Spend QUALITY time with your children

TIP OF THE WEEK- By Lillian Reekie
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Spend QUALITY time with your children doing the things they enjoy or that you can both enjoy together.*
Your children will enjoy a day out with you or even an hour or so doing something special together much more than any material gift and will value and remember that time long after any gift is forgotten about or broken.


* Think about the positive things you remember most from your childhood. What are the memories that stand out for you? Was it that exciting present you got when you were 9 or was it that fun day out or holiday you had? Was it that time you spent with your Mum or Dad doing something special that you really enjoyed?

I am sure that in many years to come Caleb will remember the special times he and Andrew are having rebuilding and restoring his car. They have spent hundreds of hours over the last few months together in the garage, getting dirty, laughing and learning together. This is something we could never have bought for Caleb. We could have handed him a new car and yes he would have loved and appreciated it but the memories of working on his car and the love shared will be so precious and remembered and appreciated always.

0- Show your children you are their biggest supporter; their number 1 FAN

TIP OF THE WEEK- By Lillian Reekie
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Show your children you are their biggest supporter; their number 1 FAN!!*
Regardless of what our children say, do or how they act we have to show them that we love them unconditionally and will not judge them or their actions. If our children know we will not judge them they will be more likely to confide in us and tell us what is happening in their lives as they will not fear being judged, criticised or yelled at.
Regardless of who else is putting them down we have to be their ROCK, the constant that will always be there to love and support them through any challenge.


* Regardless of their age (5,15 or 25)our children need to feel our support and that we are batting for them. We have to remain strong and supportive throughout ALL challenges (easier said than done I know). But the bigger the challenge the more support they will need. Any challenge can be rectified if you work as a team with your child. Work against them and the likely hood is the challenge will escalate. They will then look to others for support.
Did you know this is how and why lots of kids get involved in gangs and various groups? Because they were looking for somewhere to belong, someone or something that would make them feel important even if it is a negative influence!!! Food for thought.

If you want HAPPY and HEALTHY children reduce the toxins in their home

Nathan (my eldest son that is a Naturopath) and I went to a great health conference yesterday with 6 awesome health speakers. While they all had different topics and different levels of expertise their messages were similar.
I liked what Mark Edmonson said about why we don't succeed- and this means succeed in health, career, finances, happiness, relationships ...anything. He said there were 6 main reasons why we don't succeed-
1. Lack of knowledge
2. Poor mental conditioning
3. Poor health
4. Poor fitness
5 .Poor nutrition
6. Poor choices.

I felt good about the fact that I am working in all of theses areas. Yes I am passionate about health but combining all of these criteria ensures overall health of mind, body and spirit.

One thing that was unanimous and why I made it the 'tip of the week' was that we need to reduce toxins in our lives. In the world we live in there are so MANY harmful and potentially health affecting toxins. While we can't avoid all of them I do believe we can control what we put onto and into out bodies. That is we can choose the foods we eat and the products we use on our bodies and around our homes.
*If you are not familiar with a safety conscious company please let me know.

So make it a priority to make your living environment as toxin free as possible!!

TIP OF THE WEEK- By Lillian Reekie
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If you want HAPPY and HEALTHY children reduce the toxins in their home and the environment they spend most time in.*
We don’t always realise how every day toxins can affect our health so adversely, especially for our children. Many of the health and behavioural challenges our children experience today can be minimised by reducing the many toxins and harmful chemicals in our food and personal and household products.

* While this may sound daunting it really isn’t that difficult to do if you make the decision and just follow through to make the best choices you can.
(You may also need to educate others like the school, childcare facility or other friends/family members that the children spend time with.)
Reduce toxins in food by eating the least amount of processed food, avoiding all artificial colours, flavours and preservatives and other food additives. Make MOST of your diet fresh and preferably organic and drink plenty of fresh filtered water. Be diligent with what you put onto your bodies as well as around your home. Purchase products from a company that is committed to ‘safety conscious’ formulas that will do your family no harm. Look at all products, especially those you use for the children like toothpaste, hair care and body care etc. Remember also the importance of a good non toxic washing powder and other cleaning and household products.
For more information on these topics you can read my book ‘Hidden Dangers’ available at www.hiddendangers.com.au

Make every day a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’.

TIP OF THE WEEK- By Lillian Reekie
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Make every day a ‘Happy Mother’s Day’.
We all know the old saying, “Treat others the way you want to be treated” This is never more important than when dealing with our children. Ask yourself, “Do you like being yelled at, nagged, spoken down to, controlled, treated with disrespect, not allowed to express your opinions, feelings or thoughts?”
Your children are the same. They want to be treated with the same respect and courtesy. They deserve to be treated the same as you expect them to treat you.
If you have a child that is not showing you the respect and cooperation you believe you deserve as a parent look carefully at what you are giving out.
There may lay the answers!
When you work this out... every day will be Mothers Day (or Fathers Day or Carers or Teachers day) as your children will put you up high on the same level that you put them... plus more. They will want to give back tenfold!

Beware: New Mental Health Labels Being Invented

Beware: New Mental Health Labels Being Invented

It seems that the world is about to become a much more mentally unstable place! All that it will take is the publication of a revision of a very important book: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This publication is the ‘Bible of Psychiatry’ as it describes all the mental disorders known to man (and then some!). It is therefore the first thing that a psychiatrist will reach for when attempting to make a diagnosis.

