EMF/RF/5G – ‘Balance’ is Every Child’s Birthright

By Patricia Burke of Safe Tech International

Top Image by Jyotirmay Datta Chaudhuri from Pixabay

The calendar is holding in between the observance of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in the U.S.

I am thinking about the tremendous stress faced by parents and children in the age of tech, and also remembering stories I’ve heard about Ray Sr. and Ray Jr. – an institution in the world of bike repair.

Ray and Sons is an American ‘mom and pop’ store. When Ray Sr. and his family emigrated from Italy, the neighborhood was filled with small family businesses. Before the store sold and serviced bikes, it had apparently been a television and appliance store, and I think before that a food market.

Ray (Jr.), who is now in his 60s, tells the tale about the family traveling to another city to pick up the bike they bought for him when he was a kid. The service at the store was terrible – back when “service” meant how the staff treated the customers, and not how fast the cellphone connection is.

When they returned home from retrieving the bike, Ray Sr. looked at his wife, took a long drag on his cigarette, and said, “Rose, we’re going into the bicycle business.” They opened in 1969. That was the start of the boys learning how to fix and to sell bikes. In its heyday a band of men worked together in the back room, assembling mountains of new bikes and fixing flat tires nonstop.  

My friend Ray inherited the business when his father passed. Neighbors stop by through-out the day, because, like the sitcom “Cheers, where everybody knows your name” the store is an institution, and so is Ray.

Post-Pandemic

When the pandemic was winding down, Ray was faced with two simultaneous challenges.

#1- In order to protect their health, most of his staff members were not yet ready to return to the store, including his beloved elderly mother who would sometimes answer the phone.

#2 Due to the pandemic, there were very few new bicycles available, and many individuals were pulling old bikes out of the garage that needed tune-ups, repairs, and parts that were not available.

Parts Girl

These factors contributed to my becoming Ray’s “parts girl” for a few months. I loved helping out. All I could really do was unpack the bike helmets, tires, mirrors and other parts when they arrived, and sweep the floor, which I loved to do, and answer the phone.  But callers really wanted to talk to Ray.

Customers whose parents bought bikes for them when they were four years old came back with their own children, seeking another bike for another generation. Ray remembered them. He taught parents how to teach their kids to ride, and he knew the best places to do it. (hint: a dirt road)

New bikes received a bike blessing. When a child reached the point when they no longer needed training wheels, Ray performed an elaborate celebration ritual, which was adorable. I believe that an ice cream cone was once involved, but due to inflation, a one-dollar bill later became the award of choice. One girl once scoffed and demanded ’10 bucks’. We were stunned.

Italian music played in the background on the radio all day long, and half the town brought Chianti when it was Ray’s birthday, providing him with another year’s supply.

Mastery vs. High Tech

Ray had all the knowledge about the bikes and parts in his head…there is no computer in the store. He and the customers occasionally sit at the counter and pour through 3-inch wide, heavy, beat-up parts catalogues when needed.

But most times Ray had a ‘junker bike’ on the premises where he could harvest the right component- for pennies on the dollar. He is part technician part magician. No one minded the time spent in the store. It is a temple, in its own right, operating outside of time and space. Alchemy often unfolded.  

I loved contributing in some small way to the mastery of the place. There are shamans everywhere who heal things in real time with their hands, fixing broken cars and washing machines, mending clothes, farming, making delicious food.

I feel a deep kinship with these individuals.

Repairing valued objects is about bringing things back to life.

Life is About Balance

As much I loved the store, I was aware of the stress in parents, and the lack of well-being in the kids, some handicapped, many overweight, some with behavioral issues, all holding phones…and older kids who had never learned how to ride a bike.

One day, a woman came into the store with her sixteen-year-old son, excitedly looking for a bike for him so that they could ride together. He was a seemingly quiet kid, and very attentive.

Ray pulled out a bike to measure the right fit for the frame, cracking jokes with the mom as the son straddled the bike….

and as the teen stood on one leg to mount the seat, I saw what was going to happen-

He could not balance. He was about to topple over the other side the bike and knock a row of 20 bikes onto the floor, followed by displays and God only knows what else.

Somehow, I was able to take a giant leap and grab him before disaster struck. Ray and I both assured him that riders figure out which side they like to use to mount and dismount, and not to worry.

This scenario can’t be blamed on developmental delays caused by the pandemic. It has been unfolding for much longer than a few years.

Parenting via Unrestrained Tech is ‘Unbalancing’

In a more embodied epoch, not driven by competition, we could be cultivating strength, balance, and grounding on both sides of the body and in both hemispheres of the brain, throughout the age span.

Children learn through unstructured play. Sages mindfully practiced Tai Chi, Chi Gong, Yoga, and other disciplined energy practices. We have neither.

