygieia: A woman’s Herbal
Conscious Conception
Joseph & Moab, USA


Depression study
Do you suffer or have you suffered from depression but consider yourself ‘well’ despite this illness? Are you interested in talking about how you achieved this state of ‘wellness’? As a masters research student at Southern Cross University I am conducting research into this area, please contact Peter Keil on 6685 8487 if you are interested. Confidentiality is assured.

Peter Keil
Naturopath


The blessing of a good partner
The results of my blood test were received on September 11th 2002.  A day of mixed emotions as Wilsen entered our world.

After several attempts, myself and my partner decided IVF was the way to go and success was immediate. We had 9 months of bliss. What an amazing process to go through, the body is truly amazing, and life is so precious.

On 10th May 2002, mother’s day, my father died from a massive heart attack. Only 2 weeks from giving birth, I went into shock and my waters broke. At 6am on 11th May I was taken to hospital. The doctor thought inducing was necessary; however, it was 4 hours later that the decision was made. I went into labour — Pethidine, epidural, 24 hours of pure hell and agony. The midwife and the doctor spoke over the phone and the communication was poor. I stated that I thought I was going to die and only because of my partner’s insistence, the doctor finally arrived. Wilsen was in shock and had taca-cardia. His heart rate was 240 beats a minute. Forceps and lots of pushing presented a tired shocked baby boy.

After oxygen and lots of ‘Will’, our boy struggled into our lives.

We all spent 8 days in hospital, 13 different midwives offered their ideas. Wilsen has had major surgery on his kidney (left) and now suffers from reflux on both kidneys. Antibiotics are helping.

He is so determined and enthusiastic to live!! He is my guru, my true teacher in life. War is going on outside, peace is within Wilsen.

And so,  the ongoing debate about natural birth at home vs birth in a hospital…I think a loving partner who is so in tune with you combined with your own intuition will be the best answer to your baby’s journey.

Eleven months on Wilsen is climbing, crawling chatting and full of life…and best of all, breastfeeding.

Name withheld
Byron Bay