The Rights and Needs of Newborn Babies and Young Children

There is no such thing as a baby… A baby cannot exist alone but is essentially part of a relationship.D.W. Winnicott, pediatrician
The Child, the Family, and the Outside WorldSignificant strides have been made to overcome blatant juvenile ageism even though it has not been formally acknowledged as a form of prejudice and discrimination. Childhood and adolescence are recognized as unique stages of development today. Still, the fact that a newborn baby is a unique human being and a citizen isn’t recognized in popular thought or most legal doctrines. This isn’t surprising. It took a long time for older children to gain recognition as human beings with basic rights.Seeing a child as immature rather than as merely ignorant took shape in the Eighteenth Century. Rousseau and the Romantic poets dispelled the distorted view that children are miniature adults. The Civil War established the civil rights of individual adults and created the opportunity for a vision of the civil rights of children and the role of the state in American life.In 1870 the Illinois Supreme Court decision in People v. Turner extended due process protection to minors. It set the stage for juvenile courts that were established in 1899 and expanded in the 1910s to administer payments to single mothers, a precursor of the contemporary federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program.
A wide-ranging “save the children” movement ushered in the Twentieth Century as the Century of the Child. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had been formed in 1875. In 1900 the Swedish feminist Ellen Key published The Century of the Child. In her vision, babies would be conceived by loving parents. They would grow up in homes where mothers were ever-present.This vision dominated most of the first half of the 1900s. The aim was to map out a childhood in which children would acquire the “habit of happiness.” This inspired the professional approach to childhood and adolescence through pediatrics, developmental psychology, child-centered education, child welfare, child and adolescent psychology and psychiatry and policy studies related to the young.In the second half of the Twentieth Century, a sense arose that childhood was disappearing. The worlds of children and adults were merging again. Materially better off than sixty years ago, children are often being expected now to be independent and to adjust to a variety of family styles. Adolescents especially are wooed as major consumers. The more children act like adults in sports and in schools, the better.Underlying these developments is recognition of the rights of minors. These rights culminate in most adult legal rights being granted typically at the age of 18 during late adolescence. Eligibility for these rights presumably begins at birth.The Rights of ChildrenRights have two distinct but related functions: to protect a person’s freedoms and to fill important needs. The most important needs of children are protection from harm by others and themselves and to grow up to become productive citizens.Minors lack the capacity and experience to marry, enter contracts and bring lawsuits without adult guidance. They are considered minors until they reach the age of majority at either 18 or 21, depending upon the state and the privileges. Until then, they are required to have legal and physical custodians, usually their parents. Since late adolescents are older than 18 and are regarded as legal adults in most ways, references to adolescent rights in this Chapter are limited to early and middle adolescence.When newborn babies and children were regarded as property, they had no rights. Only their parents had rights based on the liberties and privacy of individuals. Now those parental rights are legal (acting on behalf of) and custodial (residential). Over the last century, minors have been accorded a series of moral and civil rights based on moral and civil rights that apply to all human beings.The Moral Rights of MinorsMoral rights reflect cultural values devoted to the common good and compassion for others. Emmanuel Kant said that each human being “must always be treated as an end, not merely as a means.” To treat another person as a means is to use that person to advance one’s own interests. To treat another person as an end is to respect that person’s dignity and autonomy. This distinction is especially important for young persons who are vulnerable to oppression and exploitation.The traditional caretaker view of minor’s moral rights was articulated in 1691 by the philosopher John Locke. According to him, all humans are “born infants, weak and helpless, without knowledge or understanding.” Therefore, parents were “by the law of nature under an obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate the children they had begotten.” In Locke’s scheme, parents have the right to make choices for their children:
Whilst [the child] is in an estate wherein he has no understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to have any will of his own to follow.Moral rights impose a duty to actively help a person. For example, a minor’s moral right to education imposes a duty to provide that education.Eglantyne Jebb, founder of the Save the Children Fund, began an effort to codify the moral rights of minors in l922 in England’s Charter of the Rights of the Child. The Charter spelled out the moral right of all minors to be protected from exploitation; to be given a chance for full physical, mental and moral development; and to be taught to live a life of service. The League of Nations adopted the charter in l924 as the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child.In the United States, the moral rights of minors have been detailed in a variety of organizational creeds, children’s bills of rights and White House Conferences on Children. Further declarations have come from the United Nations. These rights reflect reasonable expectations that minors will be given whatever they require to grow into healthy, functional adults. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all human beings are born with the following inherent civil rights:• to survival;
• to develop to the fullest;
• to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and
• to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.Whenever policymakers express their hopes for children, they effectively conclude that children have a moral right to competent parents… and specifically to not live in foster care or institutions. When parents and other persons make decisions for a child, they act as fiduciary custodians. They are expected to put themselves in the child’s position and place the child’s interests above their own. The contemporary challenge is to apply the same principles to newborn babies.The Civil Rights of MinorsMoral rights are not enough to protect minors from abuse and neglect. For this reason, certain moral rights of minors have become legal civil rights. Civil rights spring from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’ reformist theories of human rights, the same ideals that inspired the English, American and French revolutions. They guarantee all citizens equal protection under the law regardless of race, religion, gender, age or disability; equal exercise of the privileges of citizenship; and equal participation in community life. Newborn babies are equal in the sense that they are entitled to as much respect for their rights as are adults.Moral rights became enforceable civil rights for minorities and women only through great effort and vigilance. Even more effort and vigilance is required to enforce important civil rights for minors, especially for newborn babies. For the first time in history, we are poised to specify rights for minors in positive terms. Of course, these civil rights are based on their developmental needs and capacities rather than