Love, magic & mud pies.

The reason I wrote a book about parenting is because of the hypnotic effect parents' words have upon their children. For many years as a surgeon and participant in support groups for people with life threatening illnesses I have listened to the destructive messages most people have grown up with.

I come from a minority group. I was loved by my parents, who gave me mottoes to live by. I did well in school and got along with God. When I asked my workshop participants what mottoes they lived by someone interrupted me and said, "You didn't ask us what mottoes we are dying by."

Up to the age of six a child's brain wave pattern is similar to that of a hypnotized individual and those early messages are very powerful and difficult for most to eliminate even when they become conscious and have the ability to choose a different belief system. Prior to their birth infants are aware of the environment they are about to enter because of what they have hear. This can be used in a positive way too with music and stories played during pregnancy and preoperatively which help the children get through delivery and surgery with less pain and need for anesthetic agents.

Approximately one-fourth of individuals who felt loved by their parents, in a study of Harvard students, suffered a major illness by midlife while almost one hundred percent of those who didn't feel loved had suffered a major illness in the same time interval. The addictions and self destructive behavior come from those messages; not to mention the overt sexual and physical abuse. The following are some of those messages. "We don't love you enough to not commit suicide." "You embarrass us and will never amount to anything." "You are only allowed to wear dark colors so no one will notice you." "'Don't get too happy because life is filled with troubles and something bad always follows something good."

To quote a victim of the above type of parenting, "My mother's words were eating away at me and maybe gave me cancer." A low closeness to parent profile does predict disease in later life. So I wrote a practical book to help people avoid the above mistakes and to be able to reparent themselves and create children who are sensitive to the world and their feelings because they have a normal nervous system and do not need violence, food, drugs or alcohol to feel alive and get attention.

I consider all the authority figures in our lives to be our parents. So a great deal of what I have to say is about our biological parents but it is also about our teachers, clergy, physicians and others who have authority over us.

As a pediatric surgeon I realized the power of words to heal or kill. Wordswordswords can become swords and cure or kill. I would tell children that the alcohol sponge I wiped their skin with before drawing blood would numb their skin and fully one third had anesthesia, another third said it didn't help much and a third said it didn't work. I would tell children they would go to sleep in the O.R. and many of them fell asleep as we wheeled them into the room. One boy flipped over onto his stomach as we entered and went to sleep. When I rolled him over to operate he said, "You told me I would go to sleep and I sleep on my stomach." He made an exception for me when I told him I couldn't reach his appendix from the back. Last but not least at the end of the procedure I would say, "You will wake up comfortable, thirsty and hungry." I had to change that due to weight gain on the part of my patients and add "but you won't finish everything on your plate."

I think the combination of love and humor is what we all need to grow up with in order to develop a sense of self worth and esteem. So I do not have to like what one of our children has done while I continue to love him. My words are not about what is wrong with the child but about their actions. The childlike humor which does not offend helps us all get through the day. I loved asking our five children, "'Do you know why your mother and I will never get a divorce? And when they asked why not I would answer, "Because neither one of us wants the children." That usually got them to quiet down.

My book is written in a way in which each topic has a few pages devoted to it and then a practical exercise for parents to carry out and make magic. When all the children are raised with love the problems of this planet will cease. May it start now.

Bernie Siegel, MD--LIFETIME member of IMDHA www.ecap-online.org