Posts Tagged ‘Gabor Mate’

WIRED WEDNESDAYS: Attention Deficits & Digital Devotion

Wired Wednesdays | Marcy Axness, PhD | Parenting for Peace

TWO PITFALLS FOR PARENTS

“We all understand the joys of our always-wired world — the connections, the validations, the laughs, the porn, the info. I don’t want to deny any of them here. But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs, if we are even prepared to accept that there are costs.

“For the subtle snare of this new technology is that it lulls us into the belief that there are no downsides. It’s all just more of everything. Online life is simply layered on top of offline life. We can meet in person and text beforehand. We can eat together while checking our feeds.”

This from Andrew Sullivan in his New York Magazine article, “I Used to Be a Human Being,” chronicling his web addiction, recovery and reflections. The piece is extraordinary… and extraordinarily long. So, I aim to tease out excerpts from it to enrich the Wired Wednesday series.

Today, two aspects of digital dependence of particular concern for parents, related to attention deficits: these can have a deep and direct impact upon your developing child’s brain circuitry. (more…)

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Presence & Attachment: ADHD Treatment?

We tend to throw around the word “attachment” a lot when talking about kids and parenting, so let’s make sure we’re all talking about the same thing: attachment is a measure of the security of relationship between a child and those one or two or three adults with whom that child is in consistent contact. We now recognize that healthy (secure) attachment is a fundamental form of nourishment for a child’s growing brain. In particular, attachment fosters rich circuitry in the area of the brain that mediates social and emotional functioning. A parent’s ability to be present for a child is fundamental to fostering this brain circuitry needed to regulate attention — therefore, basic ADHD treatment. Mounting research suggests that the social brain is the basis for the child’s lifelong success — in school, at home, and out in the world! (more…)

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Teen Addiction Prevention

I pointed out in Part 1 that our culture harbors a common, dangerous misconception about teens — that they need us to drop the reins and let them “do their thing.” But in terms of their brain and social development, they are as tender as they were as infants. So, we need to remain their active guides and examples. Adults staying actively, enthusiastically involved in the lives of their children and students is one of the best teen addiction prevention measures. In addition to the 3 guidelines offered in Part 1, what else do teens need from us during this time when our window of potent influence is so soon to close? (more…)

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