Buddhism, brain science, and parenting: towards an integration

In the past week I had two profound yet seemingly polar opposite conversations about how to promote healthy development.

The first was among fellows and faculty of the UMass Boston Infant Parent Mental Health Post-Graduate Certificate program (IPMH) about a new study, The Effect of Poverty on Brain Development, published in the current issue of JAMA pediatrics. Using brain imaging techniques, researchers showed that the children raised in poverty had smaller volumes of specific areas of the brain. They describe how the "caregiver" can "mediate" against the effects of poverty. The effects on the brain were less in the setting of "caregiver support." The group was addressing the ways in which this study fit with the abundance of new research in developmental psychology, neuroscience and genetics.

In conversation with the IPMH group, made up of many brilliant and often like- minded colleagues, who I affectionately refer to as "my peeps," I expressed concern that the exclusive focus on "brain science," where parents are referred to as "mediators," the emotion is excluded. It can become a way to distance from, or even leave out, the passion inherent in these profound love relationships.

Perhaps even more worrisome, I said, is that by making the discussion primarily about poverty, there is a risk of creating a kind of "us-them" mentality.  Certainly there are plenty of well-off families raising children in an environment of high stress and emotional neglect. Similar to the focus on "brain science," it becomes another way of distancing from the problem. 

I shared with the IPMH group my recognition that pointing to the value of listening, of creating an environment of respect for all parents and children, is seen by many as "soft." For example, I felt very alone when one pediatrician referred to my work, in a none-too-kindly tone as, "that baby whisperer stuff."

I knew I was not alone when the second conversation occurred a few days later at  a workshop at Austen Riggs entitled The Interplay of Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: Partners in Liberation. It was all about emotion and interconnectedness.

In a post a number of years ago, I wrote about receiving a letter from a reader who had been "awakened by the tradition of Zen Buddhism" and found my that my work, as described in my book Keeping Your Child in Mind ( see excerpt below), resonated with his experience.

Being understood by a person we love is one of our most powerful yearnings, for adults and children alike. The need for understanding is part of what makes us human. When our feelings are validated, we know that we’re not alone. For a young child, this understanding helps develop his mind and sense of himself. When the people who care for him can reflect back his experience, he learns to recognize and manage his emotions, think more clearly, and adapt to his complex social world. 

When families come to see me in my pediatrics practice for “behavior problems,” both parents and children feel estranged and out of control. They are disconnected, angry, and sad. I help them recognize each other. Meaningful change happens when we share these moments of reconnection. 

While I do not know very much about about Buddhism, I have been greatly influenced by psychoanalysts D.W. Winnicott and Peter Fonagy. I attended the workshop because I was curious to learn more about the relationship between Buddhism and psychoanalysis. In particular I was interested in the place of mourning, for I have increasingly come to recognize that meaningful change, and with it the joy of connection, occur most often when parents move through moments of profound sadness.

Workshop leader Joseph Bobrow spoke with a kind, gentle manner while conveying a sense of quiet authority that was calming and containing. He described the Buddhist notion of "re-authoring our suffering" of "representing our suffering in safe circumstances without shame" so that the story can "take its place in a hierarchy." He described "riding the waves of affect" to "transmute them in to the waves of life." He spoke of "transmuting sorrow" so that it does not "hijack" us." He spoke of how the therapist's "presence of mind," is what  calms, regulates and heals the patient.

When parents are flooded with stress and feeling overwhelmed by their child's behavior, I may ask them to slow down and describe in great detail a specific moment of disruption. This can be very difficult to do. Listening to Bobrow speak about meditation and Zen Buddhism, I heard many links to this process. Meditation can be about noticing how we become derailed by patterns of  thought and behavior. Similarly, by slowing things down, parents become aware of how their child's behavior provokes them, and how they may unintentionally attribute meaning to their child's behavior that is markedly different from the child's true intention.

If a parent recognizes in his response to his child's behavior a surge of rage that is linked to a memory of his own father slapping him across the face, the tears may start to flow. Now we have an opportunity to, as Bobrow said "use the suffering to turn straw in to gold." For in the face of this realization, of this "riding the wave of affect" this father can "re-author the suffering" and in doing so separate his own experience from that of his child. It is just this slowing down that helps him to see his child as himself. In turn the child, himself feeling recognized and understood, becomes calm.  This "meditative" process can be what underlies the moments of profound joy and connection between parent and child that follow.

