Let me tell you something then after 25 years of practice with children. And that is that everybody who works with children is on the precipice of a depression all the time and what I want to present to you today may be informative for you, but it it's going to be very very therapeutic for me. So if you'll allow me to I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the plight of children in our society in later to do some of the things I think we can do. Although I'm sure there many many things that that you can think of to do.In 1970 The Joint Commission on the mental health of children with the following statement quotes. The belief that America is a child oriented Society is a myth. Nothing could be further than from the truth at that time. By the way, they estimated that there were approximately 10 million children in need of immediate psychiatric care in the United States in 1975 for the surveys indicated that that figure was now 15 million and the more complicated our society becomes the more stress. We all experienced. The greater will be the indications for psychiatric care.Let me check tricks a number of areas for you one child abuse. About three or four years ago. There was an NBC show on violence and it was hosted by Edwin Newman. It was a three-hour show and at the end of the show Edward Newman said during this. Of time, there will have been 40 felonies the seven murders 40 felonies and 120 cases of reported child abuse three times as much child abuse as there are felonies and we know that for every case of reporting child abuse some 15 to 20 cases go unreported. It is absolutely a national epidemic right now in Texas and because of the Heat and because children can't go out to play there has been a very dramatic increase in the amount of child abuse in children coming into hospitals with broken bones Etc. Every program in the area of child abuse in child protective services has proven itself to be effective. We have effective ways of dealing with the child abuse problem and yet almost every state in the Union in the last 3 years has cut its Appropriations to Child Protective Services. The fact that we can deal with this to successfully has meant absolutely nothing. I recently consulted at a fairly liberal Northern State and their experience is is fairly simple is fairly Young Similar to all the rest they cut their child abuse appropriation by 50% Not only do we abuse children, but even for those of us who don't abuse children, we tend to hit children more than almost any Civilized Nation in the world. We spank unnecessarily and yet we have every psychiatric study indicates that aggression begets aggression that the more you hit people the more you have to hit them the more they will hit others worse than that kidding just doesn't work. It has never changed behavior and yet we continue to perpetuate this sort of discipline. The Supreme Court in its wisdom decided that the Eighth Amendment which prescribes cruel and unusual punishment applies to criminals, but it doesn't apply to children. So that any strangers in the form of a teacher or principal is allowed to hit your child and you have no recourse for this. I think it's bad enough if parents and children, although all of us have been seen many many children who have been spanked probably we have and we grew up well, but it's hard to imagine a child being hit by someone outside of the family and derive anything positive from that kind of an experience. We have child abuse in all of our institutions in our institutions for the mentally retarded and our institutions for the juvenile delinquents in our institutions in mental health children are abused over and over and over again children are abused constantly in our public schools are public schools are not in any way organized according to the way children's grow then not even organized according to the way children learn. They bear no relationship into the way in which children learn Einstein once said that there is no way to Foster the the the tender flower creativity in an era in the area of coercion. How can you help people be creative if all you demand of them is Conformity and you demand that through corset methods? In almost all nations other forms of discipline are used. For example, we had some colleagues back from from Africa and they were telling me that in endnote country in Africa. Would you ever find a preschool child hit mothers will carry their child on their back and when the child has any biological need the mother becomes so attuned to the child that she Mason simply swing the child the child May urinate or defecate whatever he has to do and if you ever find a mother who has a soiled or wet dress, her neighbors will say to her what a bad mother rather than saying what a bad child we here tend to think of how bad the child is. I checked the area of Health. 15 years ago one out of every two federal health dollars were spent for children. Today less than one out of every ten federal health dollars are spent for children actually of every federal health dollar only $0.08 goes for children services. They make up obviously 47 or 45% of the population. They get absolutely no money whatsoever in the area that we are most interested in in the area of Mental Health. Of All the Monies appropriated by the National Institute of Mental Health only 5% goes for children services. 95% go for the adults. Heavens knows there's not enough money that is appropriated. But even of that which is appropriated children, never get an equal share they never get a fair share. We know that all illness now. There's a large body of knowledge that suggests that all illness is psychological social and organic at the same time and that there is little likelihood that anyone will ever get ill regardless of the presence of a disease agent if psychological and social factors are not present. So we're not only just talkin about the mental health of the individual really literally talking about his total physical health that if a person can't master and experience if a person can't deal with stress, they are prone to all sorts of physical illnesses Bonnie Martin in General Mills to sponsor the program in Washington, and we heard somebody from National Institute of Mental Health make an astounding statement and I've tried to get the reference He quoted a study in which a group of pregnant women were divided into three classes run in which the person is in. The pregnancy was going very very well and their life was going very well and there was very little stress. In that