Are Orchid Children the new Flower Children?

John Ballard is busy studying...

While I'm doing homework, readers are invited to check out this video and reflect on whether it may have political implications.

Yesterday I watched the Fox network long enough to see their reporting of the growing Teabagger phenomenon. With the influence and prestige of a major television network behind it, we can expect the power and influence of the more extreme elements of what once were considered independent voters/thinkers to be shifting into the ranks of the extreme right of politics.

We laught at Palin and Beck at our peril. Mocking the latest eight points of a true Republican as a "suicide pact" might provide smug comfort to many of us Liberals, but make no mistake about it, those points are catching on like a cigarette butt in a dry stand of California brush in the summertime. Sparks are starting little fires. And if someone does not soon break out the fire-fighting equipment, I forcast an out of control wildfire. 

I have been tracking the word "immigration" with Hootsuite, and came across a tweet this morning linking a compelling video from Numbers USA, a clean-looking, well-spoken outfit founded by Roy Beck (No relation to the other one), whose journalism background and connections with people of influence in high places puts him in a powerful position.  Wikipedia describes him as "a 'tutor' for U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo on immigration issues." Being a sheltered Liberal I had to look him up. Sure enough, he is to the immigration issue what Betsy McCaughey is to health reform, respectable, compelling, articulate and influential.

Meantime, as the opening line of my post indicates, I'm doing some homework, starting with the Atlantic article, The Science of Success, where I found the video.My link to that informative post from a brain-study blog I follow, Orchid Kids: The Positives of Intense and Demanding Children.

...the orchid hypothesis “profoundly recasts the way we think about human frailty.” He adds, “We see that when kids with this kind of vulnerability are put in the right setting, they don’t merely do better than before, they do the best—even better, that is, than their protective-allele peers..."

Very encouraging finding for families dealing with intense difficult temperament kids (difficult temperaments have been described as intense, negative, and slow to adapt), and bears out with our clinical practice too. Parents of these kids often need a great deal of support - and it is true that some kids are A LOT harder to parent than others...

Not to put too fine a point on it, the characters I watched on Fox News so much reminded me of children that this seemingly obscure rabbit hole seemed somehow related. If I find anything that looks important I will report back. Meantime, that Atlantic article has finished printing out to ten pages or so and I have an senior care sitting assignments today, tonight and tomorrow. At least I'll have something to read.