Ask Dr. Anna K

unasked for parenting advice for those who love or are seeking to love their own inner child or their own child

An important time in the pregnancy of a child is before the pregnancy even begins. This time is often forgotten and little preparation taken as most pregnancies appear to just happen. Needless to say, a mother’s body needs to be healthy but often we forget the body of the father also needs to be healthy. If the father is taking drugs or alcohol then the sperm will be affected. Fortunately, we are moving away from the idea that the father is “just” a sperm donor and his physical condition is unimportant. We are learning a significant amount about the field of epigenetics and are beginning to realize the conditions making up the child go far beyond what the genes are carrying.

We always worry about the condition of the mother and are very aware of the importance of the physical condition of the mother. I remember a young woman I met some forty years ago as a student at a university I attended. She was from Korea, and she was pregnant. The most important thing to her was to maintain a calm and loving environment for her unborn child. At that time, this was not considered essential. However, her culture believed firmly in playing music for the unborn baby, speaking lovingly to it, and in maintaining calmness for the mother. It was believed this brought about a happy, calm baby, easy to work with and even tempered. It has always been my observation, in my over twenty years abroad, that children from Asian cultures were easier going and more even tempered. These children were rarely physically aggressive towards other children.

It has been my observation, since returning to work in the US, that we tend to place the internal environment of the mother as of secondary importance. Unfortunately, during the past fourteen years it is commonplace for me to find the highly aggressive, extremely hyperactive children I meet, have a history of mothers’ using psychoactive drugs during pregnancy. These children are rarely provided with comprehensive medical exams including neurological and endocrinological evaluations. Somehow it is felt the infant’s system is unaffected (or rather will outgrow within two years) the effects of being bathed 24 hours per day for 9 months in a hallucinogenic bath of chemicals. Imagine, as an adult, what this would do to us, let alone a forming embryo. I am not sure how a child subjected to this is supposed to clearly define reality, as we see it in this dimension.

Yes, there are many, many adults who care and mostly, these are whom I wish to speak with in my columns. But it is these children, born of drug addicted, or former users, of drugs that worry me greatly. These children are the ones who are most likely to be abused.