My two experiences this week seem at first glance to be worlds apart.  I wonder if a piece Bobrow wrote on his Huffington Post blog following the Newtown shooting might point in the direction of integration.

We are helpless, we want it fixed, and become prone... to either-or thinking. But there is no silver bullet. Silver bullet, compartmentalized thinking is the problem. Cumulative trauma compromises the capacity for making connections, for holistic reflection. At it's extreme, the other becomes "not me," so I can eliminate him or her with impunity, Intellectually, it's like bubble living: psychology here, culture there, economics somewhere else. Climate? Fuhgetaboutit. We must grasp our fundamental interconnectedness, and with it the intimate and often unseen interplay of psychological and cultural forces and social and political action.

 I wonder if a third conversation, including both my IPMH colleagues and Bobrow, would lead to some real progress.

Protecting a space for parenting in an age of expert advice

In my behavioral pediatrics practice, it never ceases to amaze me how, given the space and time, parents come around to making sense of their child's "difficult" behavior without my giving "advice" about "what to do." They may recognize that they share a trait with their child that has troubled them their whole life. They may become tearful, thinking of how that child represents a lost loved one.  There are countless variations. The process of telling the story, of finding the meaning in the behavior, is often itself the treatment. Once parents have these insights, "what to do" follows naturally. In contrast, if I give advice without a full understanding of the story, things may not go well.

Recently in working on a new book, I have had the pleasure of returning to a close look at the work of D. W. Winnicott, pediatrician turned psychoanalyst and a kind of British Dr. Spock. In my review of his writings on the subject of advice, I came across a wonderful piece from this past spring in The Guardian: Mothers on the naughty step: the growth of the parenting advice industry, that references Winnicott.

Winnicott abhorred the idea of giving advice. He believed that when mothers tried to do things by the book – or by the wireless: "They lose touch with their own ability to act without knowing exactly what is right and what is wrong." Yet today there are far more parenting advice books (each with their own regime to promote) than 30 years ago, and the radio and TV schedules are full of programmes such as Supernanny, which train a critical eye on what are generally called parents but most of us understand to be mothers. It sometimes seems it is mothers, rather than children, who are being dispatched to the naughty step...

Winnicott feared that focusing on pathological families rather than "the ordinary devoted mother and her baby" (the title of his most famous series) could excite anxiety in listeners without access to therapy. "I cannot tell you exactly what to do," he said, "but I can talk about what it all means." And so he did, extolling the role of the good enough mother – one who can be loved, hated and depended on – in enabling the baby to develop into a healthy, independent, adult. While many of today's parenting gurus focus on a child's deviant behaviour and the contribution of supposed misparenting, Winnicott tried to help mothers understand the significance of their child's behaviour, whether it was "cloth-sucking" or a display of jealousy, and the ways that they instinctively contained their child's anxieties.

The author refers to the British program "Supernanny," the "high priestess of behaviorist parenting."

Tracey Jensen, lecturer in media and cultural studies at Newcastle University, says Supernanny reverses Winnicott, offering up the spectacle of the "bad enough mother", usually working-class, who is shamed before she is transformed. Jensen watched the programme with a group of mothers, relieved that it was not their parenting practices being scrutinised, but those of someone else onto whom all their own worries and fears could be displaced. But they also shouted back at the programme, discomfited by the judgment and humiliation meted out to the mothers featured. Such series foster the very anxiety they claim to assuage, and substitute "training" for thinking and feeling.

This last phrase captures the essence of the issue. I shudder whenever I see the term "parent training."  But this phrase, as well as others such as "management of symptoms" or "parent education" are pervasive in our culture. These kinds of interventions may improve behavior in the short term. But if they substitute for "thinking and feeling" it is likely that symptoms will re-emerge at a later date, in a different form. 

When we talk about parents and children, we are talking about passionate love relationships. The feelings are deep, intense and sometimes painful. It makes sense that we might choose to avoid them. But this is not a long-term solution.  We would do well to instead make a space for them, starting from birth.

