Alcohol For Children? Absurd!!!! Dr. Molly Barrow

In a recent article by Victoria Brett for the Associated Press, Ms. Brett discusses the pros and cons of giving wine to children.
The possible pros were listed as
1. Gourmet family says wine is life training.
2. A Southern European custom adopted by American foodie culture.
3. Justification that pop and processed food is worse.
4. Texas and Minnesota allow parents to give their children alcohol legally.
5. Giving children wine is done in good taste only with fancier meals.
6. The practice of giving children alcohol is educational according to some parents.
7. The child may be able to isolate flavors and become knowledgeable about wine to make her mother proud.
8. One mother assures that she limits the amount and adds water to the alcohol, stating it is better than her child chewing on lead paint
9. The practice is common in other parts of the world.

I hardly know where to begin to encourage parents to ignore this shocking justification for what I consider potential child abuse. Would you put a cigarette in their sweet little lips? Would you inject them with a bit of heroin or a tiny line of cocaine. Those practices are pleasurable and harmful as well. Or, are wino parents simply trying to justify their own self-destructive brain-destroying behavior? Good for the child? Antioxidants come in beautiful fruits and vegetables eliminating the need for fancy bottles with poisonous ingredients and expensive labels. Giving a child alcohol, no matter how you dress it up to seem snooty, connoisseur-ish or progressively hip, is my opinion , wrong.

In my thirty years of practice, alcohol has had a strong presence at a multitude of destroyed families from failed marriages and infidelity to incest and child beatings. Alcohol combined with street drugs have killed beautiful teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them. Adult behaviors must be tempered with wisdom, full knowledge of the consequences and the ability to take necessary precautions. That is why smoking, drinking, sex, bars, driving, and military service have age limits. They can be dangerous, deadly and must remain optional. A parent supplying food and drink to a child is rarely optional for the child. The child cannot be expected to make an educated choice. Children can and must wait until they are older.

People in other countries have many backward practices that are scorned here in the States. A photograph of a five year old boy's arm being crushed because he stole food in a marketplace comes to mind as does wife beating, and putting to death female babies. Perhaps the U.S. could lead the European and other countries away from the practice of sharing alcohol with their children in their family rather than to adopt the senseless practice here.

Pediatric experts, psychologists and many educated parents agree that giving alcohol, even in small amounts can alter brain development, is toxic and increases the likelihood of addiction the younger you start. If a parent breaks the law and pours their child an alcoholic drink, the child may learn to adore wine but she will also learn to break rules whenever she wishes. Not good parenting anyway you spin it.


BIO: Introducing the new relationship compatibility test, Match Lines Systems for Successful Relationships for Singles, Couples and Business by psychology expert, Dr. Molly Barrow. Official Web Site: http://www.DrMollyBarrow.com. Find love and healthy relationship advice for dating, pre-marital, marriage, and business relationships. Dr. Molly Barrow holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is the author of the new book, "Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships and Making the Right Choices in Love," ISBN 159507158X. As an authority on relationship and psychological topics; a member of the American Psychological Association, Screen Actors Guild, and Authors Guild and is a licensed mental health counselor, Dr. Molly has appeared as an expert in the film, My Suicide, documentaries Ready to Explode and KTLA Impact, NBC news, PBS In Focus, WBZT talk radio and in O Magazine, Psychology Today, Newsday, The Nest, MSN.com, Yahoo, Match.com, N Magazine, Women's Health, Harvard Business School, Women's World and Shrink About This columnist for Menstuff.

Dr. Molly Barrow Invited to Hollywood Private Film Screening

Dr. Molly Barrow, author of Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships and Making the Right Choice in Love has been invited to a private screening of her latest film at the Sherrie Lansing Theater on the Paramount Lot in Hollywood this week. The film is the result of an incredible squad of very talented producers, camera people, editors, actors, lawyers, and in a small role, Dr. Molly Barrow. Two and a half years in the making, the film is finally close to completion. After the sneak peek, the film will go to a Hollywood film lab for sound mixing, color correction, and additional tweaking.

Dr. Barrow, a licensed mental health psychotherapist, has appeared in documentaries, educational videos, medical training videos, voice-overs, daytime television, summer stock and made for television films.