their wishes.Adult civil rights that apply to minors include freedom from racial and gender discrimination; the right to life and personal security; freedom from slavery and involuntary servitude; and freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the relative incapacity of minors and ruled that the execution of minors violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment.The gradual emergence of minors’ civil rights in the United States began through different treatment in criminal matters. The first juvenile court was established in 1899 in Cook County, Illinois. Because existing courts were not adequately rehabilitating juveniles, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1967 in In re Gault mandated due process to provide Constitutional protections for them. Unfortunately, this did not actually improve the courts’ abilities to help juveniles as much as intended.Minors’ civil rights progressed from child labor, child neglect and abuse and education laws to the idea that children have the right to environments that offer reasonable opportunities for healthy development. These include adequate nutrition, housing, recreation and health care as well as love, security, education and protection from abuse and discrimination.These rights do not include certain adult rights such as the right to privacy, the right to confidentiality and the right to make their own choices on vital matters. All of this boils down to the right to have competent parents. Competent parenting actually is an enforceable affirmative civil right because incompetent parenting is a cause for state intervention through child abuse and neglect laws. These laws allow for the termination of parental rights by the state.In 1968 in Ginsberg v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized society’s interest in protecting minors from circumstances that might prevent them from becoming responsible citizens:The state also has an independent interest in the wellbeing of its youth… to protect the welfare of children… safeguarded from abuses which might prevent their growth into free and independent well-developed… citizens.
Stated positively, minors have a civil right to nurturance, to protection and to make certain choices through age-grading statutes. Still, the fact that parental rights are based on the right of minors to have competent parents is not yet fully appreciated by courts or the public.The civil right of minors to competent parents is more important than adult rights to freedom of actions because of the adverse consequences incompetent parents impose on our society. Adult rights benefit individuals and are the backbone of our democratic society, but minors’ rights are essential for our society’s survival and prosperity. Our society’s wellbeing depends on protecting and nurturing our young so that they can become responsible citizens.The Right to Competent ParentsNone of us have a moral right to succeed. In fact, we have a right to fail unless our failure adversely affects other people. The failures of parents do affect others, including their children and society, and fly in the face of children’s right to competent parents. A person’s freedom to fail therefore faces an exception when that person is a parent.
The legal right of newborn babies to competent parents stems from the fact that incompetent parents justify state intervention and possible termination of parental rights. Because our society is paying an ever larger share of the cost of rearing, educating and treating neglected and abused children, we all have a financial stake in competent parents.Public decision making needs to acknowledge the interests of children and that parents usually protect those interests best. But when a parent’s inability to do so is evident before childbirth, the state is obligated by existing child abuse and neglect statutes to intervene preemptively.Our society must value newborn babies enough to protect their rights to competent parents and to enforce its expectations of parenthood before childbirth. Whether or not a pregnancy was planned, the decision to enter parenthood should be based on a newborn’s right to a competent parent before the child is born. Action should not be delayed until after childbirth when maternal and paternal instincts, hormones and ideologically and fantasy-based emotions impede problem solving and decision making.The Developmental Needs of BabiesThe notion that all babies require is feeding and diapering prevails in popular thought and public policies. This is reflected in the use of the term caregiving rather than parenting as the primary need of babies and toddlers. The fact that they are interacting, learning human beings seeking to form relationships with their parents from the day of birth has not taken solid root.Babies usually are seen as objects to be adored and cared for. This view allows us to overlook the fact that a difficult birth and time in intensive care, and even circumcision, are traumatic for newborns. It makes it possible to ignore the baby while dealing with the crisis of adolescent childbirth, including establishing paternity. It makes it possible to presume that baby boys aren’t affected by the pain of circumcision. It makes it possible to ignore the connection between baby-parent love and loving adult relationships in later life. It makes it possible to successfully market videos for babies that absorb their attention and ensnare them with “infotainment” before they can explore the world on their own.The fact that their development as human beings depends on enduring parent attachments formed through parent-child interactions is not fully appreciated by the general public in part because parenthood cannot compete with less demanding and more materially rewarding activities. Actually newborn babies are interacting persons in every sense of the word. They analyze and respond to sounds. They stop feeding to listen to something. When they hear other babies cry, they usually cry with them. They might stop crying on hearing a recording of their own voice. They gaze deeply into their mothers’ eyes. They closely watch their mothers. They are upset when their mothers wear expressionless masks or when their mothers are depressed. They hunger for interaction with humans who are motivated to bond with them and can fill their survival needs. Without a doubt, they are human beings… they are persons.Attachment BondingHistorians, archeologists and anthropologists building on the work of Charles Darwin have described the human capacity for attachment bonding, cooperation and altruism from early life. Animal research suggests that bonding between mother and baby is encoded through genes in addition to the usual memory process. The bonding process tempers self-assertive-individual-survival instincts with integrative-species-survival instincts.While competition is a key motivator in human affairs, cooperation is even more important. The viability of interpersonal relationships and market economies depend upon our virtuous natures. Higher brain centers evolved to ensure species survival through attachment bonding between parents and children and among intimate groups. These trust-inducing advantages contributed to neurological attachment bonding systems fostered by hormones.
