Our tortured teenagers

The media this week has been dominated by the desperate situation this country faces with the many teenagers who are dangerous and violent.

For me, the greatest tragedy lies in the fact that the commentators keep shouting out ‘jail, boot camp, the army’ with not one single person addressing the issue of how these teens became this way. The closest they get is saying the parents should be held accountable for their teen and learn to discipline them more!

I believe every human being is born ‘good’. Babies aren’t bad!

Next week I’m speaking in Brighton about Humanity’s evolutionary blueprint: BREASTFEEDING.

As humans, we are born expecting the breast at birth. We are born expecting to see our mother’s face constantly for at least nine months. We are born expecting to hear her heart beat constantly for at least nine months. This doesn’t happen if a babe is bottlefed and kept out of a mother’s constant body contact. When we don’t meet these very basic biological needs, the PAIN is with these kids for life. The symptoms are manifesting on our streets and in an overworked health care system.

In Britain, 200 000 kids are born each year who never even make it to their mother’s breast. They never receive colostrum (the first syrupy liquid from the breast at birth and for the first three or so days). Colostrum contains tryptophan which is vital for developing serotonin. The one thing all criminals, depressives and other perpetrators of violence have in common is a drastically reduced level of serotonin! Breastfeeding not only provides the ingredients our brains need for developing optimally, but it also provides us with mother love in a way that bottle feeding doesn’t. Studies show us over and over again that breastfed babies receive more love, pleasurable touch, eye contact and interaction than their bottlefed peers. No wonder we have mental health problems of epidemic proportions.

If we want a culture where we’re not scared of our kids (and, let’s be honest, teenagers ARE children) then we have to meet their biological expectations ~ quite simply, we have to stop abandoning our babies to bottles, dummies, car seats, cribs, day care centres, and bedrooms separate to their parent’s room. NONE OF THESE THINGS PROVIDE the physiological benefits of affectionate mother bonding.

Sending violent teenagers to bootcamp or the army reeks to me of ambulance at the bottom of the cliff mentality. As Jeannine Parvati Baker used to say: the wound reveals the cure.
What wound do these teens have? Let me tell you, the cure isn’t to be found in more violence and aggression.

VIOLENT TEENAGERS

Today's cuppa: Peace Tea (ingredients: love, kindness and awareness)

Another boy has been shot by a teenager… it's becoming a regular news item here in the UK.

People (especially our ever-so-wise politicians) talk about tougher gun laws, stronger education, getting male role models for fatherless boys…but this is all so much ambulance at the bottom of the cliff talk.

Why is it so impossible for people to CONNECT THE DOTS? Really, it does my head in that there is such complete ignorance, at the highest levels of psychology, neuro-biology and medicine, in relation to violence and teenagers (and adults).

We're all born with biological needs which must be met if we're to develop optimally. Many of these needs are immediately met through breastfeeding, as the rich biochemical nutrients are vital for developing the neuro-transmitters which develop our capacity towards peace or violence. FORMULA DOESN'T CONTAIN THIS.

The more technologically advanced our society becomes, the further we seem to move away from our biological needs. There is always a price for doing so. And boy are we seeing the price for the child neglect and abuse which is happening DAILY on a massive scale.

We are inflicting violence on our children from the earliest age ~ even in-utero, with invasive tests and scans (which essentially microwave the baby's cells!!).

Many babies today are born by very violent means: suction, forceps or scalpel. Many c-sections babies even get cut. Modern babies are handled roughly, like lumps of meat, rather than souls who've just arrived Earthside in exquisitely-sensitive bodies.

Further violence, and it IS A VIOLATION to this sacred babe ~ and the mother, occurs when the baby is removed from the mother for routine and other testing. And more violence occurs when the baby isn't immediately put to the breast.

Violence continues throughout childhood in various forms ~ stuck in a prison called a 'cradle'; left to stare at a ceiling, rather than held by mother; left to cry; dummy as a replacement for non-nutritive sucking at the breast; left with strangers in day care; sent to nursery at three (at 3 for goodness' sake!); given dead, lifeless, processed food and drink (especially formula); compulsory, enforced learning before the first milk teeth have fallen out…and so it goes on and on. Of course, very few people would even consider any of these to be violence because we've become so indoctrinated with this as being 'normal'.

Eventually all this violence has to find an outlet. The baby grows into the toddler into the child into the teenager… Some of these children deal with their hurts in other ways ~ various dysfunctions, such as depression, eating disorders, a tendency towards suicide; addiction to televisual technology and consumerism. Some of our violently abused children will direct this hurt at themselves, and some will turn. They'll turn with a gun, a knife or other tool. But turn, they will. At no other time in our history have adults been scared of teenagers on the streets.

We need everyone to start connecting the dots……………………….

Find me one abusive, dangerous, tormented soul who had a gentle birth and was fully breastfed by an affectionate, loving mother, who carried and slept with her baby, and I'll shut my mouth forever ~ honest ~ not one more blog, not one more magazine.

I can guarantee that all the people who are committing violence against others, and themselves, had a violent birth, little or no breastfeeding (or weaned by mother before 2.5 years), and were deprived of an active in-arms experience with their mother.

So let's stop all this bullshit about tighter gun laws...we wouldn't even desire guns or to inflict violence if we weren't shot in the heart when we left our mother's womb!