THE COST OF BULLYING (cont)
It can lead to depression for its victims:
"Being left out or bullied is more likely to lead to depression in children with developmental disabilities than any facet of their condition, new research indicates.
The findings come from a study of 109 kids ages 8 to 17 with various special needs. Researchers asked the children and their parents to fill out questionnaires designed to identify signs of anxiety and depression. Then, the kids were screened to assess whether or not they were bullied or excluded by their peers.
“What is notable about these findings is that despite all the many challenges these children face in relation to their chronic medical or developmental diagnosis, being bullied or excluded by their peers were the factors most likely to predict whether or not they reported symptoms of depression,” said Margaret Ellis McKenna, a senior fellow in developmental-behavioral pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina who presented the research Sunday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Boston.
Other factors that McKenna and her colleagues considered included age, gender and the presence of chronic health conditions, but none came close to the influence of the negative peer experiences.
Accordingly, the researchers said that children who report being bullied or excluded should be carefully observed for signs of depression or other internalizing behaviors.
“Professionals need to be particularly alert in screening for the presence of being bullied or ostracized in this already vulnerable group of students,” McKenna said."

Don't let your child be bullied.

BUT IN HAPPIER NEWS...:
"Model turned actress Brooklyn Decker says she wants to adopt a child with special needs.
“I want to adopt a child or a baby with an intellectual disability one day,” Decker said in an interview with the Canadian fashion magazine Flare, which was obtained by People magazine ahead of publication later this month.
“Unfortunately a lot of kids with intellectual disabilities are given up for adoption when they’re born ’cause it’s a lot for a family,” she said.
Decker, 25, is not new to the disability community. Her aunt is a Special Olympics athlete and Decker serves as an ambassador for the organization.
Though the actress said it will be a while yet before she and her tennis-star husband Andy Roddick start a family, they’re looking to have both biological and adopted children when they do.
Decker is best known for gracing the cover of the 2010 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and she stars in the forthcoming film “Battleship.”

"The person who masters himself through self-control and discipline is truly undefeatable." -Buddha


“Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”--James Rogers (1875-1961)

BRAIN TALK DEPT:  WHAT DO BABIES KNOW?
That is, what are they born knowing?  Here are a few of the things a Harvard researcher has found--thus explaining some of what the human mind starts out with:

"Here, according to the Spelke lab, are some of the things that babies know, generally before the age of 1:

They know what an object is: a discrete physical unit in which all sides move roughly as one, and with some independence from other objects.

“If I reach for a corner of a book and grasp it, I expect the rest of the book to come with me, but not a chunk of the table,” said Phil Kellman, Dr. Spelke’s first graduate student, now at the University of California, Los Angeles.

A baby has the same expectation. If you show the baby a trick sequence in which a rod that appears to be solid moves back and forth behind another object, the baby will gape in astonishment when that object is removed and the rod turns out to be two fragments.

“The visual system comes equipped to partition a scene into functional units we need to know about for survival,” Dr. Kellman said. Wondering whether your bag of four oranges puts you over the limit for the supermarket express lane? A baby would say, “You pick up the bag, the parts hang together, that makes it one item, so please get in line.”

Babies know, too, that objects can’t go through solid boundaries or occupy the same position as other objects, and that objects generally travel through space in a continuous trajectory. If you claimed to have invented a transporter device like the one in “Star Trek,” a baby would scoff.

Babies are born accountants. They can estimate quantities and distinguish between more and less. Show infants arrays of, say, 4 or 12 dots and they will match each number to an accompanying sound, looking longer at the 4 dots when they hear 4 sounds than when they hear 12 sounds, even if each of the 4 sounds is played comparatively longer. Babies also can perform a kind of addition and subtraction, anticipating the relative abundance of groups of dots that are being pushed together or pulled apart, and looking longer when the wrong number of dots appears."

“Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. ”---Henry Ford (1863-1947)

“Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours. ”---Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993)

A SICK LITTLE GIRL'S BUCKET LIST
And though we're sad she's so sick, we're happy to spread awareness about what she has:
"A Texas family has created a 'bucket list' for their infant daughter after learning she suffers from a fatal genetic disorder, myFOXhouston reported.
Mike and Laura Canahuati, from Bellaire, Tex, are on a mission to teach the world about their daughter Avery's fatal genetic disease. You've likely never heard of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, but 7.5 million Americans carry the gene that causes it.
Doctors have given Avery just 18 more months to live.
"Nothing will ever be the same as far as what's important," said Laura Canahuati, Avery's mommy.
"I don't want my daughter to die in vain, and I feel like if someone doesn't tell her story that's what's going to happen," said Mike Canahuati, Avery's daddy.
The couple's only child was born smiling and healthy on the luckiest of days, 11-11-11.
"I had hands down one of the easiest pregnancies, very easy delivery," said Laura.
They had no clue that five months later, on Good Friday, Avery would be diagnosed with the crippling and incurable genetic disease known as SMA Type 1, the most serious.
"We'd never heard of this. Nobody we knew had ever heard of this, and yet it's the number one genetic killer of infants in the United States," said Mike.
SMA attacks nerve cells, gradually weakening the muscles.
Avery's mind is intact, but she can no longer move her legs or hold up her head. Eventually she won't be able to breathe without the help of a machine.
"We looked at each other and said, 'Well, we can do one of two things. Crawl into a hole and die with her, or we can stand here, face each other, face her and live life," said Mike.
In their most painful hours, Laura and Mike made a choice. Avery's life wouldn't be defined by suffering, but by the word her name is found in, "BrAvery."
And so Avery's Bucket List was born, an online blog written by Mike in his daughter's point of view.
"The reason I thought of it to begin with is because I wanted to see my daughter get married. It's the one thing I had in mind. From there it snowballed to let's see her brush her teeth, let's see her sit up, let's see her smile, kiss us, hug us," said Mike.
The Canahuati family hopes Avery's story will inspire future parents to ask to be tested for SMA and encourage doctors to work toward a cure. In the mean time, they said they hope to enjoy the time they have left with Avery, creating as many memories they can."


“Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”---Francesca  Reigler

MOEBIUS SYNDROME IN THE NEWS
Read about Moebius hero Jake Quinn, from the New England area:
"Berkley resident Jake Quinn has touched the lives of many, including this season’s Stonehill College men’s ice hockey team.
The Skyhawks recently drafted the fourth grader through Team IMPACT (Inspire, Motivate, Play Against Challenges, Together), a New England based non-profit that aims to improve the quality of life for kids facing life-threatening illnesses by creating unparalleled team-based support systems.
Quinn, 9, has been battling a rare illness which has resulted in vision issues and years of physical therapy since birth. Doctors recently diagnosis the illness as Moebius Syndrome — a rare condition that affects the nerves of the eyes and face.
Quinn loves the Boston Bruins and Stonehill player Chris Tasiopoulos (Norwell, Mass./Thayer Academy). Quinn goes bowling with the team and occasionally hangs out in the locker room."

Good for Jake...

"Happiness consists in the full employment of our faculties
in some pursuit." -Harriet Martineau

“Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit. ”--Ansel Adams (1902-1984

GENERAL HEALTH NEWS
Hmmm, what was I going to say again?  Oh, yes, eat more berries--it's good for memory:
"As the number of Americans living with Alzheimer's disease continues to rise, researchers are investigating various ways that people can prevent memory decline through nutrients in foods we might eat often anyway.
So far, nothing has been proven to work for sure, but there's no harm in eating healthy foods.
The latest target of interest is berries. A study of more than 16,000 women over age 70 suggests there is a connection between berries and memory problems. Specifically, women who ate the most berries per week were likely to have up to a 2.5-year advantage in terms of when they showed signs of memory decline.
There's no reason think that results would be different in men, said the study's lead author, Elizabeth Devore, researcher at the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston."

And here's how to get even more nutrients out of your food--specifically, what new foods you can try with your meals:
"You’ve probably seen troubling headlines recently about pink slime in ground beef and concerns that drinking too much coffee leads to depression. What you probably haven’t seen, however, are glowing stories about super-foods that can do no wrong. I’m talking about fruits and vegetables that standby like wallflowers when they actually deserve attention for being the nutritional superstars they are.