The attachment bonding process begins before birth. Research on lifetime health records reveals that characteristics in later life are affected by our experiences in the womb. A classic example was the retarded growth of women who were low-birth-weight newborns during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 and who later gave birth to smaller babies themselves even with adequate nutrition during their pregnancies.Newborn babies seek attachment bonds. They can form close relationships, express themselves forcefully, show preferences, form memories and influence people from day one. They show their thoughts when they reach out, give an inquisitive look, frown, scream in protest, gurgle in satisfaction or gasp in excitement. They listen intently to their mothers’ voices, which they readily distinguish from other voices. They engage in complex activities that integrate their senses and enable learning.The psychologist John Bowlby’s groundbreaking theory of attachment bonding borrows from cybernetics, the study of how mechanical and biological systems self-regulate to achieve goals as their external and internal environments change. Attachment theory begins with the idea that two basic goals guide young children’s behavior: safety and exploration. A child who stays safe survives; a child who explores develops the intelligence and skills needed for adult life.These needs often oppose each other, so they are regulated by a cybernetic thermostat that monitors safety. When safe, a child explores and plays. When safety is uncertain, a switch is thrown that triggers fear and withdrawal. The attachment bonding process allows children to handle these emotions by internalizing models of their caregivers. As they mature, these working models become their self-regulating thermostats. Four kinds of interactions develop the working models children and parents build of each other.• First is the succorant bonding system present at birth. It extends from infancy into adolescence and seeks bonding with parents.• Second is the affiliative bonding system, which emerges during early childhood and continues into adulthood to sustain friendships.• Third is the sexual bonding system, which becomes prominent after puberty, continues through adult life, and fosters romantic relationships.• Fourth is the nurturant bonding system, which flowers after puberty, continues throughout life and fosters bonding to a child and intimate relationships between adults.Development of the nurturant bonding system builds on the succorant and affiliative systems. In turn, those systems depend on having been nurtured in the intertwining parent-child relationship. The capacities for each system are present during early life and emerge more fully at successive levels of development. Each system is based on human needs that persist throughout life.These systems ensure that individuals survive and produce progeny. Many people lead full lives without reproducing, but the evolutionary purpose of their interpersonal bonding is reproduction, not just companionship or sexual gratification. Stable family relationships depend upon dampening the self-assertive individual-survival instincts expressed through the succorant and sexual bonding systems. This is achieved by the integrative-species-survival instincts of the affiliative and nurturant bonding systems.Succorant Bonding SystemA baby’s succorant bonding system seeks essential caregiving for the baby’s physical survival through such activities as feeding and cuddling. As seen in orphanages, without attachment bonding babies fail to thrive physically and even die. Templates for succorant bonding to mother and father images appear to be genetically programmed.Interactions with additional caregivers can help babies gauge the intentions of others and elicit their care, which also can be important for survival.Mothers who give birth are deeply attached to the human beings who were in their bodies. Prenatal exposure to the mother’s voice and odors primes a newborn to respond preferentially to a birth mother. Human babies recognize the sight, sounds, smell and touch of their mothers but apparently do not recognize their fathers the same way. However, there is some evidence that genetic mothers and fathers can tell their own newborns from other newborns simply by touching their baby’s hands.At first attachment bonding is unidirectional. Over time working models of the parent are built into the baby’s brain just as images of the baby are encoded in the parent’s brain. A baby’s distress triggers caregiving instincts in the parent. A baby’s drive for succorance is reinforced by receiving nurturing from the person to whom the baby attaches.Nurturing instincts insure that mothers are devoted to their newborns. After birth, the baby is the center of a mother’s life. Physical transformations in her body continue after birth. Nurturing her baby produces hormones and inscribes new pathways in her brain that lower the amount of stimulation needed to elicit maternal responses. Breastfeeding releases oxytocin with a relaxing effect. Within days a mother can pick out her own baby’s clothes by smell alone.Without DNA testing, fathers have no way of being certain about their parentage other than what they believe to be true. Still, a strongly attached father can be more important to his baby’s wellbeing than a weakly attached mother.Affiliative Bonding SystemThe affiliative bonding system favors the cooperative behavior essential for the survival of the species. Also referred to as reciprocal bonding, affiliative bonding builds on one-way succorant bonding in babies and nurturant bonding in their parents. It goes beyond a child’s instinctive quest for security and a parent’s instincts to nurture and protect. It involves a range of two-way dimensions that include intimacy, shared humor and positive emotions.A child succorantly attaches to a caregiver and affiliatively bonds through shared interactions with a caregiver. A parent nurturantly bonds with a child by responding to the child’s succorant attachment. A child’s initial succorant attachment grows into affiliative bonding. However, babies do not become succorantly or affiliatively bonded with genetic mothers and fathers who don’t interact intimately with them.Babies and children form succorant and affiliative bonds with adoptive parents who nurture them. Children who discover they have been adopted have socially conditioned reactions, but they do not automatically shift their bonding relationships from the adoptive parents to the genetic ones. Life experience rather than genes creates succorant and affiliative parent-child bonding.A deep emotional bond with blood relatives also is not based on genes. It comes from reciprocal affiliative bonding that takes place through child-parent and sibling relationships. Affiliative attachment bonds are imprinted in the brain. Adoptive parents are the real parents through their succorant attachment and affiliative bonds with their children.Affiliatively bonded adults and children build evolving images in each other’s brains. They sense and respond to each other’s needs. Reciprocal interactions with caregivers develop a child’s capacity for higher mental functions, empathy, compassion and resilience… in essence, they develop the child’s mind.Sexual Bonding SystemThe sexual bonding system appears early in life in the form of the Electra and Oedipal complexes. These complexes motivate attachment bonding with the parent of the opposite sex and rivalry with the parent of the same sex.Sexual feelings and fantasies later evolve during adolescence with the eventual goal of mating and reproduction.
