Book Review: Grandparenting Through Obstacles by Renee Gray ...

Book Review: Grandparenting Through Obstacles by Renee Gray-Wilburn and Dianne E. Butts

The topic of this book truly ?hit home?. This was about MY family, not a generic issue on faith, or child slavery in a foreign country or even abortion in the neighboring town. This was in my house.

The subtitle sums up what this book is about well: Overcoming family challenges to reach your grandchildren for Christ.? It is actually a collection of stories from several different grandparents about their lives and their grandchildren. I found it very easy to picture and to relate to the stories.? Their stories also made me feel ?connected? to them.

I found this book inspiring me to want to be a larger influence in my grandchildren?s lives and to pray for them more often.

I liked the questions to ponder and sample prayers at the end of each chapter. These will help to put what you learn into practice.

This book will most help grandparents who are dealing with certain specific problems (?challenges?) that are addressed in this book, which are: when the parents are not walking with God, when the relationship is long-distance, when the family is non-traditional, and the challenge of partnering with parents. The book is broken up into those sections with stories specifically as examples of how other grandparents dealt with those challenges. Even if you are a grandparent and don?t feel you have those challenges right now, this would be a good book to prepare for those problems in advance and for the general inspiration contained within.

To purchase your own copy of this book go here: Grandparenting Through Obstacles: Overcoming Family Challenges to Reach Your Grandchildren for Christ

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author herself. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commision?s 16 CFR, Part 255: ?Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.?

(c) 2013 Cheryl Cope

Cheryl Cope on Google+

Source: http://www.cherylcope.com/book-review-grandparenting-through-obstacles-by-renee-gray-wilbur-and-dianne-e-butts

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YouTube Co-Founder Teases Upcoming Video Site MixBit, A Destination For Collaborative Video Creation

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley used an April Fools' joke to promote his upcoming new product, a video-focused site called MixBit that emphasizes collaborative video creation, rather than trying to compete with YouTube for a viewing audience. Very little has been revealed about MixBit as of yet, beyond the landing page which allows people to sign up for notifications about its upcoming launch, but in an SXSW Q&A Hurley revealed some information.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/438ZBhlfdGI/

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HIV self-testing: The key to controlling the global epidemic

Apr. 2, 2013 ? A new international study has confirmed that self-testing for HIV is effective and could be the answer to controlling the global epidemic. This major systematic review, led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), shows HIV self-testing removes much of the fear and stigma associated with being tested for the disease.

This study, which is published in PLoS Medicine is the first of its kind and could pave the way for early detection and treatment around the world, thereby reducing transmission.

"Thirty years into the HIV* epidemic, there is no vaccine in sight. Treatment as a prevention strategy has been known to work, but uptake of HIV screening seems to be limited by a societal problem: HIV stigma and perceived discrimination," says Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, who is the first and corresponding author of the study, a clinical researcher at the RI-MUHC and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University.

According to UNAIDS*, 50 per cent of people living with HIV worldwide are unaware of their HIV status and about 2.5 million people become infected every year. Dr. Pant Pai firmly believes that access to an HIV self-test linked to expedited counselling systems will help expand access to screening and reduce judgement and perceived attitudes around HIV testing. Self-tests are performed in oral fluid samples from the gum lining of the mouth in the privacy of one's home. They are non-invasive, convenient, ensure confidentiality and can provide results within 20 minutes. The results are self-interpreted however, and require confirmation at a medical clinic if positive.

There is a lot of global momentum in favour of HIV self-testing with several countries and health networks advocating their use. Several studies have been conducted to determine the best methods of making a self-test with linked counselling and referral services available in various African, North American and European settings. Dr. Pant Pai and her colleagues decided to look at the global evidence on self-testing strategies based on acceptability, feasibility and accuracy and success with linkages to care.

They examined 21 worldwide studies and found that two distinct self-testing strategies have been tried: supervised self-testing (self-testing and counselling aided by a health-care professional), and unsupervised self-testing (self-testing performed without any help but with counselling available by phone or internet). Most of the data came from studies carried out in high-income settings including the United States, Canada, Spain and the Netherlands, as well as Kenya, Singapore, Malawi and India.

Across the various studies, researchers observed that acceptability (defined as the number of people who self-tested divided by the number who consented to self-test) was very high for both self-testing strategies. They also found evidence that people preferred self-testing to facility-based testing and oral self-testing to blood-based self-testing. "The preference was largely driven by the fact the oral self-tests are non-invasive, convenient, easy to swab and do not involve a finger stick or blood from your arm for a preliminary screen," explains Dr. Pant Pai. "A lot of people also wanted to take the oral self-test home to test their partners."

