Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • 19

Thursday, July 27, 1978 ometimes parents need a little help Warm Line is available to parents who need advice from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Call 487-2930 to speak with a counselor about child-raising problems. ij I I'J 1 By DAVID KLEIN Democrat staff writer Frustrated Tallahassee parents are no more than a phone call away from trained counseling on raising their children.

Are you getting a divorce and don't know how to break the news to your three-year-old? Dial 487-2930 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and a trained counselor for "Warm Line" will advise you to explain the situation to the youngster just as you would explain it to an older child. "Tell the child that mother and father don't love each other any more but they both love YOU," answered Mrs. Shirley Krishef, coordinator of Warm Line's eight counselors. Such advice comes only after a lengthy conversation between parent and counselor, a probing talk which sometimes lasts for half an hour.

Warm Line is NOT a "hot-line" type of crisis counseling service, said program director Bonnie Syfrett emphatically. Instead, it simply is a place for parents to turn for answers and advice. Counseling by phone allows easy access to child-care information for mothers stuck at home without a car, Ms. Syfrett said. Half of the 90 calls received since Warm Line opened its phone lines in April have dealt with children younger than six.

The rest were evenly divided between teen-agers and children between ages six and 12. The problem of bedwetting accounts for one-third of all the calls fielded by counselors. No other single problem is posed anywhere near that often. For example, Ms. Syfrett said, one mother was worried because her 3-year-old daughter, already toilet-trained, forgot her training after a baby sister was born.

The Warm Line counselor advised the mother not to scold the girl, or to give her undue attention. Within a week the little girl had mended her ways. "There was no payoff for wetting her pants once Mommy stopped fussing at her," Ms. Syfrett explained. "She just wanted the same attention the new baby was getting." Only five similar parent-counseling telephone services exist in the United States.

THE TALLAHASSEE PROGRAM, patterned after a $50,000 Warm Line project in Los Angeles, began in April under the auspices of the Apalachee Community Mental Health Service. Ms. Syfrett, a full-time Mental Health Service counselor, is the only paid employee; her time plus the cost of publicity brochures makes up the entire Warm Line budget. "The budget comes to only a couple of thousand dollars," Ms. Syfrett said.

"We're really operating on a shoestring." Ms. Syfrett is the only paid Warm Line counselor; the others are all community volunteers. In April, 16 volunteers many of them students earning college credits answered up to 30 calls a month. Now, in the midst of the summer doldrums, with students out of school and families on vacation, eight counselors answer as few as four calls a week. These days the volunteers spend more time reading, studying or knitting than they spend dispensing advice.

But Ms. Syfrett expects the counseling business to pick up again after Labor Day. Warm Line counselors are trained in eight two-hour sessions dealing with child development, child management, the problem of bed-wetting (a whole session for this), and special sessions on how to counsel over the phone. Parents are invited to bring their problems to the training program so the counselors can train with real-life situations. Many of the counselors already have academic or real-life experience in child-care and child development.

And in their office at the First Presbyterian Church Education Building, they have access to a variety of child-care textbooks and to a card file index listing common parental concerns. For many problems, the first advice a counselor gives a parent is to take the child to a doctor for a check-up. Parents who complain their kids are hyperactive, unusually depressed or frequent bedwetters are all in this category. Beyond that, the counselors may give straight advice; or they may recommend books for the parent to read; or they may refer the parent to a different counseling organization. "HERE'S A CASE," explained Ms.

Syfrett, "where the woman's 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter cried every morning before going to nursery school." The counselor's advice to the 35-year-old mother: Enroll in a Parent Effectiveness Training course; Read the book "Living with Children" by Gerald Patterson; Don't reinforce the girl's crying in other words, ignore it. This last is an oft-repeated bit of advice when it comes to child-care counseling. Take a young boy who throws constant temper tantrums, for example. "He's getting a payoff when someboy's looking at him or paying attention to him," Ms. Syfrett said.

Part of the solution, then after the child has been checked by a doctor for physical causes is simply to ignore the tantrum by sending the child to his room, Ms. Syfrett explained. Don't reinforce his behavior. Sam Wesmroolr There's a telephone service to help frustrated Tallahassee parents Warm Line counselors will recommend how to handle common problems Walkers of the world, your time is coming Who most influenced the course of history? a Hartung -in- cheek Ron Hartung bella I of Spain (No. 68) and Queen Elizabeth I of England (No.

95). "IN ORDER TO BE extremely influential, one needs both a lot of talent and ability and also the opportunity to exercise these talents," he explained, "and I think we all know that throughout history women have sort of been denied this opportunity. "I rather suspect that if someone were to write a similar book a century from now, there would be considerably more women on the list than there are on mine." Isaac Newton is No. 2 and Adolph Hitler is No. 35 on the list, which includes some less familiar names, such as Ts'ai Lun, No.

7, the inventor of paper, and Gre-gor Pincus, No. 81, the man principally responsible for the development of the birth control pill. Hart said he chose Muhammad as No. 1 not only because he was the founder of a major world religion, but also because he unified the Arab tribes tribes that made enormous conquests stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of Persia. And most of these conquests have endured to the present.