BIO: Introducing the new relationship compatibility test, Match Lines Systems for Successful Relationships for Singles, Couples and Business by psychology expert, Dr. Molly Barrow. Official Web Site: http://www.DrMollyBarrow.com. Find love and healthy relationship advice for dating, pre-marital, marriage, and business relationships. Dr. Molly Barrow holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is the author of the new book, "Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships and Making the Right Choices in Love," ISBN 159507158X. As an authority on relationship and psychological topics; a member of the American Psychological Association, Screen Actors Guild, and Authors Guild and is a licensed mental health counselor, Dr. Molly has appeared as an expert in the film, My Suicide, documentaries Ready to Explode and KTLA Impact, NBC news, PBS In Focus, WBZT talk radio and in O Magazine, Psychology Today, Newsday, The Nest, MSN.com, Yahoo, Match.com, N Magazine, Women's Health, Harvard Business School, Women's World and Shrink About This columnist for Menstuff.

Fidel Castro and Dr. Molly Barrow

My family arrived in New York and checked into a deluxe hotel. I was ten years old and excited beyond words at the prospect of cruising to Italy. The hotel’s glamour overwhelmed me.
I embraced the elegance and beauty of the luxury hotel as I ran my fingers along each textural delight of marble, brocade and polished wood. I was wearing my pink velvet suit, black slip-ons, white ruffled socks and carried a small black patent purse. My long, chestnut-colored hair was held back by a pink ribbon.

My dear mother dressed me and treated me like a doll and rarely loosened her tightly held grip on me. My bout with cerebral meningitis at six months had spooked her traumatically. With the help of Dr. Gillespie, I recovered, but he advised that I not go out in public for the first three years of my life. Thereafter, she absolutely never let me out of her sight except to go to school and to play in the back yard. Frankly, I did not get out much.

Here at the hotel, Mother must have been distracted by the organizational feat of getting six people’s luggage and four children all into one hotel room. My father, who had Gary Grant- level charm, was probably lost in a stimulating discussion with a new cosmopolitan friend. I seized this opportunity to stand at the top of a long wide staircase poised like a movie star waiting for the paparazzi to lift their cameras. Like a royal, I began my descent knowing all eyes were upon me (few of the busy city dwellers actually noticed). My fingers barely grazed the wooden banister. With one perfectly placed step after another, I sauntered down the staircase, fully expecting that as an adult I would return to live at this so-my-kind-of-place hotel. Terribly satisfied with my staircase descent, I sensed I was away too long . Knowing I was completely out of my parent’s sight, I got an icy feeling. Feeling a bit nervous as the thought “alone in New York City” flashed in my mind, I completed an apparently nonchalant pirouette at the bottom step. Then, a too familiar feeling came over me.

At home, I often stayed up for the late movie, relishing every dramatic nuance and incorporating the gestures, words and emotion into my already vast repertoire of imagination. On those late nights after the movie, when everyone was already upstairs, I had to turn out all the lights. Each time in the dark, downstairs alone, I knew with total certainty one bone chilling fact. That as I turned out the last light, a child-eating lion was directly behind me about to nip my heels. I would suppress the panic as long as possible and walk stiffly to staircase. No matter how hard I tried to be calm, walk slowly or think of other things, by the third stair step, I was dead running from that lion. If I foolishly stopped to look, it would surely get me. I would arrive at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed and breathing hard. I could turn and look then, but the demon lion always hid himself. Family members would stare at me strangely whenever they witnessed my panic sprinting. However, I thought it wise to not share the lion part with my three older brothers who were permanently on the lookout for my Achilles heel.

In this extremely public place, packed with sophisticated well-dressed New Yorkers and potential paparazzi, I could feel secret fear ramping up into arm pumping panic. Unfortunately, I could feel the hot humid lion breath on my bare skinny calves and I knew I had to run back up the marble stairs. With maximum effort, I bolted up the steps two at a time, carefully watching my feet. Suddenly, in my peripheral vision, I saw someone tall directly in my path. I tried to stop but I was moving too fast. I lifted my eyes up and up to see a huge man with a full black beard dressed in military garb. Inevitably, I was about to crash into a man wearing combat boots. As my eighty-five pound pink velvet bomb rushed forward, large arms reached across the man in the middle to stop my approach. Incredulous that this pink sprinter was entering his personal space, the man had stopped descending and starred hard into my wide eyes. I successfully pulled up just short of crashing into him. I smiled triumphantly. He did not smile back. His body guards gestured for me to stand aside. The three men moved on down the stairs in unison. Near the front desk, I found my father, irritated and looking for me.

Later that night, I over heard my father tell my mother that Fidel Castro was in New York. That seemed to trouble my mom. I weighed the positive attention I might get for having had an encounter with the Cuban pirate versus the trouble I would get in for admitting that I had wandered off by myself. I decided to remain silent.