Watercress
You might think this green, leafy vegetable is meek and delicate, but in fact it’s the go-to source for flavonoids, a powerhouse among antioxidants. According to a study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, eating more watercress can lower the risk of cancer by decreasing DNA damage to blood cells. It doesn’t hurt that watercress is also packed with vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C, B1, B6, K, E, iron, calcium, magnesium, zinc and potassium.
Beets
These gorgeous root vegetables contain compounds shown to protect against heart disease, birth defects and certain cancers, especially colon cancer. The pigment that gives beets their rich, purple-crimson color is betacyanin, a champion cancer-fighting agent.
Broccoli
Everyone knows this member of cruciferous cabbage family, but few know that it’s a fantastic source of both calcium plus vitamin C, which does double-duty by boosting calcium absorption. Broccoli is also rich in vitamin A, folate and fiber, and at just 20 calories per cup it’s one of the very best super-foods for weight-loss.
Kiwi
Not only are kiwis  the perfect  combo of sweet and tart, these fuzzy wonders are among the most nutritionally dense fruits anywhere, and their bright emerald flesh is chock full of antioxidants. Eat just one large kiwi and you’ll meet your daily quota for vitamin C. And you get fiber, potassium and some vitamin A and E to boot."

YET MORE REASONS TO HATE BULLYING
"Children exposed to multiple instances of violence age faster on a cellular level than children without violent experiences, a new study finds.

Although childhood stress has long been linked with later disease risk and health problems, the study is the first to show accelerated biological aging in childhood as a result of stress.
"Those kids are 'older' than they are supposed to be," said study leader Idan Shalev, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke University. If the cellular aging isn't reversed, Shalev told LiveScience, the children would likely be at risk for premature death.
Violence and stress
To gauge biological aging, Shalev and his colleagues examined a portion of DNA called telomeres. These sequences cap the ends of our chromosomes (packets of DNA), but they get shorter with every cell division, acting as a sort of molecular "clock"that signals wear-and-tear on DNA.
Several studies have found that adults who experienced violence as children tend to have shorter telomeres than those with peaceful childhoods. But those studies couldn't determine whether the telomeres had been shortened because of childhood stress or because of later adult health problems stemming from that stress, Shalev said.
To find out which was the case, he and his colleagues began a study that looked not backward, but ahead. Using a sample of 236 children from a British sample born between 1994 and 1995, the researchers took DNA samples by swabbing the children's cheeks and then measured the length of each child's telomeres at age 5 and age 10.
By the 10-year-old time point, 17 percent of the children had experienced domestic violence in their households, 24.2 percent had been frequently bullied and 26.7 percent had been physically abused by an adult, according to interviews with the children's mothers. (Some kids were already in protective custody as a result of this abuse.) Because some children experienced more than one type of violence, the researchers split them into groups: kids who hadn't experienced violence (54.2 percent), kids who had experienced one type of violence (29.2 percent), and kids who had experienced two or more types of violence (16.5 percent).
Wear and tear
The results of the DNA analysis showed that children in the final group, those who had experienced two or more types of violence, had significantly faster telomere shortening between ages 5 and 10 on average than the other children. The findings held true after controlling for health, body weight, gender and socioeconomic status. [10 Scientific Tips for Raising Happy Kids]
The violence does not necessarily have to affect the child physically, the researchers report today (April 24) in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. Instead, it seems the telomere shortening is a result of cumulative stress. It's not yet clear how stress translates to shorter telomeres, Shalev said, but inflammation, an immune response to stress, may be to blame.
"We know that violence is associated with higher inflammation levels," he said. "Higher inflammation levels are associated with shorter telomere length."
There is some hope that telomere shortening can be halted, Shalev said. A healthy diet, physical activity and even meditation are associated with longer telomeres, he said. The researchers plan to follow up with their study participants, who are now 18.
But the study also highlights the long-term damage that childhood trauma can create, said Elissa Epel, a health psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies stress and cell aging, who wasn't involved in the current study.
"Now we have some evidence that indeed children's immune-system aging can be adversely affected by severe stress early in childhood, a scar that could last possibly decades later," Epel told LiveScience. "This study underscores the vital importance of reducing violent exposures for children — both serious bullying and abuse in the family."