I borrowed this phrase "protecting a space" from my good friend Gale Pryor, who's wonderful book Nursing Mother, Working Mother was also heavily influenced by Winnicott. In such a space parents can connect with their natural intuition. It is in this space that we give room for healthy development of parent and child together.

Towards a new (or return to an old) paradigm of finding meaning

I am fortunate that my father is my greatest fan, although, perhaps because his original language was German, it has taken me years of patient listening and translation to recognize this fact. Recently, after receiving a biography of Charles Darwin for his 89th birthday, he has taken to comparing me to Darwin.

 I would certainly be more modest, recognizing that the ideas I write about draw on the work of great thinkers and researchers, together with my own clinical experience.   One of these great minds is Sigmund Freud. His discovery of the unconscious, his greatest contribution, is so much a part of the way we think and behave that is difficult to appreciate the revolutionary nature of this idea.  Even before he used the term unconscious, in his work as a neurologist, his original discovery was that symptoms have meaning.

Freud did not write very much about development under age three, perhaps because there was only so much he could do. However we do know that when he was a toddler his younger brother died. I wonder how much this early experience, and his mother's concurrent grief over the loss of her child, influenced the development of Freud's theories, though perhaps in a way that he himself was not conscious of.

Fortunately the next wave of researchers, including such great minds as John Bowlby, Peter Fonagy and Ed Tronick, and many others in the growing discipline of infant mental health, have focused on early development, showing that not only does behavior have meaning, but also how that meaning is co-created in relationships.

Here is an example. I have written on this blog about my growing recognition of the significance of sensory processing challenges in development.  While such a trait may originate in the child, it immediately takes on meaning within relationships. A newborn that is not cuddly and does not like to be held may evoke feelings of shame and even depression in a mother. A father who himself had sensory processing challenges but was physically abused because of his difficulties may be overwhelmed with anxiety in the face of his child's similar problems. The child's behavior takes on meaning in the context of the parent-child relationship. When a child is a newborn, it may be relatively easy to identify the relational nature of these problems. But when a child is older, there are layers of complexities, such as learning difficulties and concurrent self esteem issues that may accompany sensory processing challenges, or marital conflict that may occur in the face of a child who is struggling.  These complexities are usually out of a parent's awareness, or, returning to Freud's term, unconscious.

 As a society we have come far from this idea of looking for the meaning of behavior. Instead we treat only the symptom. Thus a child who has sensory processing challenges, unless he is working with an occupational therapist trained in infant mental health, may be treated by brushing, or listening to tapes designed to "re-program" his brain. Many parents have told me that they are actively discouraged from participating in the therapy. Yet if parent and child are separated in this way, the meaning of a symptom within the context of relationships is never discovered.

In mental health care, this shift away from the search for meaning is due at least in part to the birth of "biological psychiatry" and the hope that complex emotional struggles have a simple chemical explanation that can be solved with a drug.

On the list serve of the American Psychoanalytic Association there is currently an active discussion about the issue of CPT codes. In order for a service to be covered by insurance, a clinician must provide both a diagnostic code and a code for the type of service. An underlying problem is that our system of diagnosis, largely based on the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual)  is organized by symptoms, not by meaning. Clinicians who are used to helping people to discover meaning are restricted by a system that reduces these complex meanings to a number that corresponds to a list of behaviors. It is a deeply entrenched issue related to the whole structure of the health insurance industry and of our health care system. It is further complicated by the rise of electronic medical records and concurrent implications for confidentiality. Helping people to discover meaning that may be unconscious often involves intimate and private conversations.

This brings me full circle to my father's flattering comparison. It is indeed true that I am motivated not only to help the individual children and families I work with, but also to promote a paradigm shift in how we as a society understand human development, and, in turn, support newborns, young children and families.

Though my father is a magazine publisher, he is not a big fan of social media. He told me that Darwin kept his discoveries to himself, partly in fear of upsetting the mainstream thinking, until he had it all written down in the Origin of Species. My father suggested that I concentrate my efforts on producing my own analogous work.

He has a point. However, I choose to embrace the age of social media, and so aim to move our thinking one blog post at a time (although another book will also be forthcoming.)