Funny, after that, I no longer feared the secret lion and he never came back. I learned instead how quickly a young girl can become vulnerable and unprotected. I learned that I had to be smarter, and protect myself from risk that was all around me. Sometimes, even in the loveliest of places.

Image From Wikipedia.

BIO: Introducing the new relationship compatibility test, Match Lines Systems for Successful Relationships for Singles, Couples and Business by psychology expert, Dr. Molly Barrow. Official Web Site: http://www.DrMollyBarrow.com. Find love and healthy relationship advice for dating, pre-marital, marriage, and business relationships. Dr. Molly Barrow holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is the author of the new book, "Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships and Making the Right Choices in Love," ISBN 159507158X. As an authority on relationship and psychological topics; a member of the American Psychological Association, Screen Actors Guild, and Authors Guild and is a licensed mental health counselor, Dr. Molly has appeared as an expert in the film, My Suicide, documentaries Ready to Explode and KTLA Impact, NBC news, PBS In Focus, WBZT talk radio and in O Magazine, Psychology Today, Newsday, The Nest, MSN.com, Yahoo, Match.com, N Magazine, Women's Health, Harvard Business School, Women's World and Shrink About This columnist for Menstuff.

Hurt by Ungrateful People? Try a True Gift. by Dr. Molly Barrow Relationship expert

Are you a kind and generous person? Do you have talents and abilities to share with less fortunate people? Are you ever outraged at the lack of reciprocity when you give to your friends and family?

Let's do a reality check. Make a short list of times that you feel you were taken advantage of, times when you did someone a big favor and then, when you needed help, he or she was no where to be found.

Now we need some definitions.

GIFT
A gift is something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present. gift. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved February 06, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gift

CONTRACT
A contract is an agreement between two or more parties for the doing or not doing of something specified. contract. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved February 06, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/contract

Let us look at your list again. When you gave your help or service was there a tiny thought or hope in the back of your altruistic mind that you would receive something in return? Perhaps a thank you, a business deal, love or some financial gain? Then that is a contract existing only in your imagination. One that the receiver did not sign.

So many of our good deeds turn into resentment and hurt feelings because we are deserted by the very people that "should" owe us. Did you keep one hand on your gift ready to snatch the pleasant experience of gifting away if the recipient did not respond exactly how you think they should have? Are you indignant and critical of their actions and call them selfish, small minded or bad mannered. Do you despise them for their unfair treatment of you - the Big Giver.

Not fair. You made a contract with only one party, not two. You assumed you would be repaid for your efforts and now you feel taken advantaged of and wronged. But, in reality you are wronging yourself by making a contract out of your gift and bringing stress, toxic anger and bad vibes to friends, family or business associates. If you can not stop yourself from imagining these one sided contracts, then you must stop doing your good deeds that end up hurting you and everyone in listening proximity.

Or, did you give freely with no strings attached? You know when this happens because you easily forget the gesture or object that you gave away. There are no strings attached. You let go completely. You expect absolutely nothing in return.

Take a good look at your list. Can you find a real gift among your contracts? You may not because they are so often forgotten by the giver. The receiver may remember your real gift forever and the ripple effect of your kindness may have spread far and wide. These wondrous effects may never be known by you.

The next time you get a thought that you have something to give, ask yourself if you are truely prepared to let this gift go freely into the cosmos without your control or manipulation. If, instead, you are contemplating a one sided contract, take a few moments alone and ask why you need to control or manipulate to find the love, business or acceptance that you need. Perhaps there is a more direct route to finding your success. Give only true gifts and free yourself from disappointment.



BIO: Introducing the new relationship compatibility test, Match Lines Systems for Successful Relationships for Singles, Couples and Business by psychology expert, Dr. Molly Barrow. Official Web Site: http://www.DrMollyBarrow.com. Find love and healthy relationship advice for dating, pre-marital, marriage, and business relationships. Dr. Molly Barrow holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is the author of the new book, "Matchlines: A Revolutionary New Way of Looking at Relationships and Making the Right Choices in Love," ISBN 159507158X. As an authority on relationship and psychological topics; a member of the American Psychological Association, Screen Actors Guild, and Authors Guild and is a licensed mental health counselor, Dr. Molly has appeared as an expert in the film, My Suicide, documentaries Ready to Explode and KTLA Impact, NBC news, PBS In Focus, WBZT talk radio and in O Magazine, Psychology Today, Newsday, The Nest, MSN.com, Yahoo, Match.com, N Magazine, Women's Health, Harvard Business School, Women's World and Shrink About This columnist for Menstuff.