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Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Breaking Mental Illness, Violence, Divorce, and Murder Cycles

May 11th, 2009 1 comment

Our world suffers from an epidemic of destructive family cycles. These cycles occur with mothers and fathers and are passed along to their children who in turn become destructive. While much has been written about family violence, a lot of it is misleading. Further, it frequently misses the connections between violence and the problems of mental illness and divorce.

Bad parenting, mental illness, child abuse, and even child murder are problems that occur with both men and women. But the “victim feminists” of this world would like to make us all believe that mothers can never do anything wrong. In the process, they are contributing to the abuse and death of children that could be avoided, and are helping to set up future generations for similar horrid outcomes.
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US Parental Rights Constitutional Amendment

May 8th, 2009 2 comments

A group of US lawmakers has proposed the Parental Rights Amendment to the US Constitution to guarantee that parents will not lose their rights of being involved in their children’s lives and being able to make choices regarding their education, healthcare, and other decisions traditionally made by parents. They and the supporters of this amendment believe that it is necessary as the US Supreme Court has recently been rejecting enforcement of traditional parent rights interpretations, citing that there is no language in the Constitution that specifies parents have any rights.

Furthermore, the United Nations is increasingly involved in treaties and agencies that define the rights of children and parents. Some in the US government, including President Obama, appear to intend to discard US sovereignty for matters involving parents and children by ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that is controlled by a group of unelected and unaccountable United Nations experts. This treaty essentially would give the United Nations and thereby the US government the right to do whatever it wants “in the best interests of the children” even if the parents are opposed.
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Beall’s Attempt to Support Child Abuse is Defanged

May 7th, 2009 3 comments

(Please see the comments to this article that indicate the California state legislative website contains misleading information that may have resulted in my wrongly concluding the Judiciary Committee voted on the pro-child-abuse version of this bill on April 28 rather than the significantly cleaned up version that is being listed with a revision date of May 5, 2009.)

This is an update to our previous article California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse. When we started writing that article, AB 612 pro-child-abuse legislation. Despite minor changes, it was still pro-child-abuse when the Judiciary Committee voted to approve it on April 28. However, somebody in the California Assembly significantly watered it down on May 5 to a version that is no longer pro-child-abuse. These changes weren’t made until after the Judiciary Committee vote approving the bill.

You can find the the revision history of AB 612 complete with text and changes and votes at AB 612 Revision and Voting History.
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California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse

May 7th, 2009 1 comment

(Click here for an update to this post.)

A California representative, Democrat Jim Beall, has reintroduced legislation as Assembly Bill 612 (AB 612) to ban the discussion of parental alienation in child custody evaluations. California judges, psychologists, and family law attorneys all oppose this legislation because they know that parental alienation is a real problem that is harming children in many families, especially in high-conflict divorces. So do the many California parents who have been alienated from their children. And so do the grown children who are victims of parental alienation and recognize it for the damage their alienating parent caused in their own lives.

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Child Custody Overview and Strategies

May 6th, 2009 No comments

If you’re about to embark in a child custody battle or in the middle of one, here is an overview of what’s involved and issues that you need to be aware of. These topics are addressed by Steve Carlson, The Custody Coach, in an e-book, How to Win Child Custody.

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Detecting Autism in Infancy, Starting Treatment Early

May 4th, 2009 1 comment

What is Autism?

Autism is a set of child developmental delays and disabilities. It includes impaired social interaction and communications, delayed and impaired verbal and language skills, and focus on repetitive activities. Autism is just one of several related disorders in the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) classification. Asperger’s Syndrome is the second most common ASD illness after autism and generally differs from autism because language development is not affected as severely.

