Latest news with #Beaglehole
Scroll.in
3 days ago
- General
- Scroll.in
A heart full of ahimsa: Ruth Beaglehole's parenting revolution
In a municipal school in a narrow lane in North Chennai, a quiet revolution is unfolding. Daily wage earners, domestic workers and homemakers sit in a circle, sharing the struggles of raising teens in neighborhoods marked by violence and addiction. 'It was easier when they were younger,' said Anandi, whose husband is a fisherman. 'Now they barely speak to us and don't listen.' These parents are here to learn new ways of parenting. In the sessions, they explore the teenage brain – how it works and what teens truly need. 'I thought hitting was discipline,' said Buvana, 35, a domestic worker. 'I didn't know love and safety were essential for their brains to develop well.' Alongside the science, they learn practical tools – how to listen with empathy, manage anger, and set limits with kindness. Slowly, change begins. 'I used to beat my kids,' said Selvi, 27, a domestic worker. 'Now, we solve problems together.' Added Amina, 32, a tailor, 'My son listens and talks more, now that I'm being patient.' Ramesh, an autorickshaw driver, said with eyes misting up, 'After a long time, my daughter is speaking to me again and calling me Appa.' The children feel it too. 'My father used to yell and hit me,' said 14-year-old Karthik. 'Now he talks gently – I feel loved.' Anitha, 16, who once stayed out late, said, 'I come home because I saw my amma change.' Small acts of love begin to show up – a kind word, a hug, a favourite meal. 'Earlier, my mother hit me for coming home late,' said Meena, 13, with a grin. 'Now she tells me to go out and play.' Kumar, 15, says his marks have improved because of his mother's encouragement. Said Gita, with a laught, 'My mother kisses me, calls me pattu, and praises me – I've even started helping her.' These families are just a few among many touched by Ruth Beaglehole, who came from Los Angeles to Chennai in 2014 to share her approach of 'Parenting with Nonviolence', inspired by Gandhi's principles of ahimsa and satyagraha. Beaglehole's ideas have been embraced by parents from all walks of life, from daily wage earners to corporate professionals, from municipal to international schools, from rural Rajasthan to small towns in Tamil Nadu, New ideas I stumbled upon Ruth Beaglehole's work in 2012, more than a decade after my friend Kalpana Sundar and I had begun exploring a new way to raise our children, inspired by Montessori ideas. As we shared our learnings, our journey grew into an organisation – nine women challenging parenting rooted in control and punishment. Our workshops were making an impact, but we wanted more – formal training as parent educators. No programmes for this existed in India. While searching online, I found Beaglehole's work. Her philosophy of Parenting with Nonviolence, combined with 50 years of experience, including work with Māori communities in New Zealand, deeply resonated with us. I reached out, hoping for online help. She replied, 'I'll come to India.' I was stunned. Who was this woman, willing to fly across the world – at 70 – to train strangers? Though we had years of experience in conducting parenting workshops and courses, Beaglehole showed us how to go deeper, helping us reach parents stuck in old patterns and offering the missing pieces we needed. Play Today, brain-based parenting is everywhere, but back then, it was radical. Beaglehole introduced us to Harvard videos calling parents 'brain architects', finally giving us the language to show how safety shapes development – and how much hitting or shaming harms children. Beaglehole taught us a powerful concept – the misuse of power over children simply because they're small. She gave us an exercise where one person stood on a chair and shouted down to the other. It felt scary. 'Is this how children feel?' we asked. For Beaglehole, ahimsa meant respecting the whole child – body, mind, heart and spirit. She urged us to look inward – kids push our buttons because it's often about us, not them. I could not accept my strong-willed child, because growing up, I'd learnt that being 'compliant and sweet' meant safety. Without awareness, we repeat old patterns. Beaglehole showed us that deep listening is powerful. 