Lustful craving is the basic motivation for sexual union. Lust doesn’t automatically result in romantic passion or the urge to attach to a mating partner. Lust’s capriciousness might be part of nature’s plan. It enabled our ancestors to follow two complementary reproductive strategies. If a male had one mate and two children by a female from a different band, he would double his descendents. Likewise, a female who had a mate and became involved with another might bear the latter’s baby and acquire extra food and protection for her children.Romantic passion, the elation and obsession associated with being in love, focuses courtship on one individual at a time. The process focuses the evolutionary precious time and energy spent on mating and reproduction.Passionate love’s symptoms overlap with those of heroin (euphoric wellbeing) and cocaine (energetic euphoria). When passion is spurned or thwarted, the brain reacts with negative feelings like despair, depression and rage, all of which are similar to withdrawal symptoms from heroin or cocaine usage. Most commonly the need for passionate love eventually diminishes as affiliative bonding strengthens attachment bonding between a couple.Nurturant Bonding SystemThe nurturant bonding system first appears in young children’s caregiving impulses. When fully expressed in parenthood and adult companionship, it fulfills the reproductive cycle.Romantic passion doesn’t necessarily turn into nurturant attachment. They are separate processes and follow different patterns. Under the influence of oxytocin, nurturing attachment grows slowly over time as lovers rely upon, care for and deepen the trust between them. Passionate love is like fire. Nurturant love is like a growing vine that intertwines two people. Parent-child and enduring intimate adult relationships are both examples of this kind of love.Nurturant attachment between them motivates partners to stay together long enough to rear their young. When disrupted, it can cause pain. The desire for nurturant attachment generally is stronger in females than in males.
Homo sapiens is a social species full of emotions finely tuned for loving, helping, sharing and intertwining our lives.There are as many ways to have enduring companionship attachments as there are couples. Underlying them all is the willingness to compromise with and tolerate a partner as well as to nurture each other.Attachment StylesAttachment styles emerge gradually over time. A child with a particular temperament makes bids for nurturance. A mother with a particular temperament responds or does not respond based on her mood; how overworked she is; or which childrearing expert she has been reading. Children with sunny dispositions and upbeat mothers are likely to develop secure attachment bonds. Still a dedicated mother can overcome her own and/or her child’s less pleasant disposition and foster secure attachment bonding.A parent’s capacity to respond to the emotional and mental states of a newborn baby is the foundation of secure attachment bonding. These mutual experiences develop a baby’s reflective capacity and create an internal sense of cohesion and interpersonal connection. Over time, babies and young children build what John Bowlby called internal working models of themselves, their parents and their relationships with others. This self-organizing internal model of a mother provides a sense of security when the mother isn’t present.Children of parents who are empathic, set firm limits and emphasize the rights and welfare of others show high levels of pro-social and compassionate behaviors. Genetic differences also play a role. In contrast in dysfunctional families, children can become frightened or angry. They can lash out or turn away from others. In steeling themselves against their own emotional pain, they become inured to the pain of others.The Developing MindWe don’t ordinarily think of ourselves this way, but each one of us is a complicated self-organizing system with self-organizing subsystems including the central nervous system… the seat of the mind. The development of a child’s brain depends upon communication between the minds of parent and child. It occurs through observation and interaction with more knowledgeable members of the culture throughout childhood. These connections involve an energetic resonance in which information flows freely. This learning process can be exhilarating for both child and adult.Stable mental images are formed in babies’ brains as they interact with their caregivers. A baby and mother recognize each other’s faces and smile, giving the baby a secure feeling. Babies form images of their parents’ bodies, personalities and behavior as their minds are shaped by their parents.A child learns to regulate emotional states in response to parental constraints. The orbitofrontal cortex in the brain operates like a clutch that disengages the sympathetic nervous system (the accelerator) and activates the parasympathetic system (the brakes). This part of the brain is especially sensitive to face-to-face communication.This is why eye-to-eye contact between parent and child helps set effective limits. The meaning of the word “no” is conveyed more clearly with eye contact than by shouting across a room. This is the basis for the parenting limit-setting maxim: “Use your feet instead of your mouth.”Learning that wishes are not automatically gratified and that one’s mind and a parent’s mind are separate helps a child learn self-control as well as modulate emotions and behavior in pro-social ways. The clash of separate minds and wills is essential to mental and social development.Self-generated play enriches personal growth and the capacity for enjoyment and creativity later. The world of symbolic meaning creates awareness that one has a subjective experience… a mind of one’s own. Creative imagination-stimulating pretending crystallizes a child’s ideas so that the ideas become thoughts that can be thought about. When children grasp the fact that minds are independent, they acquire their own minds. They expand their own creative imaginations.Then the insight dawns that the child is one among others. From this time on, a child can think about other people as individuals who have their own experiences. At this point, children enter society and culture. Young children who passively view television may well be less imaginative and empathic than those who engage in self-generated, creative play.Special Considerations in Father RelationshipsMost children enjoy affiliative and, to a lesser degree than with their mothers, succorant attachment bonding with fathers. Some receive inconsistent support while others are adversely affected by their father’s behavior. Still others lose their fathers early in life. Some children have high levels of involvement with males other than their genetic fathers like grandfathers and uncles.Fathers can provide emotional support to the mothers and participate in childcare whether they live with the mother or not. Fathers also can link children to their extended families and community resources. Fathers are more likely to engage children in physical and stimulating play while mothers tend to spend more time in verbal activities.Honoring Children’s RightsChildren have come a long way from when they were seen as miniature adults, and adolescence was not recognized as a developmental stage in life. We are evolving from a baseline of extreme prejudice and discrimination against children… especially against newborns, who still are murdered at parents’ discretion in some parts of the world. When children were regarded as property, they had no rights at all. Now they have moral and civil rights. Our society has taken decisive steps toward overcoming juvenile ageism.At the same time, the notion that babies need only feeding and diapering still prevails in popular thought and public policies. The facts that babies are interacting, learning human beings and that their development depends on enduring parental attachments are not fully appreciated.The development of the brain depends upon communication between the minds of parent and child. Babies internalize working models of their parents; in this way, their developing minds are shaped by their parents’ more mature minds and actions.Minors’ rights spring from human rights that specify the minimum standards of civilized behavior. They all hinge on the right to competent parents. Competent parenthood rests upon attachment bonds that promote self-respect, self-confidence and resiliency in both children and their parents. Although parental rights come from the Constitutional protection of the privacy of the family and individual liberty, they really are legal and physical custodial duties essential for the survival of our species and our nation. Parental rights deserve careful consideration.