"If Muhammad had not founded Islam, I really doubt that anybody would have, and he therefore changed history in a really marked sense of the world. In the pro-foundest sense of the word, he was a maker of history," added Hart. The author does research in astronomy at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, and is a visiting professor at the University of Maryland. "The 100" is published by Hart Publishing Co. By CAROL DEEGAN Associated Press NEW YORK Who is the most influential person in history? Muhammad, says Michael Hart, who lists the prophet of Islam as his No.

1 choice in his book, "The 100, a Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History." He decided to write the book after a friend challenged him to compile a list of the greatest persons in history. The book took three years to research. "I decided on a list of those persons who have had the greatest effect on the course of history, and upon the everyday lives of individual human beings," said Hart, an astronomer, lawyer and chess master. It is not a list of the 100 greatest persons in the world since "neither fame, nor talent nor nobility of character is the same as influence," he pointed out. Thus, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr.

and Babe Ruth are omitted. "It's my list drawn from my own research and my own criteria," he said. "I don't expect anyone to agree with my exact ranking or my specific selections." For example, he noted, many people have suggested that Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gandhi should have been included. "Roosevelt surely would be in my second 100, probably in the next 10 if I had extended the list a bit further," Hart said.

"Gandhi and Lincoln I wrote brief articles about in the honorable mentions, explaining why I had not included them in the book, although they are quite interesting choices and men I do admire a lot." Only two women are listed: Queen Isa Tell people you're a driver and they'll ask to see your car. Tell them you're a runner and they'll ask to see your shoes. Tell them you're a walker and they'll ask to see your identification. People don't trust people who walk. Like seersucker suits and Durward Kirby fan clubs, walking seems to have fallen out of fashion.

Perhaps it's the simplicity that makes it so unappealing to so many. After all, it requires no special equipment. No blue light flashes above a special section of K-Mart advertising great buys in walking supplies. No Democrat columnist keeps us up-to-date on the wonderful world of walking, as columnists do on running, driving, bowling and divot-digging. Face it: Unless you're about 1 year old, no one is likely to be excited about even your finest heel-toe-heel-toe.

Driving is macho excitement, running is the way to Truth, but walking is only outmoded transportation. Most people walk only when necessary. At work, for example, they walk because their cars are too large to take inside and their running shoes clash with their business clothes. These are the people who swear that if the Lord had intended for us to walk more often, he would have cast the blueprints for the bucket seat into the fiery lake along with Beelzebub. Such a shame.

Driving is fine for distances, and running is unbeatable recreation. But just for your everyday travels from Point A to Point what can be so swell as a stroll? And it's so nice to pull into a gas station and fill yourself up with only 30 cents for the pop machine. But be prepared for harassment if you take to the sidewalks. You'll be different. Everyone else on the streets will be wrapped in steel and glass.

You'll be naked. Motorists squinting sternly through their windshields will see you as a potential hitchhiker, escaped Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln share the distinction of being omitted from Michael Hart's list of the 100 most influential people in history. convict or office seeker in the tradition of "Walkin' Lawton" Chiles all of whom are better left alone. You'll be able to read the message in their eyes: "Make something of yourself.

Get a car." Your friends will chuckle when you refuse their offers of swift, smooth transportation as they might chuckle at a young savage determined to wrestle a python to prove his manhood. "Well, if you're sure you know what you're doing," they'll snicker. First they can't understand why you want to shed precious beads of sweat in so ignoble a cause. After all, when you run you can sweat, gain a little prestige and wear a spiffy outfit to boot. Not only are they mystified about the WHY of walking, but they apparently aren't too clear on the HOW either.

The head of the president's crack team of physical fitness experts reportedly is alarmed that otherwise wholesome citizens (shudder) don't know how to walk properly. Walking is so obsolete, in fact, that even the federal government is planning a campaign to get decent Americans hoofing it again. The idea seems to be primarily to offer the elderly an alternative to years of Monty Hall and unexercised muscles. The expert's pithy observation: "Most of the time the best way to learn walking is by walking." Who knows? This walking jazz might catch on. And seersucker suits (heel-toe-heel-toe) might be in this fall.

"TJ Franklin D. Roosevelt does not appear on the list of 100, but Hart says the long-time president probably would have the top 110. You thought it couldn't be done And don't worry if you're squeamish about picking up a dead mouse. With this trap you never have to touch the critter; you simply shake him out of the tube into the nearest trash container. The Electric Mouse Trap will be in retail stores, as well as the Montgomery Ward and other catalogues, by fall.

The trap will sell for about $10. An Electric Rat Trap also will be available for about $20. If you thought they couldn't build a better mousetrap, think again. A North Chicago company, Hall Industries thinks it has a better one with its new "Electric Mouse Trap." The cylindrical-shaped, plug-in unit shocks a mouse to death before you can say "Eek!" Inside the tube is a pellet that smells like peanut butter to lure the mouse. I.