Infant Mental Health and Child Protection: an Essential Partnership

Michael Bush, a bright, open-minded third-year student at West Virginia University College of Law, contacted me this past summer when, in his role as an editor of the Law Review, he was organizing a symposium on Child Protection in the 21st Century. In our subsequent email conversation he wisely observed that those in the legal profession are often in a position to decide what is "in the best interest of the child" with little substantive understanding of what exactly is in the best interest of the child.  He invited me to share my knowledge as an expert in infant mental health.

This week, his efforts and those of his fellow law review editors-a remarkable group of intelligent and thoughtful young people-came to fruition. It was an extraordinary experience that opened up many opportunities for meaningful collaboration.

 In my presentation I contrasted the historical view of Child Protection as a child-saving service designed to prosecute parents with the model of relationship-focused preventive intervention promoted by the field of infant mental health (those who are interested may see the talk in its entirety on the webcast.)


Rather than giving specific ideas about what to do, I offered a different way to think about work with very troubled families.  While many in the legal profession view their task as "proving what the parent has done wrong," (this is a direct quote from a CPS social worker) I encouraged them to think about creating a "holding environment" where there is room for non-judgmental curiosity about the meaning of behavior. I presented an overview of the research that supports this paradigm.

Many very important things came out of this trip. A number of people from CASA, a non-profit organization in Virginia that supports volunteer advocacy for abused and neglected children, attended my talk. Amber Moore, the editor-in-chief of the Law Review, told me that they had requested my PowerPoint because "they couldn't write fast enough." They want to use what I was teaching to train their volunteer workers. I discovered that people were starved for knowledge about contemporary research in child development in a form that they could understand.

I quoted from my book Keeping Your Child in Mind, explaining that while it was being marketed as a parenting book, it is actually a book about infant mental health written for a general audience. I wrote it with my pediatric and mental health colleagues in mind, but now I see how useful it could be to the legal profession, specifically those working in the area of child protection.

One of my co-presenters was a delightful judge from central West Virginia who has been doing child protection work for over 20 years. He openly admitted to his lack of knowledge on the subject of contemporary child development research and bought 5 copies of my book.

I met a remarkable young woman who, in addition to attending law school, works at the Industrial Home for Youth in Salem, where prior to a recent lawsuit, children as young as 13 were routinely placed in solitary confinement. As part of a law school class, she is drafting a bill to require multidisciplinary meetings every three months for these young offenders, who currently may not meet with anyone who is advocating for them for their entire stay. Because WVU is the only law school in West Virginia, the students' bills are presented to the state legislature, and a percentage of them actually become law. I am hopeful that she and I will keep in touch and that I can support her in her efforts.

As Keynote speaker of the symposium, I have been invited to write a paper for the West Virginia Law Review that will then be available for citation in legal work.  Another of my co-presenters, who spoke about the legal challenges of adolescent parents, already told me that she intends to cite my work.

This trip was well outside my comfort zone. I had never been to West Virginia (or even Pittsburgh-where I had to fly to get there) and certainly had never spoken with an audience of lawyers. My infant mental health colleagues are "my peeps." In a few weeks they will gather in Los Angeles at the wonderful Zero to Three National Training Institute. Sadly, I will miss it, in part because of this trip.

I have often said to my infant mental health colleagues that we need to work on communicating the wealth of ideas that will be presented at that conference widely beyond our borders.  It was like a dream come true to have the opportunity to speak to a group of bright young law students- the future lawmakers and policy makers of our country. The experience left me hungry for more.

Too many psychiatric diagnoses for children: an epidemic of labels

Allen Frances, professor of child psychiatry at Duke University and chair of the DSM IV(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) task force hit the nail on the head in a recent commentary "Why So Many Epidemics of Childhood Mental Disorders?" in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Because he makes his argument so clearly and persuasively (and the full article is only available to those who subscribe to the journal) I will quote it at length.

Since the publication of DSM-IV in 1994, the rates of 3 mental disorders have skyrocketed: attention deficit disorder (ADD) tripled, autism increased by 20-fold, and childhood bipolar disorder by 40-fold. It is no accident that diagnostic inflation has focused on the mental disorders of children and teenagers. These are inherently difficult to diagnose accurately because youngsters have a short track record; are in developmental flux that makes presentations transient and unstable; are sensitive to family, peer, and school stresses; and may be using drugs. If ever diagnosis should be conservative, it should be in kids. Instead, we have experienced an unprecedented diagnostic exuberance encouraged in part by DSM-IV, but mostly stimulated by the powerful external forces of drug company marketing and the close coupling of school services to a diagnosis of mental disorder.