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Mergers and Acquisitions Services: Finding the Best Mergers and Acquisitions Advisor

The services of mergers and acquisitions advisors are often engaged by business owners for a number of reasons. It could be that they need representation on their plans to sell their existing business or to acquire other companies. It could also be that they need assistance because they want to have a thorough evaluation of a company that they are planning to sell or acquire, they need capital for a business acquisition, or they want to perform business exit planning for the future of their company.Every time you engage professionals who render mergers and acquisitions services, you can utilize their services either on a short-term or long term basis. Mergers and Acquisitions Advisors are compensated based on a flat fee or contingent on the results of an assignment, sometimes referred to as a success fee. Sometimes it can be challenging to find M&A advisors with the right expertise, experience and trust who can best serve your person who can serve as your trusted advisor for your mergers and acquisitions needs. For this reason, you need to consider numerous things before hiring the best firm.First, you have to consider the firm’s expertise and experiences in handling similar cases. Prior to engagement, it will be helpful to get certain facts like the number of engagements they are currently handling, the number of projects they have completed in the recent years, and their success rates in relation to the cases they have handled. It will also be most helpful to ask them to provide you with a list references. This way, you can verify specific information and you can check if their previous clients were satisfied with their services.Next, you need to follow up on the expertise of the firm in providing successful merger and acquisition services. It is critical that they are thoroughly knowledgeable about the industry and the appraisal methods being used to evaluate specific businesses. Ask for personal meetings and ask relevant questions so you can gauge if they are really knowledgeable and can be considered as experts in this field. They should not only be able to answer your questions intelligently, they must also be articulate enough to provide explanations and answers that you will fully comprehend. The best service providers are also expected to do their due diligence before accepting a meeting with potential clients; they take the time to learn about your business and your industry so that they can provide the right inputs during your meeting.Mergers and acquisitions professionals can come from different industry backgrounds; they can be accountants, advisors, business consultants, lawyers, bankers, and entrepreneurs. The most important credential, though, is to have specialized knowledge in contract law, sales, business systems and principals, marketing, negotiation, accounting principles, and business valuation. To provide the best mergers and acquisitions services, it is a big plus if the individual M&A advisor and or firm posses professional certification and participates in ongoing education from reputable professional associations and organizations related to the M&A industry. Certified professionals are normally more knowledgeable and experienced. It is more to your advantage to obtain assistance from certified M&A advisors as they are well-versed in negotiating the sale of a business. Moreover, dealing with licensed and certified professionals means you can expect seamless processes and strategies that can bring about the best results. It means you can avoid going to the battlefield without a well-oiled strategy and battle plan; you are not likely to waste time and precious resources in the process.Lastly, you have to consider the character of the professionals that you will be working with. It is not enough that they are highly experienced and educated; you are working with someone whom you will choose to represent you in many important transactions so this means you have to ensure that you will be working with someone that you can trust and be comfortable with. Choose a M&A advisor and or firm who can professionally represent you and place your interests above everything else. Work with a likable person who can get along well with people and mediate effectively and who can also create a good impression with other parties.Consider all these factors before you make your final choice of a mergers and acquisitions service provider. Doing so will increase your chances of getting the best deal in your our mergers and acquisitions endeavors.

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Is empathy over blown and exaggerated?

American media makes a big deal of the human trait of empathy. We are reminded at every turn to always step in the shoes of our fellow people and look at the situation from their perspective. In fact, empathy is being kicked around so often in mass media that it runs the risk of being rendered meaningless. The more people repeat it, the more clueless people are about what it really means. It really is quite sad because empathy is necessary for emotional intelligence that directly affects the mind.

There are no two ways about it, this is an inescapable fact. If you want to become a more effective emotional person, and be in touch with your emotional intelligence and make it work for you, you have to know what empathy is and how to use it. Empathy means being able to look at any situation from the perspective of people in reacting with that situation. You may not necessarily like these people, and they may not have anything in common with you, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are able to step out of the crushing gravitational pull of your own ego and pride to step into their shoes.

As you can imagine, this requires a tremendous amount of reprogramming because that’s not how people wire themselves. Most of us look at the world in selfish terms. We think the world revolves around us. In fact, too many of us think that once we die, the world dies with us because we’re no longer there to witness what’s going on. You know that that’s a lie. You don’t have to be a philosophy major in college to understand the concept of absolute truth.

The world existed before you, it exists now and will continue to exist long after you’re gone. That’s reality. How does this play out in terms of logic? Well, if you see a cat, it doesn’t really matter if it has stripes or spots, or has many colors or only one. Once you understand the form of a cat, you know that cats exist. The same goes with the world. If you can understand the concept of reality, then you know that reality exists whether you’re there to observe it or not.