'How you are with parents is how they'll be with their kids,' she said. Once, a teammate shared regret over sending her child to school too early. Ruth simply said, 'You were trying your best.' That moment showed us: if we meet parents with compassion, they'll pass it on to their children. She helped us see that parents don't need lectures, just safe spaces to be vulnerable and feel supported. Walking the talk Beaglehole didn't just teach – she lived her values. Once, during a session at a teammate's home, her seven-year-old son with a fractured arm interrupted. Embarrassed, she tried to hush him. Beaglehole gently stopped us, welcomed him and asked what he needed. In that moment, we saw what it truly meant to respect a child. Another time, Beaglehole asked – curious, not critical – why we do not greet the cleaning lady. We had not even noticed her. The next morning, a chorus of 'Good morning, Sundari' made her beam – and made us reflect on our class bias. Beaglehole's certification changed everything for us. We integrated her ideas into our curriculum, one rooted in the Indian context, strengthening it with science while staying true to the realities of the families we work with. Our work expanded, we established a resource centre, partnered with schools and companies, launched online courses and led campaigns to build awareness on the need to move from punishment to positive discipline. In 2018, at the age of 75, Beaglehole returne,d now focusing on parent education as a tool for social justice. 'When we treat children with respect, we build inclusive, equitable communities rooted in safety and well-being,' she said. I often asked Beaglehole, 'Do parents facing poverty or violence have the space to think about parenting?' She said yes, every parent, no matter their struggle, longs for connection with their children. When we began working in North Chennai, I saw that truth unfold before my eyes. Ruth Beaglehole passed away in April at the age of 81. I feel her presence in all that she has taught me. In these troubled times, it feels right to end with a quote Beaglehole loved from Gandhi: 'If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.' Beaglehole brought ahimsa into our homes, showing us that nonviolence begins with how we speak to and treat our children. Ruth Beaglehole book, A Compassionate Guide to Raising Children with Nonviolence, will soon be available free on her website.
NZ Herald
4 days ago
- Health
- NZ Herald
Opinion: Youth vaping is a problem, let's look at the evidence
It risks reinforcing a narrative implied by e-cigarette companies, including some owned by Big Tobacco: that New Zealand should never clamp down on e-cigarettes or smoking rates may rise again. Let's re-examine the evidence. Beaglehole claims: 'So far, there is no evidence that teen vaping leads to smoking.' This is incorrect. I was an investigator on the only New Zealand study to date to directly compare adolescent smoking trends before and after e-cigarettes became available. We found that the decline in 14– and 15-year-olds initiating smoking – and smoking regularly – significantly slowed after the emergence and rise of vaping in New Zealand. Had pre-vaping trends in adolescent smoking continued, the smoking initiation rate in 2023 would have been around 6.6%, rather than the 12.6% it ultimately reached. Also, our new study – published today in The Medical Journal of Australia – adds to the evidence, albeit from the other side of the Tasman. As in New Zealand, we found that Australia's progress in reducing adolescent smoking significantly slowed after the emergence and rise of vaping. In both countries, the pattern is similar in a manner that seems unlikely to be a coincidence. While youth vaping may be less of a problem in Australia than in New Zealand, it is still a serious problem. But it's not just our New Zealand and Australian studies. There is also a large body of evidence from international cohort studies – the strongest type of observational study for understanding cause-and-effect relationships. These studies track individuals over time and have consistently found that adolescents who vape are more likely to go on to smoke. None have yet been conducted in New Zealand, but their findings are so consistent across countries and cultures that it seems likely a New Zealand cohort study would show the same. To suggest all of these studies provide 'no evidence that teen vaping leads to smoking' is simply inaccurate. What about adult smoking? Beaglehole's claim that vaping has significantly contributed to its decline in New Zealand also deserves a closer look. It is true that adult daily smoking in New Zealand declined more sharply than expected between 2020 and 2023 – from 11.9% to 6.8%, a period when daily vaping rose rapidly from 3.5% to 9.7%. This four-year window is what many e-cigarette advocates rely heavily on when declaring victory on behalf of e-cigarettes. But the most recent New Zealand data diverge from that narrative. Despite daily vaping continuing to increase from 9.7% in 2023 to 11.1% in 2024, the rate of daily smoking failed to decrease for the first time in a decade. Other countries offer further reason for caution. In England, although smoking rates declined between 2016 and 2023, there was no acceleration in that decline among adults aged 18-24 and 25-44, despite a sharp rise in e-cigarette use from 2021. Among those aged 45 and over, the decline in smoking not only failed to accelerate – it actually slowed. Smoking