He gives the example of ADHD, describing how the revisions to DSM IV had anticipated a jump in diagnoses in girls with the additon of an "inattentive" subtype. But in fact there was an unexpected tripling of ADHD rates and parallel increase in use of psychiatric medication. He writes:

Three years after DSM-IV was published, drug companies introduced new and expensive on-patent drugs that provided the incentive and resources for an aggressive marketing campaign to psychiatrists, pediatricians, and family doctors. Simultaneously, successful drug company lobbying gave them unrestricted freedom to advertise directly to consumers. Parents and teachers were inundated with the message that ADD was terribly underdiagnosed and easily treated with a pill. Sales of ADD drugs ballooned to an astounding $7 billion.

He then moves on to bipolar disorder:

Childhood bipolar disorder is an even more chilling case. DSM-IV had wisely rejected a proposal that there be a separate and much looser definition of bipolar disorder in children. The argument for inclusion rested on the unreplicated findings of just 1 (albeit very influential) research group suggesting that kids present a developmentally different prodromal form of bipolar disorder characterized by ambient irritability, impulsivity, and temper outbursts, rather than the typical cyclical mood swings of adults. Rejection by DSM-IV did not stop charismatic thought leaders (who were heavily financed by drug companies) from spreading the gospel of childhood bipolar disorder. The 40-fold increase in rates was accompanied by an increase in antipsychotic spending up to $18.2 billion in 2011. These drugs frequently cause massive weight gain in children. The overuse of antipsychotics in kids was not deterred by the fact that childhood obesity is an important risk factor for diabetes and heart disease. Drug companies have received billion dollar fines for off-label marketing to kids, but these pale in comparison to the enormous revenues. Of note, the inappropriate use of antipsychotics is most pronounced among children who are economically disadvantaged.

He then accurately depicts the link between the rise in diagnoses of autism with the fact that a diagnosis is needed for a child to receive appropriate services:

The introduction of Asperger's by DSM-IV was expected to result in a 3- to 4-fold increase rates of autism. Severe classic autism had an unmistakable presentation with rates lower than 1 per 2000. Asperger's blends imperceptibly into normal eccentricity, and the rates of autism are now reported at 1 per 88 in the United States and 1 in 38 in Korea. Theories connecting the increase in prevalence to vaccination have been discredited. Instead, the rates have grown so rapidly because a diagnosis of autism is required to allow a child access to greatly enhanced school services. About half the youngsters who now receive the diagnosis do not really meet the DSM-IV criteria when these are carefully applied. And follow-up studies finding that half the kids no longer meet criteria also confirm that diagnostic inflation is rampant. Eligibility for school services should be decoupled from an unreliable clinical diagnosis and instead be based on educational need. 

The challenge, and Frances does acknowledge this fact, is to avoid over-diagnosis while at the same time not undertreating those who need help. Most of the children who receive these labels, and their families, are struggling in significant ways. They do need help,  and sometimes lots of it. The issue is inextricably linked with the need to "name" the problem, a need comes in part from both clinicians and parents, who may feel more of a sense of control if what they are struggling with has a name, and also insurance companies who require a diagnosis for reimbursement of services.

Psychiatric diagnoses in children, by definition, place the problem squarely in the child, when in fact it is almost always more complex than this. Genetic vulnerability and environment both have an important role to play. A recent article in the Archives of Diseases of Childhood; Poverty, Maltreatment and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder offers insight in to this complexity:

This paper hypothesises that the population of children receiving a clinical diagnosis of ADHD is aetiologically heterogeneous: that within this population, there is a group for whom the development of ADHD is largely genetically driven, and another who have a 'phenocopy' of ADHD as a result of very adverse early childhood experiences, with the prevalence of this phenocopy being heavily skewed towards populations living with poverty and violence. A third group will have a high genetic risk and have been exposed to violence.