The problem is a lot of people assume that they are the center of their universe. This is why empathy merely gets lip service. It’s very hard for us to stay away from the gravitational pull of our pride and egos. You would rather imagine that everything turns around us. This is why it’s really important to master the art of empathy. Ironically enough, to become a more empathetic person, you must first become more emotionally self-aware. In other words, to be selfless, you must first become selfish and self-absorbed.

Examine yourself. Are the emotions that you’re feeling what you think they are? Are you able to effectively communicate these emotions in an objectively clear way? Once you have answered these and other fundamental questions, can you make serious progress when it comes to empathy?

Make no mistake, if you want to become a better leader, more sexually attractive to members of the opposite sex, become a persuasive person all around, and otherwise live a more fulfilling and effective life, empathy is part of the picture.

The good news is you only need to click the link below to get the information you need to maximize your emotional intelligence. It is something that you can improve as long as you choose to. Get your FREE Book an awesome blueprint so as to make emotional intelligence maximize your chances of success in all areas of life and experience the benefits of a healthy mind.

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Improving The State Of Your Mental Health Through Emotional Intelligence

Here’s why emotional intelligence is as crucial as IQ for personal success

For the longest time, there was the idea that people who make a big deal of emotional intelligence are simply low or mediocre IQ people. In the minds of a lot of people, those who make a big deal of their emotional skills and sociability are essentially compensating for the fact that they have a low or mediocre IQ. If only things were that simple.

The truth is, when you look at any organization, chances are high that the prime movers and shakers of that establishment are not at the top of the IQ chart for that organization. In fact, in many cases, the most progressive and successful organizations have CEOs that have IQs way below the smartest people in their organizations. The smart individuals, it turns out, are specialists. Either they work in the IT department, the planning department, or other areas, but when it comes to the actual operation of raw executive control of the organization, these individuals tend to have lower IQs.

What’s going on? You have to look at emotional intelligence. Success doesn’t just involve figuring out what to do. It doesn’t just turn on whether you know how to do things or not. Instead, a large part of success turns on whether you can really manage people who are often opposed to each other toward a common goal. You must be able to do this day after day, week after week, month after month. You must be able to scale this in the future and you must be able to communicate this clearly not only to your team members but also to people outside your team.

Interestingly enough, this skill set cannot be explained by IQ. This is where emotional intelligence comes in. Not only do you have self-aware to the point that you know what your feelings are, but you are able to communicate your feelings to others in such a way that you’ve become more persuasive and you are able to remind them about common goals. This is how you can tell whether a leader can motivate and inspire people around them to produce better and better results.

People with low emotional intelligence who are thrust into leadership positions often use fear, intimidation, or grotesque and cheap rewards to get what they need. Eventually, that gets old. That organization would stagnate if it doesn’t fall apart.

Emotional intelligence is crucial to any organization that is aiming for the fences. Make no mistake, if you’re trying to hit that home run, you need to be led by somebody who not only knows how to say the right things to the right people at the right time to produce the right results but also who is able to do this in many different contexts. That person must also be able to plan out the consequences of such emotional signals.

Understand the importance of emotional intelligence because if you want to be more successful in any area of your life, you need to confront this issue and you need to master emotional intelligence. It’s not as hard as you think. It is not complicated, it is not Greek, and it is not written in computer codes. You just have to know what you’re doing and what you’re dealing with.

Unfortunately, so many people think in habitual terms. They think that once they perceive certain things they can respond emotionally in a certain way. This is why they continue to struggle and don’t get the results that they otherwise have coming to them.

If you want to maximize your emotional intelligence, you need guidance. This FREE book “Improving The State Of Your Mental Health” The benefits of a healthy mind, will set you on the right path. Start with a blank slate. Start with what you know. Start with who you are.

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Why Having Good Oral Health Matters

Taking care of your teeth is an essential part of maintaining overall health and wellness. Not only do healthy teeth allow for proper chewing and digestion, but they also play a crucial role in preventing disease and infection.

One of the most important reasons to take care of your teeth is to prevent tooth decay and cavities. Tooth decay occurs when the enamel, or protective outer layer of the tooth, is damaged by bacteria and acid.

If left untreated, tooth decay can lead to cavities, which can cause pain and sensitivity, and may even require a costly filling or root canal. By brushing and flossing regularly, and visiting the dentist for regular check-ups and cleanings, you can help prevent tooth decay and keep your teeth healthy.

Another important reason to take care of your teeth is to prevent gum disease. Gum disease, also known as periodontal disease, is an infection of the gums that can lead to tooth loss and other serious health problems.

Symptoms of gum disease include red, swollen, and bleeding gums, as well as bad breath. Thankfully, brushing and flossing, as well as regular visits to the dentist, can also help to prevent gum disease and keep your gums healthy.

As a general rule, you should see your dentist every six months. During your dental appointment, your teeth and gums will be examined for any signs of problems that need to be treated before they get worse.

Better Teeth Mean A Better Quality Of Life

Taking care of your teeth also has a significant impact on your overall health. Studies have shown that poor oral health is linked to several chronic health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. In addition, poor oral health can also negatively impact your self-esteem and confidence, making it difficult to smile, speak, and interact with others.

Good oral health can even affect how successful you are professionally! People who smile more often are perceived as more competent and trustworthy than those who don’t smile often enough. So if you want to make a good impression on potential employers and clients – and improve their perception of your professionalism – make sure that your teeth look great and don’t hesitate to show them off.

So how can you take better care of your teeth? The first step is to establish a daily oral hygiene routine. This includes brushing your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, flossing once a day, and using an antiseptic mouthwash to kill bacteria and freshen your breath. It’s also important to limit sugary and acidic foods and drinks, which can cause tooth decay and erosion.

