74 JEMS OCTOBER 2011
BOOK REVIEW
It’s probably quite easy to recall an injury or sickness that occurred during your childhood,
but did you know that the first words you heard after the event played an
invaluable role in how well you would manage the situation, heal and subsequently deal
with similar events in the future?
Derived from current medical research, Verbal First Aid demonstrates how the words
a caregiver chooses to say when a child is sick or in pain will cause chemical responses
to travel through the child’s body and either help or hinder the healing process, as well
as set the course for their physical and emotional recovery.
Techniques provided through descriptive scenarios teach the reader how to empower
children to actively participate in their own healing, conquer their fears and turn seemingly
tragic events into an accepted part of life.
Easy to read and compassionately presented, Verbal First Aid announces revolutionary
non-pharmaceutical healing that can be used anywhere at any time. This book is perfect
for healthcare providers, teachers and parents. It provides the key that can unlock
a child’s inner strength in any situation, thus promoting a healthy and happy life.

JEMS—By Natalie Harris BHSc, AEMCA

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I was my own worst nightmare, a caricature of the anxious stunt-mom, the stuff I have warned my sister about far, far too many times for both her and my own liking. And even writing this to you, I am embarrassed. I'm supposed to know better. This is generally the sort of thing I teach to parents — how to generate a sense of authority, safety, and assurance and then transfer that to their children or loved ones. I'm supposed to be the maven of ,Verbal First Aid not the Grand Ol' Mama of Woe and Oh No.

But as I look back on it — and how I had to retrace my steps, backpedal, and make it right with my niece (first with an apology and then with some true correction), I see it more as a gift. As hard as it is to let go of the people we love, it is that easy to grab them right back. Control is like a tether ball. It may look like you've slapped it past the horizon, but then there it comes around and slams you upside the head.

What I've learned is that letting go of someone I love so that she may properly live her own life is an ongoing struggle — at least for people like me whose natural tendency is to fret. For others who are more like my husband, it is a grace, a way of walking and breathing in the world. So I went back to basics. As she talked about all the things she was going to do I went through the list I teach but forgot to practice:

1. BREATHE! I honestly forget to breathe more times than I care to admit. It's a wonder I'm not perpetually cyanotic.

2. CENTER! This word has a multiple meaning for me. In one, obvious sense it means to get centered physically in my own body, which is the only way to manage an unreasonable anxiety, even though everything about anxiety pushes us in the other direction… to leave our bodies. (If it's going to feel like this, I'm OUTTA here!)

The other thing it represents for me is a spiritual center. I have to remember, or to be more accurate, actively remind myself by reading something, praying, talking to someone who knows better than I do, who I really am, who she really is and what our ultimate destinations are. Even though I love her as if she were my own child, she is far, far more than that and has her own purpose in life. She is God's child, just as I am. She has never belonged to me (or anyone else for that matter) even though at times it may feel like that.

3. The ABC's of Verbal First Aid with children and adults. Even though this was not a "crisis" (at least not for anyone but myself), it was a good opportunity for me to remember what makes for truly therapeutic communication–Authority, Believability, Compassion. Usually these qualities are important to cultivate when someone is in shock or had a traumatic or frightening experience so that we can lead them towards health or healing. In our case, it was oddly reversed. I was the one who, with my fear, was creating a traumatic or frightening experience where none did or needed to exist. To reverse it, I had to go back to what was the essence of any good parent or healer relationship: the ability to be a leader (to help her to move forward without the unnecessary baggage of MY anxiety), to be believable in my assertions (not a fear-monger), and to be understanding. She was tired and desperately wanted a vacation. If she wanted to see Donald Duck and be a little girl for a week, who was I to judge? And where did I come off assuming that she didn't have enough sense to get out of the sun or find a chair in which to rest her weary legs? I had messed up on all counts.

4. Rapport. In this case, because I was such a worry wart, I had to re-establish what I once had but rapidly lost because my fear had begun to affect her. The more fear I had, the more I lost the rapport we had cultivated over so many years. Obviously it was not "lost" in the sense of "gone forever" but it was tenuous in the moment. With every "what if" she had to defend not only her status as an adult or her decisions, but her sense of well-being. The more afraid I was, the more she really had to resist me. I remember quite a while ago when I was undergoing these quick twists and turns with my parents and how their fear had more than annoyed me, it had angered me. As the years passed, I realized why: it resonated with me. If they were afraid (and if secretly I was, too), then there must have been something to be afraid of. I didn't want to be afraid. It made me feel helpless rather than empowered and alive. And being pervasively (as opposed to realistically) fearful never gave me a single useful tool in my life.