Image by tookapic from Pixabay

Many of our fitness approaches, from weight machines to jumping jacks, are homolateral, and do not cultivate the cross-over pattern that relates to the connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain and the corpus callosum. We have unknowingly abdicated many of our human capacities and relationships to unbalanced devices.

Ray and I spoke about the fact that lack of activity and screens have diminished the physicality of generations of kids.

Ray also listened respectfully when I spoke about issues with cell towers, cell phones, and radiation health issues, including relentless tinnitus, which is actually microwave hearing. (see: Microwave News | Auditory Effects of Microwave Radiation)

He never questioned my concerns about device use, wireless exposures. and brain function. This is not always my experience. His openness was a refuge.

Writing by Hand vs. Typing

A recent study explored writing by hand vs. keystrokes. NPR reported, Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning, In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material. “There’s actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand,” says Ramesh Balasubramaniam, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. “It has important cognitive benefits.” A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting’s power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page. Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples. This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.  Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/05/11/1250529661/handwriting-cursive-typing-schools-learning-brain

Self-mastery is much more extensive than calling on the different parts of the brain to work together via handwriting instead of keyboards.

Decades ago, the originators of Brain Gym recognized “the often overlooked physical components of learning — visual, auditory, motor, and stress management skills so that people can reach their peak performance for life’s most important moments.” Many learning challenges can be addressed via whole body movement that activates the specific sections of the brain, as opposed to medications like those in active use for growing numbers of ADHD diagnoses (1 in 9 children).

Enabling children to self-actualize also requires protecting them from addictive consumer paradigms, including social media and cellphones which act as a dopamine delivery device, altering brain chemistry.

Kids can go outside, again, without being tracked, playing, peeling around the neighborhood in gangs, like Ray and his friends and their bike banana seats, and falling asleep at the end of day naturally, because their muscles and their bodies are physically tired.

Neighborhood watch and safety is not the equivalent of a camera; it is the presence and awareness of everyone who loves kids.

“The cure may be as simple as opening our back doors.”

Melanie Hempe at Be Screen Strong on Substack recently published a post “A Prescription to Heal a Screen-based Childhood” about observations she made while visiting a school prior to a speaking engagement.

“Down the hallway, there were art projects strangely different from those we still have hanging in our kitchen. Very few were made by hand. Instead, most were photos printed from a digital printer, sloppily cut out, and pasted on poster boards.  “Kids do “digital art” these days. They love the computer“ Kathy explained.

As I continued through the building, I asked about the strange “dirt” line along the entire length of the main hallway at waist level. Kathy explained: “When the children walk in single file, they extend their arms to touch the wall so they can get their bearings and not fall over. Their physical balance is off because their core is weak; they are not experiencing enough recess or physical play outside of school.” 

 I headed to the auditorium, a little distracted to deliver my talk. What I saw in that hallway was disturbing. Was this the norm now, or was this just this school?

I began to unravel this elementary school mystery the next day when I called my friend, Cris Rowan, a pediatric occupational therapist. Cris was not surprised by my description of what I saw. She explained that the average child spends more time on a screen than asleep. They aren’t getting enough time to move and play to build core muscles, hurting their learning ability. Simply put, kids aren’t spending enough time outside experiencing the push and pull of nature. They are experiencing what Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, calls a nature deficit disorder.”

Please read Melanie’s post, and insights from Cris here.  

In the introduction to her work Melanie at Be Screen Strong wrote “I am a medical professional and mom of four children who accidentally raised a video game addict. When our oldest son dropped out of college due to his gaming addiction, I put my nursing degree from Emory University to good use and met with as many medical professionals as I could to learn about childhood screen addictions, including addictions to video games and smartphones.  Our experience with our oldest son, combined with what I learned about the effects of screen overuse on teenagers’ physical and emotional development, caused us to implement changes in our household. We wanted to ensure that our three younger children detoured around screen-related problems and flourished with life skills, healthy hobbies, and stronger family connections. We discovered that it is possible to raise teens without allowing video games, smartphones, and social media to be an essential part of their daily routines.” 

Re-claiming What Was Once Lost

Decision-makers have not addressed foundational concerns about children and tech.

Can the societal pressure that is now directed towards device use and its synthetic, disembodied, and addictive nature, especially for children, be redirected, by consumers?

It is human nature to want to ignore gnawing discomfort, -to dissociate or distract, and device use enables countless options for not paying attention to what is in front of us.

Please let unease and awareness move you enough to become an active part of the growing pushback against unexamined tech, especially for kids. 

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” – Rumi  

What has been inflicted on younger generations and nature in the relentless pursuit of disjointed, faster, more ubiquitous connectivity, – at the expense of so many human capacities, – is not love.