And as mentioned, another important step is to visit your dentist regularly. A dental professional can examine your teeth and gums, and provide any necessary treatments or recommendations to keep your mouth healthy. They can also help you identify potential problems early on, and take steps to prevent them from becoming more serious. This is important, as treating dental problems before they get worse can save you thousands of dollars in the long run!

In addition to daily oral hygiene and regular visits to the dentist, it’s also vital to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle. Eating a balanced diet that is high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and low in sugar and processed foods, can help keep your teeth and gums healthy. Furthermore, avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol consumption can also help to protect your oral health.

And make sure that you floss! The simple act of flossing may help to reduce the risk of heart disease. This is because flossing helps to remove plaque from your teeth and gums, which can lead to inflammation and gum disease. The inflammation can then cause a buildup of fatty deposits in your arteries, leading to blocked blood flow – and eventually a heart attack or stroke.

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Buy Phentermine online | Omega-Medstore

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Buy Phentermine, it Hcl is a generic prescription appetite suppressant to help patients lose weight. Phentermine Hcl is intended to help the patient eat less food while changing their food choices, modifying their behavior, and exercising more.

However, not all painkillers for sale are of the same quality. Unfortunately, there are a lot of counterfeits that are sold on the web these days. That is why we recommend you to cooperate with the trustworthy suppliers that provide an excellent price-quality ratio, not aiming to fool you. Painkiller World is the store where you’re meant to be if you care about your health and wallet. We carefully select the manufacturers to cooperate with and test all our products before offering them to you. So, if you want nothing but the best pain meds to keep your acute sensations at bay, you have come to the right place.

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Interpersonal Communication – An Effective Delegation Management Skill for Increased Performance

There are many different management styles and manager personality characteristics. All can be appropriate or inappropriate based on a number of factors such as:
Type of business
Responsibilities
Size and make up of business unit
Goals and Objectives
It may be that in a high-stress and mission critical situation, a more autocratic style might be appropriate (think military battle situation). At other times, a much more team-oriented style would be better (think a business unit where collaboration is key). In most business settings, a manager gets promoted to a leadership position based on performance, seniority, and other factors unrelated to “style of management.”So if management style is somewhat a given person-by-person and a manager is put in a position of responsibility to lead a business unit regardless of “style”, what can be done to improve performance? The answer is that every manager needs to get better at certain core skills regardless of their style, or sometimes in spite of their style. One such skill to explore is “interpersonal” management.”Interpersonal management skills represent a more collaborative style in leading the business unit. A manager may find times when the project or problem requires a more collaborative approach and interpersonal skills would boost results. What are some of the basic characteristics of “interpersonal” management?
Encourage participation in developing projects and solutions and sharing of ideas.
The manager shares all information relevant to the task at hand.
Power and authority are delegated, where appropriate, to carry out specific tasks and assignments.
Managers support and encourage “team-work” in planning and executing the assignment.
These basic approaches to fostering interpersonal management are not particularly difficult to employ when the situation requires. The problem is that most managers, particularly male managers according to many studies, come to the table with a more “authoritative” style or mind-set. It is the common “command and control” style that does not include much interpersonal/collaborative interaction. Certainly, the more directive and authority driven styles can be productive and have their place. The challenge to productivity and execution by managers who naturally employ this style is those situations where collaboration is needed to carryout a project.The key here is “recognition.” The top managers will realize when a situation, problem or project is such that “interpersonal” skills will be needed to foster the teamwork and collaboration needed for a particular assignment or project. These managers think-through what the assignment will require as part of the pre-project planning and review process. When they conclude that business unit or team collaboration will be the winning approach, they deliberately modify their management style to integrate more interpersonal skills into their management.It is a thoughtful and deliberate application of style modification. This is a hallmark of very effective leadership and it is called Versatility. Managers who can adopt a different style to fit the circumstances at hand are showing the versatility to match the situation. It can be a winning formula.

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Strategic Marketing Using Digital Channels The Right Way

If you are looking to implement marketing from a strategic perspective in your company or business endeavour by making use of digital channels then it may well serve you to seek out some advice first. That’s some of what we set out to do here as we look to highlight some of the ins and outs of executing marketing in the digital age. There is more to digital marketing that ordinarily meets the eye as found in our consulting, devising and executing search engine and social media marketing campaigns.When a company is looking to [via its marketing personnel or use of third party agencies] market its products and services use the available digital marketing channels such as…
Video Marketing
Email Marketing
Search Engine Marketing
Podcasting
Blogging
Social Media Marketing
Micro Blogging
… all of the activities will need to be carried out via specific digital marketing channels with a view to getting engagement from chosen target market sector clients.As an example of the statement made above; the decision could be made to use the social media marketing and to connect with clients using an associated advertising platform through which to serve up ads. Going through the process of crafting and executing specific ads necessitates that one understands who the target audience is that the business is concerned with so that time is not wasted running ads that will be ultimately shown up to people that are not interested in the related products or services that the company has to offer. Going through the targeting process will determine where one’s audience ‘hangs out’ so that when the message is seen it is relatively easier to consume [or be interacted with].When running ads within the social media marketing channel alongside that of publishing engaging and compelling content, connect, following and republishing others content. It is important to make sure that the ads are in fact related to target clients likes, interests and aspirations as this will affect click through rate, engagement and other factors that lead to the actual cost of running the ad itself.The content aspect of digital marketing is indeed a critical and foundational one as one piece of content can effectively be repurposed for use in various formats and on differing platforms and digital marketing channels. E.g. a well written article can be used as a blog post, then used as the basis for a podcast, this same piece of content can be developed into a video and then used to create multiple micro blogging content pieces. Each piece of content should be used within planned digital marketing channels in order to deliver the marketing message through to the intended market segments.With the world in which we live in becoming increasingly technology enabled; this is continuing to open up opportunities for marketers and business owners to present their message to clients found the world over. However it is important to execute correctly and to start with the right messages, next the most appropriate digital marketing channel [some of which are listed above] are used in order to put the marketing message in front of the right audience. In other words a targeted approach should used as opposed to a shotgun spray and hope approach.At the end of the day digital marketing is still a subset of marketing and it itself has its own set of sub digital marketing channels. The strategic digital marketing approach is strongly recommended as when adhered to and the results start coming in, one will understand why it’s important to continue to adopt this approach to business promotion.