So, this time, I was lucky. Not too much water or wasted emotional energy had flowed under the bridge before I caught it. I was able to recapitulate in short order and she, gracefully, laughed at her aunt once again. When, inevitably, I imagine her walking across miles of parking lots and waiting on long lines in sweltering heat to get through the Pearly Gates of Disney, I will instead take a breath, sit back, remind myself of the basics and think of her as a brave and happy young woman with a baby on the way, running up to Cinderella and smiling from ear to ear.

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Do You Substitute Praise for Parenting?

Now in Huffington Post…

I was at the dog park recently and watched as a middle-aged man played with his young son and their dog. They were throwing around a ball and running back and forth. The dog and the kid returned back to dad, each with the same expression, awaiting the same response: "Great job!" And they got it every time no matter what they did.

It was pretty sweet, really, and I couldn't help but smile when the boy and the dog both got patted on their heads at the same time, but it made me wonder a bit about how we praise our kids and how we confuse unconditional love and unconditional approval.

A while back (in the early '80s) when I was just starting out, there was a group for women on the West Coast that was dedicated to the fostering of self-esteem and empowerment. These are good things… up to a point. But those were the times we were living in, and the terms were being thrown around like rice at weddings. Anyway, the women were told to use the word "yeasting" to imagine themselves growing full of their true "selves." Given what we know about the power of imagery and how words translate into physiologic responses, can you guess what happened?

Take a moment.

Are you laughing yet?

They developed yeast infections. I kid you not. Whether they had any real improvement in their self-worth, I can't tell you. No studies were done and no further reports were given.

Can We Praise Too Much?

Parents struggle with this issue all the time because somehow in our society we have transposed love and approval. We have been infused ("yeasted?") with the notion that if we don't praise and empower our children at every turn we are somehow failing them or burdening them with battered egos, poor economic futures and a long life of traumatic relationships.

Praising, which is a marvelous thing when it is merited and sincerely given, has become as freely distributed in the schools and playgrounds as cake at a birthday party. "You're so wonderful!" has become not just common, but culturally "requisite." Chic Hollywood moms show the world their baby bumps, or parade their infants as they breast feed for the paparazzi. It would seem that what we do has become less important than who sees us doing it and the image it creates for us. And the media surely perpetuates this.

Is this the same as love or as parenting? To answer that for myself, I had to backtrack for a moment and recall who we all are at the most elemental levels.

We are, first of all, sentient and aware from day one. Studies have indicated that babies are not only aware but have preference recall from while they were in utero.

In a study at the University of North Carolina, pregnant women read aloud "The Cat in the Hat" twice a day to their unborn children. A few days after birth, the newborns were outfitted with special nipples that let them signal their approval of what they were hearing. (This is based on the data that sucking behavior is a reflection and direct measure of interest.)

The newborns were then given the opportunity to hear a different story than they one they'd heard in utero. They quickly realized they could change the story by changing the speed of their suckling. They vastly preferred what they heard in utero. Not only that, but they preferred it the exact way they heard it: by their mothers as opposed to other females, read forward rather than backward.

Translation: Children are listening and watching and interpreting what we do, what we say and how we do or say it, even when we think they're just dribbling.

Secondly, we are all pack animals. We need to know we belong. That includes love, but requires more. In order to truly belong, we must be able to participate. This entails that we also know and follow the general rules — what we can do, what we can't do, what we have to offer and where our place in the pack is.

Guidelines and standards, when used lovingly (and I can't overstate the importance of "lovingly"), are necessary for good character. It's the same as lifting weights for good bone density. If we never have to lift more than we think we can, we never will. We simply get weaker and weaker.

The third and perhaps most important is that we are all — again, from our first breaths –hard-wired to seek safety. That is where parenting really comes in.

Safety is everything to a child. It allows him to grow, to question, to create, to make mistakes, to actually become empowered, to learn and finally to understand the workings of the world so he can function and build new relationships outside the family.

Unconditional praise or approval is, by definition, the absence of limits, standards and expectations. And if there are no limits for a child, there can be no safety.

The problem is that, like poor Ali McGraw in "Love Story," we think love means never having to say, "I'm sorry," or, "Please don't do that," or, "That was wrong." Love often means precisely the opposite.

Children who are raised to think it's all "okay" and that they're "just wonderful," no matter what they do, are given a message that is actually contrary to our best intentions and their deeper needs — that they are limitless, constantly central to whatever is going on and always right. All of this breeds the very thing we don't want: narcissism.

For more intuitive children, it also resonates as a lie. I remember one young girl when I worked at an elementary school. Her mother wanted her in the school band. She bought her a brand new, expensive violin. She hired a private tutor. She became her daughter's greatest cheerleader. But the child had no interest and no pitch. She used to come crying to me in my office that she wanted to quit, that she couldn't do it. But her mother insisted that she could be anything she wanted to be, that she was terrific, that she only need apply herself a little bit more.

"I know I can't play. I can hear myself," the child told me. "Why can't she?"

Are Standards Punitive?

