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The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 44: Child Welfare:
Abuse and Nurturing:
March 31, 2003:
In previous essays I discussed child abuse and by implication
child nurturing. Now I will reiterate the main point of nurturing.
That is about preventing abuse. The first thing we must do is
recognize that there is widespread abuse in our culture. It is
the most debilitating thing we do to ourselves. It does more long
term damage than any war we have ever fought. It is widespread.
I do not know a single adult who was not abused when they were
a child. Most of us are not even aware of it. We don't see it
as abuse because it is the norm.
Thoughtful sensitive people who listen to their friends will realize that some of the stories they hear are about being abused. What we will often also notice is the children of these people are being abused in turn. Too often, it is a cycle. Once we recognize abuse we must act to prevent it. I will get to some of the how of that in a bit.
For sure, interrupting abuse is only the first step in nurturing. Beyond that, the most important thing we can do is give the child positive reenforcement. There are many forms this can take. One easy way is to complement the young person. I have often said, when talking to you daughter about your daughter, you cannot use the word beautiful too many times. Smart is another powerful word. We must remember how powerful we are. The child will strive to make whatever we say come true, good or bad.
Another thing we can do is encourage the child's natural curiosity. Children are curious as all get out. That is why they so often annoy us by getting into things we think they ought not to and even into dangerous things. Sometimes we are even tempted to punish them for this behavior. It is much better to interact with the youngster. Try to find out what they were trying to do or learn and act to satisfy the need in a safe way. The curiosity does need to be directed for everyone's benefit.
A good way to direct a kid's curiosity is to read to them. Take the kids to the library and let them pick out books from the children's section. Then come home and spend some time reading to them. You may also have a computer and an internet connection. If you have children, you really should. If so, you can sit beside them while they explore and learn. For this, adult supervision is imperative. There is much that's good about the internet. Like all the rest of the world, however, there is also a large helping of evil.
All of this child nurturing and support is a function and responsibility of the home. The schools cannot be held responsible for the basic nurturing of children. They can only reenforce or negate what has already occurred. If they get a kid who has been positively nurtured, they can easily reenforce that. The kid will blossom in school. If, however, they get a kid who has been abused, they can try to overcome it, but they will have limited resources to apply. The school is responsible for a large number of children. They cannot give largely disproportional attention to a handful and ignore the others.
I suspect by now, there is an undercurrent of grumbles in my readers of the form, how much time do you think I have? I love my kid, but I have other things to do. This will come up again and again so let's look at it. This is the most important point. Your child was not born by accident. Your child was born because you took positive action to participate in the creation of life. When you did that you created a responsibility and you forfeited some rights.
Children are very vulnerable dependants who desperately need love and support. They have an absolute right to that. You have an absolute responsibility to provide it. Your community has a right to expect that of you. Get it straight. The kids have rights. The parents have responsibilities. Until those responsibilities are met, the parents have no rights. Any rights you thought you had were forfeited in the passion of procreation. I will get even more adamant about this when we get to education.
As parents, we have a responsibility to nurture our own children in every way possible. For sure, we should avoid any hint of abuse and interrupt it in ourselves. For most of us, who are not completely self actualized, this requires some attention to what we are dong and thinking. Beyond that, we have a community responsibility to watch for abuse in others. When it occurs we must act to interrupt it.
Sure! And how do we do that without getting punched out by an irate redneck parent? I agree, it is a delicate thing. For one thing, when we interfere to protect someone, we may only be setting them up for later abuse. If we frustrate an abusive person, even if we succeed, they may simply get later revenge on the kid when we are not there. We could do more harm than good.
That is a more extreme case. Let's leave it for a bit. In the less extreme cases we will often find kids who are getting verbally abused or put down. One way to interrupt that is to contradict it. If someone says a kid is dumb, we can notice something about the kid to praise. "Hey, that was a smart move young man," or "Boy! How did you figure that out?"
We need not make things up. If we are thoughtful, we can always find something to praise and reenforce in a youngster. By praising the child of someone who has just put them down, you not only pull their teeth, you may cause them to think about what they are doing. Unless they are a complete lout, they will notice the difference in the kids response to what you did and what they did.
For sure, sometimes the abuse is more than verbal. Sometimes it is physical. In these extreme cases we must take the kids out of the abusive environment. We cannot allow physical abuse at all. We must act to protect children at all costs. We must intervene quickly to take children from abusive adults and keep them away. The do-gooders have had their day and failed. Too many children are getting tortured, beat up, and murdered. That must stop.
It is time to provide a permanent solution for these kids. It is time for the community to provide permanent homes for abused children. The abominable practice of returning children to abusive environments has failed. Most often the abuse not only continues, but gets worse. For the abusive parent it becomes a form of revenge on the system.
Foster care is a sound ideas, but there are not enough providers. Also, the system disqualifies too many providers for what amounts to political reasons. Adoption is another sound partial solution that could work better, but for politics. Another solution that was tried and failed long ago is permanent community run homes for these children.
I'm sure this will cause some gasps and raised eyebrows. However, there is nothing wrong with what were once called orphanages. They have a bad rap because of the behavior of some evil people decades ago, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept. Too often these places in the past were badly run by dishonest mean spirited people. That need not be the case.
The idea is, we need to protect kids from abuse until we as a people outgrow the cycle of abuse. That will take a few generations. In the meantime, we need permanent solutions. Community run homes is a solution. I will argue that kids should be together. The more kids the better so long as the environment is supportive and safe. Together they will teach and learn from each other.
I know I am talking about a large cost to the community, but we must make that investment. What we are doing now does not work. The cycle of abuse goes on and on and gets worse with each generation. We are producing way too many sociopaths, psychopaths, and criminals of all kinds. If you want to discuss cost, let's discuss the cost of dysfunctional and criminal adults to our communities.
Every community I know about has a prison problem and a law enforcement problem. We cannot build prisons fast enough. We cannot put enough cops on the streets. Every prison I know about is releasing convicted felons because they have no room for them. These people are being turned back on the community. Why not consider the cost of that? That cost is not a separate issue. It is a direct outcome of how we treat our children. Put it in a scientific statement if you wish. The level of criminal activity in a culture is directly proportional to the level of child abuse in that culture.
It's true the near term cost of caring for our kids will be very high. The ultimate cost of not caring for them will be disastrous. It should be clear that we are in a downward spiral. Only a fool could notice the daily news and still deny that. I will submit that caring for our kids is the first and largest step we can take toward reversing that decline. Our culture needs creative, dynamic adults to make it work. We cannot afford the dysfunctional adults that result from child abuse.
I have not finished with this theme. I will continue next time.
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