The key phrase here is "aetiologically heterogeneous." Psychiatric labels, be it "ADHD" "bipolar disorder" or "autism," are artificial constructs that provide a false sense of simplicity.  When I see a child and family in consultation, the aim of the work is to take the time to listen to the story and understand where, and it may be in several places, the "problem" actually lies. In order to help these children and families in a meaningful way, we need to be able to, in the words of one of my mentors Ed Tronick, "embrace complexity."

Pediatrics and Psychoanalysis: An Essential Partnership

D.W Winnicott, pediatrician turned psychoanalyst, has been among the most important influences on my work. Unlike him, however, I have been determined, in my professional life, not to "defect" from pediatrics to become a psychoanalyst. I have always felt it was important to bring the wealth of deeply meaningful ideas coming from the discipline of psychoanalysis to the practice of pediatrics.

For example, in my current position as a behavioral pediatrician at Newton-Wellesley Hospital I teach the pediatric residents and  medical students about colic by starting with Winnnicott's notion of "primary maternal preoccupation." I read to them from my book: Keeping Your Child in Mind, itself an effort to bring psychoanalytic ideas to a general audience:

Winnicott described the first weeks to months of motherhood as a period deserving of a name, a psychological state, which for both a newborn and mother is not only healthy but highly adaptive. The name Winnicott gave this state was “primary maternal preoccupation.” He referred to a mother who is preoccupied in this way with her baby as an “ordinary devoted mother.” This way of being in tune with the baby happens naturally and does not look like anything particularly dramatic. A mother knows what her baby feels through her intense identification with him. He is a part of her. Though her role is in this sense “ordinary,” it is in fact hugely important. Winnicott writes: “It will be observed that though at first we were talking about very simple things, we were also talking about matters that have vital importance, matters that concern the laying down of the foundations for mental health.”

Rather than asking "what to do" to "manage" colic, I encourage them to think about the meaning of the behavior within the context of this intense infant-parent relationship. Similarly, when parents come to see me about how to "manage" their child's "behavior problem," I help them to recognize that they are engaged in a kind of "dance of dysregulation" with their child, and that they both need to learn a new way to dance that is calm and coordinated.

This weekend, however, I get to do exactly the opposite, namely bring my knowledge as a pediatrician to a group of psychoanalysts.  Just as psychoanalysts are experts in relationships, so pediatricians (and all professionals who provide primary care to children) are experts in babies.  We are immersed in child development in a way that is unlike any other profession.

I am speaking at a conference at the Austen Riggs Center, co-sponsored by the Yale Child Study Center: Development of the Parent as a Person: Psychological, Biological and Genetic Contributions. Within minutes of looking at the proposed lineup of presentations, I knew exactly what I had to add. My talk is titled: "The Development of the Parent: the Child's Contribution."

 After more than 20 years of listening to countless parents and seeing thousands of babies, I have no doubt that babies come in to the world with their own unique set of qualities and characteristics, that from the first moment have a significant impact on the development of the parent. Almost every parent who is struggling with their child's challenging behavior has shared some variation of, "we saw this from the moment he was born."

I will use the photographs from Kevin Nugent's book: Your Baby is Speaking to You, that so beautifully captures the way babies are engaged in complex communication from the start. I have a video clip of a baby at three days of age having a conversation with me. I will introduce the Newborn Behavioral Observation system, a clinical tool designed to bring out these qualities in the baby, and promote healthy relationships from the start.

A number of years ago I attended a conference entitled "Pediatrics and Child Psychiatry: an Essential Partnership." I was hopeful, but sadly it ended up being primarily about prescribing medication, with a little bit about "parent training" thrown in. The word "relationship" was not mentioned once.

Here we have two parallel relationships: the parent-child relationship, and the pediatrics-psychoanalysis relationship. In each pair, one has the opportunity to have a profound and positive effect on the development of the other.

Auch die Pakete nach Lettland treten heute ihre Reise an

Sie stehen schon fertig, sauber von Robert Himmler in Schutzfolie gewickelt, auf Paletten gestapelt da und warten, dass der LKW anrollt :). Ist euer Paket dabei? Leeeider hab ich mich nicht getraut, ganz hinauf zu klettern auf die Zwischenböden um die oberen Paletten zu fotografieren!
Eure Corinna

Lettland - Verteilung an der Raudas Skola

Hier haben wir eine Schule in Rauda besucht. 