Standards of behavior don't negate love. They may very well help express it. The reality is we are not all created equal. We have equal rights under the law, but I know without a doubt that I can't play basketball. I can't fly a plane. I can't do neurosurgery. I'm not the same as you. You're not the same as me. We each have gifts. We each have deficits. That is what we all share. That is the true nature of our equality — that we are not the same.

Children know this until they are taught otherwise. They see it from their first birthday party, their first foray into a playground, their first afternoon at daycare. Some kids run faster than others. Some speak earlier, some speak later. Some kids sing like angels from the time they can breathe. Other kids can see deep into the netherworld of mathematics, as if they were reading a milk carton. Some kids are born with the gift of compassion.

Whatever their gift, they usually know the difference between a brilliant performance and a lousy one. It's not just because we say so. They can feel it.

The issue is, how we walk them through the reality that already exists?

I remember one teacher from fifth grade. His name was Mr. Sperber. He was the strictest teacher in the school and he taught grammar. We all loathed it, all the diagrams and conjunctions, but we learned it. And we behaved. Granted, this was not the most creative or expressive episode of my life, but because of him, it was one of the most disciplined and important. I learned what I was capable of doing, even when I didn't "feel" like it. I learned respect and diligence. And I knew the pleasure of well-earned praise. When he said, "good job," he meant it. There were no effortless "atta-boy's" in that class. But when praise was given, it felt awfully good.

Just the fact that I remember him when I can't recall one of the other teachers in all those years of school is evidence enough for me of his impact.

Suzanne Brown, an economist and the mother of two grown boys (aged 20 and 25), felt that her kids needed her approval, and she gave it unstintingly when they accomplished something: "When Ben was little, and did something well — be it put a puzzle together or kick a ball — I would say, 'You must feel really great about that!,' or, 'Wow, how does it feel to get a 100 on your spelling test?'"

She added:

I think people become confident because they build on success … It seems to me that parents often fail to recognize that parenting is about raising a self-sufficient, value-centered individual. It is not about how they look to the outside world, it is about how the children function in the outside world. As parents, we tend to think our kids need to make us look good, rather than we need to look good to our kids, and set examples for them to live by. I tell each of my boys that I am so very lucky that, of all the little boys in the world, I got to be the mom of the very best ones.

Approval and encouragement and praise are cause for joy. I love giving it. I love receiving it. And occasionally, I really need it. But it's not the same as the deeper need for love, which can be given unconditionally, wholeheartedly and needs no approval at all.

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Hi Jude,

Your point about children tending to "interpret things literally, think magically, and respond viscerally" to heal right away, I observed when my daughter, known then as the "Little Princess", crawled atop a chair and "unintentionally" dove into the edge of a coffee table. Contact point: right eyebrow, which accommodated her explosion of kinetic energy with a half inch gash.

I am an easy-going parent, but watching your kid simulate bungee-jumping sans bungee, even for two feet, heightens your terror alert meter… For those who don't know, small head wounds produce volumes of blood. I remained calm and said, "Wow, I've done that, boom, you hit your head!" then I told her bleeding was a good thing, cleaning the wound and all, and that it would stop soon because of the magic ice. There was more, but the really interesting part occurred at the hospital, she chatted with the nurses and doctors about her situation, never cried (even while they stitched the wound), and the amount of blood was comparatively small. It was a non-event to her.

Did I contribute to her self-healing attitude and actions? Looking back and comparing elements of what I did to your Verbal First Aid… I believe I may have, and if it worked on the "Little Princess" it will work on other kids too.

The best part is that you are modeling beneficial behavior for your kids – how to react to your grandchildren.

Good thoughts!
Lawson M.

That's precisely how it's supposed to work. Words lead to thoughts lead to images lead to chemistry which in turn leads to images and reinforces thoughts about ourselves–how we handle stress, healing etc…

Thanks, Lawson.

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This is a wonderful comment from Victoria B on an article about Verbal First Aid (title above) on Huffingtonpost. There has been such a resounding "YES" on every piece I've written about Verbal First Aid and it's been truly gratifying. Thank you, Victoria, and all of you who have written to say, "Finally…a how-to manual for kids!"

I'm back to say a few, I hope, more-cogent words after watching your video for Words Are Medicine. I was traumatized during an unnecessary hospitalization when I was a toddler, seriously traumatized, won't go into it but the classic symptoms emerged and have troubled me all my life. As a result, I have pursued alternative health and healing practices since I was old enough to understand the difference, and I've been able to heal a lot of trauma.

What I want to say is that your understanding of the power of the words that medical personnel say, and the way they touch the patients under their care, is what I have been trying to get people to understand for most of my life. I'm going to find your publications and study them so that I can do more healing of myself, and so that I can feel confident in my own ability to be appropriate with others in crisis.