rates in New Zealand were already falling before e-cigarettes emerged – and they continued to fall afterwards. This progress is at least partly due to the impact of strong tobacco control policies accumulating over many years – policies that continue to influence smoking patterns today. These include smokefree bars and restaurants, regular increases in tobacco excise taxes, graphic health warnings on packaging, point-of-sale display bans, plain packaging and legislation prohibiting smoking in cars carrying children. At best, vaping may have slightly sped up the decline in adult smoking. At worst, it may have made no difference – or even slowed progress – while embedding a commercial nicotine industry that will be hard to wind back. The risk of overstating the evidence is that it fuels the idea that New Zealand now needs a thriving vaping industry. That if it's reined in, smoking will inevitably rise. It's a convenient narrative. Especially for companies that profit from it. Vaping may have a role to play in quitting smoking. But that doesn't mean efforts to limit access to young people who have never smoked should be dismissed. Now more than ever, New Zealand should double down on a progressive, evidence-based approach to tobacco control. Decades of hard-won progress shouldn't now be handed to an industry eager to claim the credit.
Los Angeles Times
23-05-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Long before Dr. Becky, this L.A. woman changed parenting for good
USC professor Andrew Ogilvie was standing outside Canyon Coffee in Echo Park last May, his youngest daughter dangling from his chest in a baby carrier, when a gray-haired woman with a New Zealand accent approached him, placing a gentle hand on the baby's back. 'When she's having a tough time two years from now, remember this warmth,' she said, smiling. Ogilvie, who had seen the woman's photo on missives from the local elementary school, smiled back, honored to be in the presence of an L.A. legend. 'Oh, Ruth,' he said. 'You don't know who I am, but I know who you are.' Like thousands of L.A. parents before him, Ogilivie had just had his first lesson with parent educator and child rights activist Ruth Beaglehole, who devoted her life to countering 'childism' — the misuse of power over children — and taught generations of Angelenos to parent their children with empathy and kindness rather than spanking, threats and manipulation. For more than 50 years, Beaglehole, who died April 21 at the age of 81, was a tireless advocate of what she called parenting with nonviolence, disseminating her philosophy in celebrity living rooms, domestic violence centers, schools, jails, social service agencies and occasional one-on-ones with strangers outside coffee shops. Though she never was an author of a bestselling parenting book like Dr. Benjamin Spock or became a social media influencer like Dr. Becky Kennedy, Beaglehole's many colleagues and mentees say her teachings rippled across L.A. and the world, helping families break longstanding cycles of violence and oppression toward children. 'What Ruth brought was really a paradigm shift in terms of how we thought about parenting,' said Patricia Lakatos, lead trainer for child-parent psychotherapy at Children's Hospital Los Angeles who studied with Beaglehole. 'It was not about learning techniques to help get your children to behave, but really about thinking of children as human beings who in their own right need to be heard.' Beaglehole moved from her childhood home in New Zealand to the United States in the late 1960s, eventually settling in Echo Park, where she became part of a community of social justice activists. Over the decades she founded several L.A. institutions including the cooperative daycare Echo Park Silverlake People's Child Care Center that was immortalized in the Emmy-winning short documentary 'Power to the Playgroup' and the Teen and Parent Child Care Program at the Los Angeles Technology Center. In 1999 she opened the Center for Nonviolent Education and Parenting, where she and her staff, many recruited from the teen group, taught weekly parenting classes in Spanish and English and gave parenting workshops throughout Southern California. 'What Ruth figured out is that whether you're in a teen program or you're a more affluent parent who has more access or resources, the reality is that the things parents face cross culture and wealth,' said Glenda Linares, who worked as a parent educator at the center for 13 years after meeting Beaglehole as a young mother, age 15, in 1998. 'Parenting is hard.' A broad cross section of Angelenos attended Beaglehole's classes, but she was able to create a sense of community and common ground, said Rabbi Susan Goldberg, Beaglehole's daughter and founder of the eastside Jewish community Nefesh. 'There was this feeling that we are all dealing with the same things and acting the same ways,' Goldberg said. 