Die Schüler haben ein Theaterstück aufgeführt. Das Mädchen in Grün war der Weihnachtsbaum.

 Olala, wie es ausschaut gab es da noch viele zusätzliche feine Dinge!

 Rudi aus Villach (links) und Hannelore aus Wien (rechts) waren für euch bei der Paketverteilung dabei!

Nicht nur Süßigkeiten, auch die Zahnpasta und Zahnbürste machte Freude. 

An "Oh So Random" $20 Giveaway!

I am beyond thrilled to announce that my blog makeover is finally complete. It's definitely been a long road (I blame my OCD...lol).

Two weeks after my last makeover (I know, I know) I came across The Bubbly Blonde's new design and it was love at first sight. I knew I had to work with the wonderful person behind her design. Before that, I spent countless hours scouring the web for blog designers. 

Each time I found a designer I liked, they either had a mile long wait list, or the price was just way out of my price range- some costing as much as $300! YIKES!!!  Teri was perfect. Each time there was something I didn't like she was very quick to change it. She is very patient, very kind, and very affordable. She is also a teacher! How cool is that?

We must have sent 50+ emails back and forth.
I highly recommend you hop on over to her blog and check her out ;-) 

Ok. Enough of my ramblings- so in celebration of this very long road coming to an end. I'd like to throw a fun giveaway.

You don't have to blog about this giveaway, follow my blog, my pinterest boards, or my fb page (though I would love if you do...hahaha). 

All you have to do is tell me ONE random thing about yourself, your job, or your family. Anything. 

Some ideas are; what grade you teach, how many students you have, what state/ country you teach in, how long you've been teaching, what your favorite children's book or professional development book is, your favorite subject to teach, a funny story, something crazy your students have said, or something on your bucket list. 

Tell me ANYTHING. Just have fun with it!! One comment only per person. Additional comments will be deleted.

 **Please make sure to leave an email in your comment** 

& because this giveaway is 'oh so random- so are the prizes...lol! 

You get to choose your prize. 

A $20 limit anywhere- anywhere of course, that allows me to purchase a gift card for you online. 

(note: no items will be mailed)

Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teacher's Notebook, Scrappin' Doodles, KPM Doodles, DJ Inkers, Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc. 

I will announce the winner by random generator on
September 17, 2012. 

You decide. How exciting! How Random! :) 

ENJOY & Good Luck!  

 

Freude steckt an - Teile ein Lachen!

Hallo zusammen,
na, seid ihr schon fleissig am Packen? Hier möchten wir die Freude der Kinder bei der Weihnachtspaketverteilung im letzten Jahr mit euch teilen :). Das komplette Video findet ihr weiter unten im Blog.

My Summer Bucket List & an upcoming giveaway!!

Teri {A Cupcake for the Teacher}, Hadar {Miss Kindergarten}, & April {A Modern Teacher} are throwing a FUN LINKY PARTY!!! Hop on over to their blogs & link up!! 

My summer bucket list includes working on a new theme for my classroom...is it cheating if I've already started? LOL! Can you guess??

Yep, it's from Schoolgirl Style's Rainbow Collection. When I saw this, I just knew it was going to be my theme. 

I've already started planning, gutting, cleaning, sorting, and packing {whew!} my room a little at a time in anticipation for my new theme.

 

Also, this summer my hubby & I are taking my little one to...

We are HUGE Disney fans and we normally take a trip out there every other summer. EXCITED!!!

We are also going to Maui for a family wedding: 

I've never been to Maui so I am SUPER EXCITED!!! So if I neglect my little 'ol blog, I truly hope you'll understand ;) 

And finally, I plan to...stop and smell the roses. 

This year has been going by extremely fast, and I really need to remember to take time to enjoy life and appreciate God's blessings.  I need to remember that its okay that I didn't get every single item on my to- do list completed. I need to stop over- analyzing, and over- thinking the choices and decisions I have made. Basically, I need to stop being OCD!!! LOL :D

On another note, I have an AWESOME Giveaway coming up! I can't tell you much right now as details are still being finalized but I am REALLY EXCITED about this one, so please check back as you won't want to miss this!!!