group every child was born perfectly healthy and every pregnancy went very well. The second group was a group of women who are all experiencing a great deal of stress, but they had good support systems. They had family close by they had friends. They had people they could talk with 30% of the births were anomalous. There was some danger inherent in the birth. The third group we're going through the same degree of stress, but they had no support system and 90% of them had difficult or anomalous births 90% There's a stress charged with indicates that if you experience a certain degree of stress and they give arbitrary numbers to it. If you have 300 units of stress, for example, was it your cumulative in the last two years. There is a 50% chance that you will get physically ill within the next 6 months. If you have 500 units of stress the opposite goes up to 80% than 80% chance that you'll get eel in the next 6 months and this is really a very very simplistic study and yet it is that predictive. That is it measures only those gross elements that we call stress, but we know for a fact that you and I probably will not respond to the death of a loved one in exactly the same fashion. It depends upon our age. It depends upon whether we have social supports. It depends upon whether what what happened immediately prior to the stress. None of these things were taken into consideration. It was just simplistically adding up the stress episodes and yet 80% of the people who have had a lot of stress in the past two years for physically ill it might interest you to know that their studies done on in the area of cancer which indicate a type of cancer personality and almost always these people have been very very distant from their Is early in life or they have lost their parents early in their life in addition the cancer person or the person prone to get cancer is one who has a very hard time expressing emotion. If you ask him how the world is even though it's crumbling around on me. So it's fine and it might interest you to know that about 25% of our population get cancer almost one out of every four yet among imprisoned felons and among emotionally disturbed people and institutions only 4% every get cancer. And I'm not sure that I know the reason why I accept certainly the people in prison in the people in emotional institutions are not known for the suppression of affect. He's a people who scream and yell a lot anyway, so maybe if we go crazy will be physically healthy, I'd I'm not sure. There's a man in Texas who treats? Cancer patients. He took a group of stage 4 cancer patients. These are people with an imminent prognosis of death hypnotize them and taught them how to imagine their cancer away his first group within 2 all lived over two years and in 16 of his original 23, there was no sign of Cancer on surgical exploration by using one's mind. I'm not trying to suggest a cancer is a psychological illness. It isn't there is a disease agent. I'm trying to suggest that the mental and emotional health will contribute to weather when gets healed and how run recuperates there's a man. I know who's taking a group of young ladies and hypnotize them and taught them how to imagine their breasts growing larger. And in every case, he got a measurable increase in breast size. I try to conduct an experiment myself and I can never get any volunteers. We have I say that facetiously but it isn't it is true. That study was done on two different occasions. But it might interest you to know that last year in the United States. There are over a hundred twenty five thousand operations to increase breast size so that you get some idea of how much surgery is unnecessary how much we able to be able to use other modalities to cure those things that occur to us. Meet a freak sample very briefly and not at any length the legal system. you know that over 50% of all crimes both personal and property crimes are conducted or perpetrated by children 18 years and under 65% of all habitual juvenile delinquents were originally known to authorities as abused and neglected children. 65% but we have no programs for them. There's nothing nobody to help them so they go on and on and on and they take the abuse that they've experienced by others and they take it out on others would doing nothing but perpetuating entire Society of people who don't know how to get along with each other. There are 350000 children in foster care in the United States. And if you want to see somebody without any legal rights whatsoever. That's the group to look at the average child in foster care will go into 7 Foster Homes before they reach the age of majority. Now, we know very well that there is no way in the world to raise a healthy child going from house to house to house about a week ago. I received a call from an attorney asking me if I would. Did the orb speaker the witness for his client before the state supreme court and unfortunately, we were too late because the case went before the court and the Court ruled in the following manner. This is a child who had aged 18 months was given up by his mother went into foster care and the parents legally adopted the child now at 8:10 8 and 1/2 years later mother comes back and says I want my child back and the Supreme Court says sure the mother has all the rights mother has had four marriages to two men that have been in the penitentiary. She's had the number of of unwanted pregnancies. I'm not trying to put her down. I'm trying to suggest only that the court system takes into account the needs and rights of adults. Never never have children. It's a very very deplorable situation. It's gotten somewhat better but over the last 10 or 15 years. I think it has deteriorated witness the the the data that I gave you on health care for children and the day that I gave you on the emotional care of children. But let me tell you one of the things that was most disturbing to me. I served on the White House conference on children in 1970 and foot desperately to get services for children. The White House conference is on children began in 1909 and in an attempt to understand the plight of children in our society the American Academy of Sciences in 1978 commission to committee to look into this they began their research by looking at the White House conference recommendations in 1909, and they discovered that in 1978. 