'It was very humbling, and also there was a sense that we were all in this together. We're all trying.' Beaglehole also taught overseas, doing workshops in the Congo, Japan, India and a comprehensive multiyear project with the Māori community in Aotearoa, (the Māori name for New Zealand). She also continued to hold classes at Elysian Heights Elementary Arts Magnet, Nefesh and the Center for Pacific Asian Family, preaching the gospel of child-centric, empathetic parenting up until the moment of her death. In addition to Goldberg, she is survived by her children David Goldberg and Maxie Goldberg, children-in-law Karla Alvarado Goldberg, Brian Joseph and Munira Virji, and eight grandchildren. She remained connected over many years to the father of her children, Art Goldberg, and his wife, Susan Philips. Beaglehole often started her classes with an open-ended question: 'So, tell me what's going on.' One by one, the parents arranged in a circle would share their struggles, frustrations and occasionally their wins to remain empathetic to their kids in the midst of difficult circumstances. The situations didn't need to be dramatic to be significant. Someone might talk about the challenge of getting a kid to brush their teeth in the morning, another might mention the endless battles at bedtime, a third the humiliation of a meltdown in the grocery store. Gently but firmly, Beaglehole would encourage them to consider what their child was trying to communicate, what the behavior was stirring up inside the parent and how to approach the situation with more kindness, empathy and respect. 'She always said that all behaviors are an attempt to get our needs met,' said Mel McGraw, who was in Beaglehole's recent parenting group at Elysian Heights Elementary Arts Magnet. 'And in the midst of being triggered, can you remember that this isn't my child misbehaving, they are struggling with something. And my job as a parent is to help them, and support them, and identify it. And if I can't identify it, to love them through it.' Beaglehole didn't provide straightforward, Instagram-friendly solutions. 'I don't have an easy one, two, three,' she said in a 2022 YouTube video. 'It's a commitment. It's an intention that we need to set every day.' McGraw remembers turning to this philosophy after a particularly difficult morning with her kid a few years ago. Her wife was out of town, work deadlines were piling up and there was her daughter, lying on her back in the hallway, screaming that she didn't want to go to school. McGraw lost her temper and found herself yelling at her daughter and frightening her. They drove to school in silence, tears streaming down both their faces. After the dropoff, McGraw imagined how Beaglehole would frame the situation. She thought about how her child was probably missing her wife. She remembered that her daughter was having trouble with a friend at school who was being mean to her. And she thought about the pressures she herself was under too, parenting alone for several weeks with little time for work or rest. The blowup was a result of both of them failing to get their needs met, and yet, only one of them was an adult. As the day wore on, she couldn't wait to pick up her daughter from school to tell her she was sorry for yelling and to repair the relationship. 'It's those microcosm moments,' McGraw said. 'And the kernel of Ruth's work was that as much as we're doing it for our kids, we're also doing it to reparent ourselves.' Beaglehole's many students say her work is poised to continue. Her book 'Principles and Practices of Parenting With Nonviolence: A Compassionate Guide to Caring for Younger Human Beings' will soon be available on her website, free of charge. Videos on YouTube articulate her philosophy and detail her strategies. The more than 300 parent educators whom she trained now work as therapists, educators, community organizers, social workers and in other fields. And then there are parents who sat in her classes over the years modeling her teachings for their own children. They number in the thousands. A few years ago Linares created a curriculum based on Beaglehole's parenting philosophy for migrant parents living in a temporary shelter in Tijuana. When officials at UNICEF saw that work, they asked her to design a similar curriculum for a mobile school bus that could bring Beaglehole's teachings on parenting to other shelters in the region. 'I was taking the learning I did when I was 19 and thinking, how do I bring this approach to parents who are in extremely difficult circumstances?' said Linares. 'They might not know if they are going to cross the border tomorrow, but they do have some agency around the relationship they get to have with their child.' It's what Beaglehole taught her whole life: Parenting is always difficult, and it is always — always — worth the effort to do it well.