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Different Types of Direct Marketing Lists

Direct marketing delivers your marketing message directly to a group consumers or businesses on a personalized level (such as a telephone call or via a personal email message). It’s a form of marketing that provides the recipient with a direct call to action. The following are the three main types of direct marketing.Mailing Lists
Direct mail is one of the most common forms of direct marketing and an essential part of an integrated marketing campaign. Companies promote their products and services with a provocative mailer. Direct mail campaigns provide your prospects with a tangible piece of mail to read at their leisure. Direct mail campaigns are extremely effective and when they are personalized and customized to a specific target audience can have great response rates.Telemarketing Lists
Telemarketing is the process of calling prospects on the phone to promote your products or services. This can be done using your own sales staff or by subcontracting out to a call center. Telemarketing is vital in creating brand recognition, building customer relationships, nurturing leads and of course, closing sales.Even with its bad reputation, telemarketing still plays an important part of any direct marketing campaign. Telemarketing is personal and interactive, and capable of providing an immediate response. As effective as telemarketing is, you need to be sensitive to your prospects’ willingness to receiving unsolicited phone calls.Telemarketing campaigns work best when the telemarketing lists are highly targeted, with accurate data that matches your current customer’s profiles.Email Lists
Email marketing is an effective way of reaching out to new prospects or following up with existing customers. Email marketing is extremely versatile, and you can easily customize your marketing messages to various market segments, or for prospects in different stages of the sales funnel.Email marketing can be used to nurture customer relationships, provide company and product information, drive website traffic and to promote direct sales. The emails can be as elaborate or as simple as needed.Most people check their emails on a daily basis, making email a very effective marketing method for your business. However, email marketing should be used responsibly, and it is extremely important to have your customers’ consent before sending emails.The most successful direct marketing campaign will use a mix of marketing methods. Repetition is very important in any type of marketing efforts. The more you can get yourself out in front of prospects, the greater the chance of being remembered. Try a direct mail campaign with a telemarketing follow-up or an email blast in conjunction with a direct mail campaign. A Multi-Channel campaign also allows your prospects multiple ways to communicate back to you.Regardless of the method, the key aspect in any direct marketing campaign is the ability to target the marketing message to a specific audience. With properly defined target market, you can deliver your message directly to those who have a greater probability of purchasing from your business. This allows businesses of all sizes focus their marketing budget and resources where they’re most likely to get results.It’s very important, before starting any direct marketing campaign, that you understand the different regulations governing each method of communication. The responsibility is yours to make sure you are compliant. Legitimate list brokers and managers should be able to confirm that the lists they are providing comply to the various rules and regulations. If you are uncertain, do not hesitate to ask.

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Short, Intermediate, And Longer – Term Impacts On Home Sales, When Rates Rise!

For many reasons, some, economic, while others, related to the pandemic – related, so – called, fatigue, etc, home prices, in most areas, have gone up, at, or, near, record amounts! Because of the prolonged period of artificially – created, low – interest rates, mortgage rates, have been at historic lows! Since, for most home buyers, using financing is essential to affording a purchase, when a low rate, causes cheap money, and, thus, the ability to afford more home – for – the – buck, prices usually rise! It permits qualified buyers to qualify for more money/ loan, because the ratio of monthly mortgage, to overall income, is artificially – reduced! How long will this trend continue, will it become the new – normal, will previous trends/ cycles return, and how will pricing be affected, in the immediate, intermediate, and longer – run, are, all factors, to consider! With, that in mind, this article will attempt to, briefly, consider, examine, review, and discuss, some possibilities, to consider, and understand.

1. Short – term: Since, the Federal Reserve Bank, announced, they planned to raise rates, three times in 2022 (of course, this was before the potential implications, and ramifications, from the Omicron variant), many feel pressure, to act quickly, to take advantage of today’s low rates, before they go up! Three increases will probably translate to, at least, a 0.75% higher rate, which will translate, for most mortgages, to hundreds of extra dollars, per month. Some things to consider, and pay attention to, is, this rate of increased home prices, will, probably, not continue, especially, at such a large degree! How longer one, expects to keep a specific house, is, one issue, to consider, thoroughly, and wisely, before proceeding!

2. Intermediate – term: Although, many believe, to – know, the precise timing of any projected rate – hike, is uncertain! The Fed has changed, and/ or, altered its strategies and approaches, in the past, What the intermediate – term, may bring, including potential inflationary pressures, how long the economic conditions, and unknown factors, related to the pandemic, etc, will determine, largely, what this phase, may bring! In addition, the attitude, and perceptions of buyers, and their confidence, etc, largely impact this real estate market!

3. Longer – term: In the longer – run, will things, restore, to what we have seen, so often, in the past, which is, alternating cycles, between, Sellers, Buyers, and Neutral Markets? The possibilities, include: a continued large escalation; a more – gradual, but persistent – one; some leveling; and/ or, will we see, at least, in certain areas, some sort of falling prices, for a period.

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