Early Detection of Autism Provides More Time for Intervention

Early detection of autism can provide parents, doctors, and therapists the time to intervene early in a child’s development, before autism becomes more severe. Although doctors recommend screening for autism starting at age 18 months, it is difficult to screen kids under the age of 2 (sometimes even older) because of typical developmental variations between children that are apparent in the verbal, language, emotional, and motor skills tests used to identify autism.
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Women Get Off Easy for DV Crimes Due to Sexism

May 3rd, 2009 No comments

Western societies value the lives of men less than those of women and more severely punish men than women for similar crimes. This constitutes a form of government institutionalized sexism against men. In the process, this sexism tends to legitimize and enable violence by women against men and children. It has been well-established for decades that partner violence is most often mutual, with both partners committing acts of violence upon each other. Pretending otherwise, as Western societies do, simply enables and encourages women to assault, victimize, and even murder their partners because they know the consequences to them for their crimes are often minimal. Sexism simply helps perpetuate the problem of partner violence and its related problems of child abuse, divorce, and mental illness.

Female DV Offenders Benefit from Gender Bias

Consider the March 2009 case of Surrey, British Columbia wife Ellie Cunningham whose violent assault against her husband Adam led to his death. Canadian authorities are likely to drop the charges against the wife because she managed to kill her husband, the only witness to the crime. They are doing this even though Statistics Canada government data shows very clearly that women are often abusing men and it is seldom reported. The message sent is that it’s OK for women to abuse and even kill men.
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Help Kids Avoid Type 2 Diabetes: Eat Less Sugar, More Fiber

May 2nd, 2009 2 comments

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) conducted a 16-week study to see if slightly modifying the diets of Latino teenagers would affect type 2 diabetes risk factors. The findings were reported in the April 2009 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Latino Teens Have High Obesity and Diabetes Risks

The research participants were Latino teenagers because previous research showed almost 40 percent of Mexican American children ages 12 to 19 were found to be overweight or at risk of developing diabetes.

“Latino children are more insulin resistant and thus more likely to develop obesity-related chronic diseases than their white counterparts,” the authors write. “To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of a high-fiber, low-sugar diet on metabolic health in overweight youth, and to our knowledge, none have tested the effects of this type of intervention in a mixed-sex group of Latino youth.”

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Book Review: “The Five Love Languages of Children” by Gary Chapman, Ph.D & Ross Campbell, M.D.

May 1st, 2009 No comments

The Five Love Languages of Children truly is a great and important book for every parent to read. It explains the five different approaches of providing love to a child and teaches parents to recognize and speak their child’s love language. By speaking the right love language, Moms and Dads can avoid many parenting issues and pitfalls by effectively connecting with their children and redirect their efforts to building family relationships that are filled with mutual and genuine respect, affection and commitment. Parents who read the book will also learn much about themselves, understand what their own love language is, and thereby improve relationships with their spouse or partner and even their own parents.

Apart from the basic physical needs of food, shelter and clothing, every child needs unconditional love; love that accepts and affirms a child for simply being who they are, not for what they do. Without unconditional love, a child will wither emotionally and can become stunted for life by feelings of inadequacy, fear, anger and resentment.
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Canadian Wife Assaults Husband Who Later Dies

April 29th, 2009 24 comments

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On March 20, 2009, Ellie Cunningham viciously attacked her husband Adam with a broken wine glass, repeatedly slashing him and leaving him with multiple severe cuts on his arms and legs and a broken ankle. When police arrived and found him on the steps outside of their home in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, it was clear Ellie had badly assaulted him.

Ellie was arrested by police and a domestic violence (DV) investigation ensued. A restraining order was issued on the wife, and Adam moved in with his mother to recover from the assault. He had extensive stitches to hold together his slashed skin and surgery to repair his broken ankle. Unfortunately, he was found dead on his mother’s sofa three weeks later. An autopsy indicated the cause of death to be complications from the surgery to fix the damage from the DV assault.

During the time between the assault and his death, Adam was interviewed by police and wrote about his experiences during the nearly four years of marriage to Ellie. He recounted how Ellie would have outbursts and become verbally abusive.

Video news coverage of Adam’s death, including photos of his injuries and an interview with his sister Nikki, can be found at:

Global BC TV News Coverage of Death of Adam Cunningham

Oddly, his wife published this obituary claiming that she’ll miss him:
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