The proposed new edition of the DSM is attracting widespread criticism as it is felt that the psychiatrists working on it must suffer from a disorder off their own namely “Over Definition Addiction”!

Many things that were previously just seen as being part of the scale of normal human behaviour are described as disorders in the manual. Whatever you are struggling with, it seems that the new DSM will have a label for you:

• Rudeness – Antisocial Behaviour Disorder
• Temper Tantrums – Temper Dysregulation with Dysphoria
• Overeating – Binge Eating Disorder
• Rebelliousness – Oppositional Defiant Disorder
• Promiscuousness – Hypersexual Disorder
• Attention Seeking – Histrionic Personality Disorder

• Selfishness – Narcissistic Behaviour Disorder

All of this labelling would actually have been extremely funny if it was not so very dangerous. Those of us who have been working in the field of ADD/ADHD for a long time are acutely aware of these dangers and should be at the forefront of warning people not to be sucked in by this ‘medicalisation’ of everyday life.

These could be a few of the dangers:

· Increased levels of psychiatric treatment: It is not overly cynical to point out that for every new ‘disorder’ that is described, new treatments will also be needed. It is therefore in the best interest of psychologists and psychiatrists to keep inventing new categories of disorders.

· The more there are, the busier they will be! in labelling everyday challenging behaviour. In this way mental health professionals make sure that they will be in business for a long time to come!

· Blame shifting: It is a well-known fact that taking personal responsibility is a vital first step in achieving lasting behaviour modification.

· People will now be able to say things like: “It’s not that I want to act like this, my problem is that I have oppositional defiant disorder!” If these revisions are accepted we should all expect a world where more and more people will shift the responsibility for their problems to other people.

· This will be a world that will keep lawyers happy (e.g. lawsuits by obese people against fast food companies will have so much more chance of succeeding if they can point to the fact that they have a recognised mental disorder i.e. ’Binge Eating Disorder’!) Is this really the kind of world we want to live in?

· A world in which very few people take responsibility for their actions and in which we will continually be told that we cannot even hope to deal with daily life without some form of treatment.

· Increased rates of medication: Perhaps the most serious implication of the proposed DSM revision is the fact that many psychiatrists will choose to treat these ‘conditions’ with drugs. The implications of this for the young generation are simply staggering. Can we really afford to have an even bigger proportion of people drugged out of their minds simply because of the perception that they suffer from some kind of disorder.

We tinker with the workings of the human brain at our peril and this revision will certainly be interpreted by many in the mental health field as an invitation to tinker on a massive scale.

What are the implications of all of this for people with ADHD? We may need to prepare ourselves for an onslaught of ‘combination diagnoses’. The growing public awareness of the dangers of medicating kids with ADHD (and of the fact that there are alternatives available) means that an increasing number of parents are asking some hard questions before resorting to medication.

This trend obviously makes the drug companies very nervous. They may try to maintain sky-high prescription rates by encouraging medical professionals not to stop at simple ADHD diagnoses. Coupling the ADHD with something else (e.g. ADHD with ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’) make it sound much more serious and therefore beyond the scope of alternative methods to deal with ADHD.

This could be the reason for the increase in double-barrel diagnoses (ADD/ADHD and …). These will obviously only increase once all of the new disorders have been made official.

So what should we do when people want to take away our responsibilities as human beings and put us on medication to ‘make things better’?

Perhaps our response should be the same whenever we are confronted with something dangerous: Just say “no”!

Know what your children’s highest valuesare and work with them in alignment with THEIR values and not (necessarily) YOURS.

TIP OF THE WEEK- By Lillian Reekie

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Know what your children’s highest values are and work with them in alignment with THEIR values and not (necessarily) YOURS.*

Your children’s most important values will ultimately determine what they do and how they will live their lives. It can be when we try to instil values that are not congruent with the child that they revolt or become uncooperative. Our values are our cherished beliefs and standards for right and wrong. They provide direction and meaning to life and can inspire constructive behaviour.

*If it is high on your list of values for example that the children get a ‘good’ education and do their homework and study but it is not on the child’s high list of values you can still look for ways to come to a compromise. For example if the child really loves animals and wants to spend all their time with animals and neglect their school work you may be able to find out that through that high value of ‘loving animals’ that the child would love to be a vet. You can then use the value that is high for your child to discuss that in order to be a vet they will need to complete secondary school with high enough marks to get into university to study to become a veterinarian. This same principal can be used for lots of areas. So find out what your child’s highest values are and work with them to achieving them. If you are clever and work cooperatively with your child you may also see your highest values for your child be fulfilled. (But don’t force them if you are not in alignment)

My perception of a ‘good’ education was to finish high school and go to University and for Nathan that was also in his highest values but for Caleb it was not. I had to allow him to work within his own values and to make his own decisions for HIS future. It was hard for me to ‘let go’. But when I did and Caleb knew we understood that conventional education was not a high value for him and that we had ‘faith’ in him to follow his own set of values...he made MUCH better choices. We could have FORCED him into remaining at school (legally) but what sort of outcome do you think we would have had?

Have you ever heard of parents forcing their child to fulfil the parents highest values. In ALL instances what do you believe the outcome would be?