I can say as a person deeply wounded by the very pitfalls you describe that this information is essential to effective person-hood, not just for parenting or for first responders. Also crucial is the point you make that we tend to replicate what we were given, so it's really important for us to study and grow beyond that, otherwise we are just reenacting and recreating the insufficiencies. Thank you so much for publishing here on HP, I'm so happy to know about this research.

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According to a growing number of experts, a human's need–and search–for safety starts at conception. Studies have shown that mothers who do not want or are overwhelmed by their pregnancies induce the production of stress hormones in their newly forming babies.

Gary Sibcy, Ph.D.,co-author with Tim Clinton, of Attachments: Why You Love, Feel, and Act the Way You Do, states unequivocally that relationships–how we speak, relate, and respond to our children–are crucial to brain development. Furthermore, he emphasizes, the earlier we engage children properly in life, the more likely they are to be healthy, adaptable, and happy.

In the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology, it is becoming axiomatic that the brain is a social organ and that the relationships we experience at an early age change not only the way the brain functions but its very structure and its future function. The brain changes and forms with experience and our interpretation of those experiences based on what we see, hear, and feel around us. This particular and important feature of childhood is what experts callplasticity.

A child is not born with a fixed set of resources, not even genetically. The only thing that comes in ready to go is the brain stem, which allows us to breathe and sleep and blink without thinking. The rest of the synaptic and neural nets are wired, rewired, and wired again throughout our early lives. Eventually, those networks can become hard-wired, which is why knowing how to speak to our children is so vitally important.

For the full article, please go to:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Kid-Whispering–Keeping-by-Judith-Acosta-100706-621.html

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Babies come into the world crying, cooing and clinging. They need—food, warmth, love, and safety.

They are born with the innate capacity to feel fully, scream for us, hold onto us.

They are born with the potential to develop and think.

But they are not born with the ability to feel and think at the same time.

That is what we—as grown-ups, parents, caretakers—are there to teach them to do.

This is a formidable task, hopefully made easier with Verbal First Aid.

When kids are left to their own devices—or worse, are taught they are unloved and are made to feel unsafe—they do not develop normally. And that holds true in both the cognitive and emotional arenas.

At a Christian Counseling Convention, Gary Sibcy, in exploring the effect of the emotional environment on development, talked about a study that was done with monkeys. Interestingly, monkeys have the gene for alcoholism though it remains dormant unless activated.

Not only are our relationships important in the moment in terms of how we make others “feel,” but as the research is leading us to conclude, it is pivotal in our development on every level—mental, emotional, and genetic. What we say and do with others matters in ways we are only just beginning to appreciate.

The Verbal First Aid Relationship

According to many experts in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, there are certain types of relationships that are healing, nurturing and developmentally pivotal. They can even help a child who has been repeatedly abused and hurt to rewire those learnings so he can go on to have good relationships in his life.

In Verbal First Aid with children, there are three essential principles that are utilized to both facilitate physical healing in the moment as well as long-term wellness and proper development:

1. Recognizing The Healing Zone
2. Developing and Utilizing Rapport:  Centering and the ABC’s of Rapport
3. Leadership: Healing Suggestion

For the full article, please go to http://www.opednews.com/articles/Verbal-First-Aid-and-Attac-by-Judith-Acosta-100629-216.html

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Hard to believe!

For more information, go to: www.verbalfirstaidthebook.com

Also go to www.radicalparenting.com. Very hip.

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The commercial was a thirty-second spot in which a group of teenagers (“punks,” according to my husband) rushed into the home of one of the boys in the group. Within seconds they had taken over the kitchen opening every cabinet they could reach, offering unsolicited commentary—all negative—on the food they found there.

Rush to rescue…enter the servant mother with a tray full of freshly cooked (previously frozen) chicken (by-product) tenders.

“Yeah, mom,” they barely uttered as they flung her offering down their throats.

“No one I ever grew up with, tough guy or not, would have ever had the gall, the unabashed audacity to walk into someone’s home and, forget just rummaging through their pantry, but to criticize what they found?” He was clearly disgusted. “That’s just the height of entitlement. That’s insane.”

Who can argue with him? Even those of us who were raised in more open, less structured homes than my husband’s can see the problem in the scenario and, more importantly, the cultural calamity it forebodes.

He wasn’t done…“I would’ve gasped if any of my friends had done that in my home when I was a kid…or if I’d found out that any of the kids I raised went into someone’s home and behaved like that. God, I’d be thoroughly embarrassed. And today…if I was greeted with a horde of self-centered punks ransacking my kitchen and dissing the food that I’d worked hard to provide, I would not run out and hook them up with a platter of chicken tenders. Tender would be the last thing on my mind.”

(For the full article, please log onto http://www.opednews.com/articles/Chicken-Tenders-and-the-De-by-Judith-Acosta-091101-884.html)

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