THE PREMIER PARENTING MAGAZINE FOR CENTRAL ALABAMA
FREE
AUGUST 2016
Helping Kids EMBRACE NEW THINGS Make the Most of SCHOOL FIELD TRIPS How to Choose Your AFTER-SCHOOL ACTIVITIES BACK TO HOMESCHOOLING Tips & Traditions
NEW SCHOOL? NO WORRIES!
table of contents
EDUCATION AND ENRICHMENT GUIDE For Happy, Healthy Kids
Going Back to School!
S E E O U R 2 0 1 6 H H K D I R E C TO R Y O N PAG E 1 0
MINGHAM PARENT’S
py,healthykids 32
24
School Ministries of Birmingham
26
College Corner: Are We Fostering the Wrong Kind of College Envy?
32
Fresh Starts: Helping Kids Embrace New Things
34
Help for Choosing After-School Activities
36
Making the Most of School Field Trips
40
New (School) Year, New You
34
28 departments
26
Note 04 Editor’s Life in an Empty Nest at Back-to-School Time
GHAM Your Back-to-School 42 GetPARENT’S
py,healthykids Shots with Tot Shots Clinics
44
32 36 34 38
07
Parenting with Dr. Friedman
08
Short Stuff
46
A Page in a Book Books, Beds and Sleepyheads
48
Ask the Specialist Sports Safety for Children
57
August Calendar of Events
Party: 62 Poetry Daydreaming
Honor Student Dares to Defeat Diabetes
50
20 Pledge to Pack a Healthier Lunchbox
28 New School? No Worries!
38 Back–to-Homeschool Tips & Traditions
ON THE COVER: Jared and Jonathan, brothers, both age 12, of Columbiana are ready for back to school. Photo at Briarwood Christian Academy. Photo by Christy Pierce Photography, LLC, 205-902-0385; www.christypiercephotographyllc.com.
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with Love: 50 Sprinkled Have a Baby Shower for the Second or Third Child Travel: 54 Family Pensacola Has Everything for Families
parenting
Parenting with Dr. Friedman
Q:
Our 15 year-old daughter is deliberately cutting herself. She tells me that she does it because it feels good. I find this hard to understand. I have
bribed her with offers to buy clothes for her or take her on a trip
if she stops but she says she can’t. Why is she doing this? The frequency of self-injurious behavior – cutting, burning, and scab picking – has increased dramatically over the last several years. I saw virtually none 20 years ago. It is, unfortunately, not uncommon now. While to many parents it may appear to be an irrational or senseless behavior, most behaviors occur for a reason. Cutting is typically done to cope with intense and overwhelming feelings that the adolescent cannot bear. It continues because the self-injurer feels a dramatic drop in tension after the cut and thus the behavior is reinforced. Behavior that is reinforced is repeated. The reasons for self-harm can be grouped into three categories: regulation of feelings, communication of distress, and self-punishment. The first of these is the most common and probably is present among all self-injuring adolescents. Cutting or burning can be an attempt to bring the mind and body back to equilibrium in
the presence of overwhelmingly intense feelings. Pain can serve to relieve emptiness and feelings of unreality. It can relieve rage that the victim cannot express outwardly. It can even serve as an alternative to suicide. Cutting is not, of itself, a suicide attempt. Some cutters, who feel emotionally empty, say they use cutting to escape numbness. They do it in order to feel something. The sight of their own blood serves as a tangible reminder that they are alive. Some cutters use self-harm as a way to communicate feelings that they cannot convey in other ways. They want you to literally see their pain. When the self-injury is used to communicate it is often seen as manipulative. Cutters, like anorexics and bulimics, may cut to maintain a sense of uniqueness. They feel that they disappear if they are not special. They have no internal sense of who they are. They require constant affirmation from others.
aspire to
Some cutters harm themselves for punishment. This is often true of children who were abused. They make the passive experience of abuse active by harming themselves. This is a “trauma reenactment.” They feel they are bad and need to be punished. Many cutters use pain to divert attention from issues and feelings that are too painful to bear. The physical pain is easier to tolerate than the emotional pain and takes its place. People who cut usually have failed to develop the ability to tolerate strong feelings. They have difficulty maintaining a sense of self-worth without constant approval from others. They have trouble maintaining meaningful connections to others. Behavior therapy uses pain substitution to avoid injury.
Squeezing ice cubes, snapping a rubber band or eating a hot pepper leaves no physical mark. This works in theory, but I have not found it to work in practice. Antidepressant medication can alter the biochemistry that is thought to be a part of this problem. Insight-oriented psychotherapy is essential in helping the sufferer to understand the source of despair and to fill the empty hole inside and to provide a nurturing and supportive relationship to replace the emptiness.
Vivian K. Friedman Ph. D. is a child and family psychologist at UAB, Department of Psychiatry. Send questions for response in this column to Viviankf@gmail.com. No personal replies are sent.
Open house for prospective students
Saturday, October 22
• Public education for students entering grades 7-11 • Attend a session at 9 am, 10 am or 11 am • Learn about ASFA, its curriculum and special programs in Creative Writing, Dance, Math/Science, Music, Theatre Arts and Visual Arts • Admission by audition only for the 2017-2018 school year • Questions? Email Jaronda Little at jlittle@asfa.k12.al.us or call 205.252.9241
ALABAMA SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
1800 Rev. Abraham Woods, Jr. Blvd. Birmingham, AL 35203 205.252.9241 www.asfaschool.org birminghamparent.com | 7