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. ”--Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1909)

“The future turns out to be something that you make instead of find. It isn't waiting for your arrival, either with an arrest warrant or a band, nor is it any further away than the next sentence, the next best guess, the next sketch for the painting of a life portrait that might become a masterpiece. The future is an empty canvas or a blank sheet of paper, and if you have the courage of your own thought and your own observation, you can make of it what you will. ”--Lewis Lapham (born 1935)

INSPIRATIONAL STORY OF THE DAY
A young lady wins a penmanship contest--even though she was born without hands.  There are those with Moebius Syndrome who know what it is like to do without hands, or at least to do without full use of them.  You are not alone:
"Annie Clark was born with no hands, but that’s not stopping the Pennsylvania first-grader who just won a national penmanship contest.
Clark, 7, was honored this week by Zaner-Bloser, an education publishing company, as one of two winners of its annual handwriting contest for students with disabilities. She received a trophy and a $1,000 prize.
Despite her disability, Clark’s parents say she’s committed to doing for herself.
In order to write, Clark wedges a pencil between the ends of her arms. She uses a similar technique to do everything from eating to dressing and painting her toenails. Admittedly, Clark says she must take her time when writing.
“She can ride a bike. She swims. She is just determined that there’s nothing she can’t do,” Clark’s father told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette."

To read more, go here.


“Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks. --James Baldwin (1924-1987);

NOTES AND ASIDES...
Interesting items today from here and there...

Natalie Abbott wrote the other day about something many with Moebius Syndrome have gone through--cooling your heels in a doctor's waiting room:
"My ophthalmologist was the worst.  You could expect to wait absurdly long at any appointment with him, mainly because he squeezed every possible appointment in.  My pulmonologist was the best, mainly because I was usually coming to him when I couldn't breathe, which I guess is important.

Now it's not as excruciating, with phones and iPads and many other distractions... far cry from doing my school reading in an array of waiting rooms during my childhood.  But it's still the same drill, waiting, anticipating, sometimes worrying.  And doing it all over again all too soon."

Are you seeing a therapist?  In Sunday's NY Times, a noted psychotherapist, Jonathan Alpert, argued against ineffective therapy that goes on too long.  If it isn't working for you, he argues, end it.  He explains:
"Therapy can — and should — focus on goals and outcomes, and people should be able to graduate from it. In my practice, the people who spent years in therapy before coming to me were able to face their fears, calm their anxieties and reach life goals quickly — often within weeks.  Why? I believe it’s a matter of approach. Many patients need an aggressive therapist who prods them to face what they find uncomfortable: change. They need a therapist’s opinion, advice and structured action plans. They don’t need to talk endlessly about how they feel or about childhood memories. A recent study by the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland found that “active, engaging and extroverted therapists” helped patients more quickly in the short term than “cautious, nonintrusive therapists.”  This approach may not be right for every patient, but the results described in the Finnish study are consistent with my experience.  If a patient comes to me and tells me she’s been unhappy with her boyfriend for the past year, I don’t ask, as some might, “How do you feel about that?” I already know how she feels about that. She just told me. She’s unhappy. When she asks me what I think she should do, I don’t respond with a return interrogatory, “What do you think you should do?” If she knew, she wouldn’t ask me for my thoughts."


And there's some interesting news for women concerning aspirin use today:
"In a new study of more than 1,200 Asian women, those who took aspirin at least a couple of times a week had a much lower risk of developing lung cancer -- whether or not they had ever smoked.

The findings, which link regularly taking aspirin to a risk reduction of 50 percent or more, do not prove that aspirin directly protects against lung cancer. There may be other explanations for the connection.

But the study backs up a number of previous ones linking regular aspirin use to lower risks of certain cancers, including colon, prostate and esophageal cancers."

“If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”---Anna Quindlen (born 1953)

"Sometimes a winner is just a dreamer that never gave up."-Unknown