Dr. Pant Pai's project is supported by a Stars in Global Health award from Grand Challenges Canada, which is funded by the Government of Canada. "Canada has a deep pool of talent dedicated to pursuing bold ideas that can have big impact in the developing world," adds Dr. Peter A. Singer, CEO of Grand Challenges Canada. "Grand Challenges Canada is proud to support innovators like Dr. Pant Pai because they will make a difference to many lives."

Dr. Pant Pai and colleagues urge policy makers everywhere to look at the proven results of supervised and unsupervised self-testing, and think how best to put these strategies into practice in their own countries. "We have, as a society, made great progress with biomedical tools, drugs and strategies, but we haven't conquered HIV-related stigma and perceived discrimination. The time is now right to tailor strategies to suit the preferences and lifestyles of patients with a view to expand access."

* Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

*2012 UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McGill University Health Centre.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Nitika Pant Pai, Jigyasa Sharma, Sushmita Shivkumar, Sabrina Pillay, Caroline Vadnais, Lawrence Joseph, Keertan Dheda, Rosanna W. Peeling. Supervised and Unsupervised Self-Testing for HIV in High- and Low-Risk Populations: A Systematic Review. PLoS Medicine, 2013; 10 (4): e1001414 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001414

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/99U-fIdGuYM/130402182638.htm

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Could iPads Hurt Toddlers' Development?

Liana Vilanova can't even sit up yet, but her father is already cheering his 2-month-old's digital prowess, praising her for interacting with an iPad app.

There are dozens of proud parents sharing their infants' touch screen skills in videos posted on YouTube, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over their kids as they interacted with various apps. Babies are transfixed by iPads, so when the device shuts off or is taken away, YouTube videos show them going into full-fledged tantrum, screaming and crying for the device.

Beth Brooks put an iPad in front of her 10-day-old baby, Alex, to see how he would react.

"I guess I just didn't think it was going to hurt, so why not give it a try," she said. "And he seemed to like it."

The iPad didn't exist until three years ago, so there is no hard data yet on the effects the device might have on a child's development.

But could all of the electronic play hurting kids developing brains -- shrinking their attention spans, stunting their social skills or ruining their eyesight?

Watch the full story on "Nightline" tonight at 12:35 a.m. ET.

Join the Conversation: Like "Nightline" on Facebook HERE and follow "Nightline" on Twitter HERE.

Family Uses Sleep Consultants for Fussy Baby Watch Video 'Secrets of Happy Families': One Man's Mission Watch Video

The Klaus family of Whitehouse Station, N.J., is a very modern family. Devon, 9, Delaney, 7, and Dalton, 4, are savvy digital divas, fluent in iPhone and iPad apps.

"From a distraction perspective, if we go out to eat, which we never do, and they are out of control, we can whip [the devices] out and they will be completely distracted until the food arrives," said their mother, Sharla Klaus.

ABC News wondered what would happen if the Klaus kids would go iPad- and iPhone-free for a month, quitting cold turkey -- no devices for 31 days.

"That means you have to entertain yourself outside or in the playroom," Sharla Klaus told the kids.

The girls were left to play with their analog toys and had to resort to imaginary play. At one point, Devon and a friend played with a pretend iPad.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Klaus kids fought a lot more without the devices to occupy them, but some child psychologists said those sibling squabbles are healthy socialization.

At Barnard College's renowned Center for Toddler Development, child development experts invited "Nightline" behind a two-way mirror where they were observing several young kids and monitoring their reactions to traditional toys versus an iPad, taking note of how the kids reacted after the iPad was taken away.

The center tested for "distractibility" by having researchers call out the names of the children who were playing with iPads and noted how readily the children responded. Many of the kids were so zoned in on the apps they were playing with, they didn't respond to the researchers at all.

The only toddler who managed to resist the iPads' magnetic pull was a little girl named Viv, who never fully tuned out her environment. She had a full conversation with a researcher while creating a make-believe world of her own.

But once the iPads were confiscated, the researchers believed the toddlers transformed into more verbal, more social and more creative creatures.

Tovah Klein, the director of Barnard's toddler center who specializes in toddler social and emotional development, said the kids were much more active when the iPads were taken away.

"You see how much their vocabulary has gone up and they are talking to each other," she said.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/toddlers-obsessed-ipads-hurt-development/story?id=18855537

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Getting Afghanistan ready to stand alone

On the Radar

As commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, Jr. has one of the toughest jobs in the military: preparing Afghanistan to stand on its own by 2014 when the last international troops are set to pull out of the country.