Have a fantastic day!!

P.S. I wonder if I can begin cutting the things I laminated on the 5 hour plane ride to California...hmm...my hubby just rolled his eyes at me...hahaha!! 

Heute war es endlich soweit - Paketverteilung an die Kinder in Fushe Kruja, Albanien

Schon seit Tagen hatten sie mit riesiger Ungeduld auf die Pakete gewartet. Heute war es dann endlich soweit. Viel Freude mit den ersten Fotos von der Verteilung eurer Weihnachtspackerl :-)!

Albanien - ein großes Dankeschön an euch alle!

Die Weihnachtsaktion "Kinder helfen Kindern" war auch in Albanien ein großer Erfolg. Die Kinder haben sich sehr über all die bunten, kreativen, interessanten, schönen - schlichtweg wunderbaren - Päckchen von euch gefreut! Anbei der finale Bericht von Lucas Aeschbacher, der mit der Verteilung der Weihnachtspakete in Albanien betraut war.

Weihnachten – gemeinsam feiern

Von außen betrachtet konnte man meinen, man befände sich in einer normalen Schulweihnachtsfeier. Das war es eigentlich auch.  Lehrer, die versuchten, die Schülerinnen und Schüler in Schach zu halten, aufgekratzte Stimmung, Musik, Beiträge der Schüler, eine viel zu enge Aula um alle Kinder fassen zu können, so stehen einige auf der Stiege, welche zur Aula führt und betrachten die ganze Szenerie von oben. Vor der Schule steht ein Kleinlastwagen. Die Hebebühne ist schon leicht nach unten gekippt. Im Innern des Laderaums kann man Geschenke erhaschen. Pakete aus Österreich. Pakete von Kinderhänden gepackt. Pakete, die bald, in einigen Minuten von Kinderhänden geöffnet werden würden. Eine ganz normale Weihnachtsfeier. Eigentlich. Aber eben doch nicht.

Wie jedes Jahr haben in Österreich viele Kinder in Schulen, Kindergärten und Kirchgemeinden Geschenke gepackt um  zu Weihnachten einem anderen Kind, in einem Südosteuropäischen Land, eine Freude zu bereiten. Kurz vor Weihnachten wurden so über 7.000 Geschenkkartons nach Lettland und eben Albanien gebracht.

Nach der gemeinsamen Feier in der Aula suchte jede Klasse wieder ihr Schulzimmer auf und jeder Schüler durfte ein Weihnachtspaket in Empfang nehmen.

Eine ganz normale Weihnachtsfeier. Eigentlich. Aber eben doch nicht.

In Fushe Kruja gab es bis vor wenigen Monaten zwei Schulen: eine für Albaner-Kinder und eine für Kinder der Volksgruppe der Roma – Durch ein langfristiges Projekt, das ADRA Österreich in Zusammenarbeit mit ADRA Albanien und der lokalen Organisation Amara Drom durchführt, konnte die Schließung der Ghettoschule erreicht werden, sodass nun alle Kinder im gleichen Gebäude zur Schule gehen. Bei der Weihnachstfeier dieses Jahres gestalteten albanische und Roma-Kinder sowie Jugendliche gemeinsam Programmpunkte und feierten gemeinsam Weihnachten. Eine ganz normale Weihnachtsfeier? Ja, aber für uns auch ein berührender Erfolg auf dem langen Weg der Integrationsbemühungen eines Volkes, welches seit Menschengedenken verachtet und unterdrückt wird.

Die Integration des Volkes der Roma in Fushe Kruja ist noch lange nicht abgeschlossen. Es warten noch große Herausforderungen auf ADRA Österreich und ihre Projektpartner, aber viele kleine Schritte führen letztlich auch zum Ziel. Mit Unterstützung der Österreichischen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (ADA) wurde deshalb im Herbst ein neues, langfristiges Bildungsprojekt unter den Romas in Fushe Kruja gestartet, welches bis im Herbst 2015 andauern wird.

Nochmals an euch alle ein ganz herzliches Dankeschön für die vielen wundervollen Weihnachtspäckchen! Mit euren Paketen habt ihr viele Kinder, denen es nicht so gut geht, sehr glücklich gemacht!