90% of the recommendations made in 1909 have never been acted upon. They finally they stopped the committee at that moment and said there's no reason to go any further or we have to do is to reissue the 1909 report and let's hope somebody does something about the damn thing. It's just utterly ridiculous. There are things that I think we can do our search recently has indicated the extraordinary importance of the first two to three years of life when fry began Freud spoke of the preschool years as important. We find now that it's really the first two or three years of life. There are in Norma studies very very very impressive studies on bonding and attachment most of these Studies, by the way, I being done at the University of Minnesota, which is one of the leaders in the whole area of attachment by psychologists by the name of Alan sroufe. We find that when children make positive attachments to their parents. That by the first year of Life they go through toilet training more easily. They are more social in nursery school and given the same IQ their learning capacity and their problem-solving abilities is better than their colleagues whose attachment to parents are less or more tenuous. Almost all of later development of which of course can be turned around because people will learn and change all their life. But much of what goes on in our life can be determined in the first few years of life given the economically circumstances of country today given the the women's Liberation movement within with which I'm in in deep sympathy. We're finding more and more families where both parents work and where children are being put in daycare centers the United States government to the recent study of daycare centers discovered or Suggested that of the daycare centers, they studied which was a fairly extensive study only 10% of them could be described as adequate. Only 2% were considered Superior and the adequate daycare centers provided only custodial care. The food was good. The place was clean and there were toys around but whether there was any love whether there was any one to one relationship and you're talking about one and two and three year old children who cannot cannot exist without the absolute loving care of of a concerned adult. So I daycare centers are nothing but what you're a boss and Brenner once spoke of it as warehouses for children. And yet this is going to be the future of our society. I think we must train people in child-rearing we can I'm not trying to suggest that that the that women not work. Well that women not seek careers. They have every right to the same sort of life that the man has we forgot sample are one of the very very few Nations that refused to pay parents to remain at home. You know that can be done. We spend it off a lot of money on bombs and and warfare and destruction and all sorts of things and almost nothing a piddly the piddling some on the welfare of all of our children. In Sweden, they now pay both parents to remain at home mother is paid for the first three years of the child's life and the father is paid for the first 6 months of the child's life. Recognizing the critical importance of this early. Ireland, which is a much much for a nation than we pays a parent to remain at home during the first three years of life many other countries do it. And we the only time we ever pay any parent is what we call a two dependent children and then we insist that the father not be in the house or no man be in the house despite our belief in the sanctity of the family. We do not allow a family to exist in a two dependent children recipients. One of the studies that was conducted by General Mills on what parents want to know indicated that one of the most pressing need for parents is authoritative information on job, very they have nowhere to go. I'd like you to know that there is no curriculum that I know of in any professional course of study which teaches child-rearing. I'm not talking about child Psychopathology. I'm not talking about Child Development. I'm talking about child-rearing if you want to know what to do with your child when you're ready to try to train him and you go to your pediatrician and if he gives you good advice it's only because the lady who is there before you told him what she did and it works, you know. He has no knowledge of child very none whatsoever. Nobody ever told him anything. It is not innocent in the professional course to study for psychiatrist. They know nothing more about showering and you do probably a lot less. Psychologist know nothing at all about child-rearing nurses nobody that I know of and yet it's a very very legitimate course of study. We ought to be teaching people how to help parents. One of the greatest stresses on the marriage is a disturbed youngster or differences between parenting to between parents on how to rear ones child. Leslie I think we have to make American Business much much more aware if its role in fostering family Unity. You can do this. Not only through less transfers of people so that the family has to pull up roots and go from place to place but we certainly should have staggered work schedules when you have a husband and wife working. Why is it both of them have to work from 9 to 5 so that somebody else has to be with a child. Why can't they work staggered work settings many many parents would like it. Why is it that we can't have people working part-time? Why does everybody have to work full time in England? If you are a teacher and you want to work 4 hours a day, you are given every consideration for a job. Is anybody else willing to work the full day? Therefore you can stay home with your child. You can leave them for short periods of time which may be adaptive and helpful for the youngster to learn how to deal with separation instead of leaving them for extended periods of time. Why shouldn't American Business provide really competent daycare centers for the children of their employees? Why don't they provide counseling for the stress-related aspects of their job which promote physical illness and mental breakdown? Leslie I really accepted this opportunity to speak to you because I think unless groups like this which have some political clout which are organized start lobbying for children. They have no political constituency. When Walter Mondale Road his daycare Bill a senior senator said to him that's foolish. Why don't you write something for the agent? They can vote. Kids can't vote. They have no political constituency. They have no one talkin for them unless groups like The Mental Health Association nationally and locally speak up. I'm afraid that what's going to happen is that the children will continue to be our most prejudiced against minority.