Gen. Dunford says Afghanistan isn?t yet strong enough to provide for its own security but is optimistic about the country's future.

?The conditions are not yet set for a stable and secure Afghanistan in the long term from which Al Qaeda and other international extremist groups will not be able to conduct attacks on the West,? the general tells On the Radar.

When asked if there's a "Plan B" in case Afghanistan isn't capable of providing for its own security by 2014, Dunford replies without hesitation that "it's going to work."

?I'm confident that we have a plan in place right now to grow the Afghan security forces to the level they need to be at in order to secure the country,? Dunford says.

Progress has been made in pushing the violence out of?Afghanistan's most heavily populated areas, Dunford touts, and says the mission now is to maintain that progress.

?The critical piece is to ensure that the Afghan security forces do have the sustainability in the future where they can continue to secure the people and allow the political transition to take place as well as development," he says.

But the challenge of maintaining security becomes more challenging as fighting season approaches in Afghanistan. Dunford is bracing for a tough fight against the Taliban.

?We?ve seen some indication that the Taliban would like to be successful this year, particularly conducting high profile attacks and assassinations of Afghan leaders to try to erode the will of the coalition,? Dunford says, but goes on to say ?we'll be able to provide the Afghans the support they need to be successful this summer.?

Another challenge Dunford faces is securing the porous Pakistani border through which insurgents enter into Afghanistan to fight, and then retreat back across for sanctuary in Pakistan.

?Certainly not satisfied with where we are on the border right now?but I'm probably no more satisfied than my predecessors, that we've satisfactorily addressed the challenge of Pakistan,? says Dunford of ISAF?s progress in securing the border, whose predecessors include recently retired Gen. John Allen and former Gen. David Petreaus.

Dunford asserts that Afghanistan?s security is steadily improving, despite the difficulties that remain.

"I don't think we're drifting sideways, I don't think?we're in a stalemate as people say," Dunford says. "I can see the growth of the Afghan national security forces. It is real. The opportunity the Afghans have for political transition?it is up to them to seize that opportunity but they will have that in the spring of 2014."

To hear more of the interview with Gen. Dunford, including his thoughts on how civil society will fare following the troops' withdrawal, check out this episode of On the Radar.

ABC's Alexandra Dukakis, Eric Wray and Brian Hartman contributed to this episode.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/isaf-commander-afghanistan-not-ready-stand-own-2014-110500701.html

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Texas district attorney, wife found dead at home

KAUFMAN, Texas (AP) ? A central Texas prosecutor and his wife were found killed in their house two months after one of his assistants was gunned down near their office, authorities said.

Investigators found the bodies of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, on Saturday, Kaufman County sheriff's Lt. Justin Lewis said. Police, FBI agents, Texas Rangers and deputies were part of the investigation.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse was shot to death in a parking lot a block from his office on Jan. 31. No arrests have been made in his death.

Lewis declined to say how the couple died or whether authorities believe their deaths are linked to Hasse's. He wouldn't provide further details. Kaufman County is 33 miles southeast of Dallas.

Kaufman Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh told The Dallas Morning News that the McLellands had been shot in their home and although investigators didn't know if their deaths were related to Hasse's killing, they couldn't discount it.

"It is a shock," Aulbaugh told the newspaper. "It was a shock with Mark Hasse, and now you can just imagine the double shock and until we know what happened, I really can't confirm that it's related but you always have to assume until it's proven otherwise."

Sam Rosander, who lives in the same unincorporated area of Kaufman County as the McLellands, told The Associated Press on Saturday that sheriff's deputies were parked in the district attorney's driveway for about a month after Hasse was killed.

Aulbaugh said recently that the FBI was checking to see if Hasse's killing could be related to the March 19 killing of Colorado Department of Corrections head Tom Clements, who was gunned down after answering the doorbell at his home.

Evan Spencer Ebel, a former Colorado inmate and white supremacist who authorities believe killed Clements and a pizza deliveryman two days earlier, was killed in a March 21 shootout with Texas deputies about 100 miles from Kaufman.

Hasse was chief of the organized crime unit when he was an assistant prosecutor in Dallas County in the 1980s, and he handled similar cases in Kaufman County. After Hasse was killed, McLelland had said Hasse was one of 12 attorneys on his staff, all of whom handle hundreds of cases at a time.

"Anything anybody can think of, we're looking through," McLelland said after Hasse's death.

McLelland graduated from the University of Texas before a 23-year career in the Army, according to the website for the district attorney's office. He later earned his law degree from the Texas Wesleyan School of Law.

He and his wife have two daughters and three sons. One son is a police officer in Dallas.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/texas-district-attorney-wife-found-dead-home-045407488.html

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Unfit To Bear Arms

Jared Loughner, after having a gun confiscated for disturbed behavior, went back to the same store and bought another.

Photo by Pima County Sheriff's Forensic Unit via Getty Images

In the last few days, investigators in Connecticut and Arizona have released thousands of pages of documents about the Tucson and Sandy Hook massacres. The documents, coupled with investigative leaks and with testimony about the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, paint a clearer picture of what caused these tragedies. It isn?t just high-capacity magazines or defenseless victims. It?s a failure to link firearms access to mental health information.

On Sept. 29, 2010, Pima Community College told the parents of a troubled student, Jared Loughner, that he was being suspended for a raving video he had made. College officials stipulated that before returning to campus, he would have to ?obtain a mental health clearance indicating [that], in the opinion of a mental health professional, his presence at the College does not present a danger to himself or others.? The officials advised Loughner?s parents, with whom he was living, to remove any firearms he might use. So Loughner?s dad took away the shotgun his son had bought from a local store in 2008. As compensation, the father gave his son money to cover part of what the gun had cost.

What did Loughner do with the money? He went back to the same store and bought a Glock pistol. The clerks at the store had no idea anything crucial about Loughner had changed since 2008. They made him sign the same form (ATF Form 4473) and go through the same background check, with the same result: He passed. After the shooting, they handed over his forms to the police, proudly explaining their strict protocol for verifying each customer?s identity. Mental fitness wasn?t part of the protocol.

On Dec. 6, a week after the Glock purchase and a month before the shooting, Loughner put two spent cartridge casings from the gun in an envelope, with a note describing them as proof that he had ?planned my assassination.? Police later found the envelope, along with The Anarchist Cookbook, in a safe in his room. Apparently, his parents hadn?t looked inside it.

Three weeks before the shooting, Loughner showed the Glock to a friend. It had an extended clip full of rounds. The friend later told police that Loughner had failed to give a satisfactory answer his question: ?Why the hell do you have this?? Noting that Loughner had ?crazy thoughts? about the government, the friend assured investigators that when Loughner showed up with the gun, ?I kicked him out of my house.? Fat lot of good that did.

Three hours before the shooting, Loughner tried to buy ammunition at a Walmart. The clerk, uneasy about Loughner?s agitation, told him the ammo wasn?t in stock. The press calls the clerk a hero: ?Tucson ammo seller lied to make Loughner go away.? So what did Loughner do? He went to the next Walmart and bought the same ammo 23 minutes later. Warnings don?t get passed, even between Walmarts.

A year after the Tucson shooting, James Holmes, a neuroscience student at the University of Colorado, began to unravel. Dr. Lynne Fenton, a psychiatrist at the university, has testified that she met with Holmes on June 11, 2012 and subsequently contacted a campus police officer in part ?to communicate my concerns? about him. Reports from Denver, citing sources close to the investigation, say that Fenton requested a criminal background check on Holmes and contacted colleagues on the university?s Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment team because Holmes was fantasizing about killing "a lot of people."

What did Fenton and her colleagues do about this menace? Nothing, apparently. Holmes was already in the process of leaving the school. He had dropped out of the neuroscience program on June 10. By June 12, he no longer had access to campus facilities that required security clearance. He wasn?t the university?s problem anymore. So Fenton and the threat assessment team dropped the case. University officials never reported it to police in Aurora, where Holmes lived.

Over the next month, Holmes bought an arsenal of weapons and military gear from merchants who knew nothing about his condition. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms lists eight local and online purchases from June 13 to July 14, providing Holmes with a Glock, several 30-round magazines, a 100-round drum magazine, two laser sights, body armor, and chemicals for making bombs. He eventually stockpiled four guns and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition, which he used on July 20 to kill 12 people and injure 58 more.

Adam Lanza?s atrocity came five months later, but the warning signs began years earlier. A New York Times article found by police at his home describes a shooting spree at Northern Illinois University that killed five people and injured more than 20 others. The date on the article, according to police records, is Feb. 18, 2008. Since that doesn?t match the Times? online archive, Lanza presumably clipped it from the print edition.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=61e1f4c9974a5a805ebdae563fff4944

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