Social Entrepreneurs, Promote What Works for Children!

The annual State of America’s Children research report from the Children’s Defense Fund tells us that our children are not doing well in health, education, and emotional development.   Child advocates are frustrated, because decades of research tell us how to prevent unacceptably high rates of poor outcomes for children. We are making more progress right now in Malawi than in Miami!

Let’s focus on solutions – and do what works.

·       Feed all pregnant women with nutritious diets.  The WIC program helps ensure a healthy pregnancy by getting high-quality protein and other foods to women in the first 4 months of pregnancy, when crucial brain development is occurring. And don’t include income criteria on WIC.  By the time you figure out if mom’s eligible, the damage of malnutrition to the fetus is done.

·      After the baby comes, send a lay health worker or nurse to visit the family for a while.  Voluntary evidence-based home visiting and parent education programs in the first year of life save lives, decrease rates of child maltreatment, and increase rates of successful breastfeeding.  Postpartum depression can be caught and treated with sleep and support.  In most home visiting programs, 90% of participating children are fully immunized by age 2.

·      Feed school aged children.   The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and free school lunch programs feed the hungry and helped lift 5 million children out of poverty in 2013.  It is ridiculous that 25% of children in the USA do not always get meals, especially when 75% of these hungry families have at least one working parent.

·      

Transform “daycare” into high quality early childhood education, birth through 4.  Get early education teachers on a career ladder to add to their skills, and pay them what they are worth.  Fund existing high quality models like Head Start.  Now, over 90% of eligible children are not enrolled due to lack of funding!

·     

Mentor Young Parents – there’s no app for that.  Support parent-to-parent mentorship programs like Strengthening Families.  Reach out to parents through synagogue, mosque, church and school.  We can give parents facts about ages and stages of child development via social media, but to change lives, you need friends. It’s hard to be a dad when you did not have one, and easier when you’ve got mentors.

Do what works!  Support children & families.

http://www.childrensdefense.org

Sharon Carnahan, Ph.D.

Rollins College

Winter Park, FL 32789

Working It Out

Working it Out:  Understanding the Place of Perfectionism & Life Balance

© 2013 Sharon Carnahan

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

-- Marge Piercy, To Be of Use        

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, where you are going.

-- Ecclesiastes 9:10

By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

-- Genesis 2:2
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Yesterday, I was tired.  God, I was so tired and fed up with work.  Squabbles, self centered shirking, decisions made by cronies instead of qualified people, endless stacks of papers to grade, the drudgery of doing the same thing for the 20^th year.  But rest?  Admit defeat and go home?  No way.

In my family, there was really only one acceptable way to cope with worry, failure or tragedy:  Work.  Work harder, smarter, better.  Try, try again.  Get there early, read it faster, practice more than the opposition.  Be frugal.  Stay late.  Leave a clean desk at the end of every day.

My grandmother had the habit of perpetual motion.  She worked to forget the deaths of those she loved, and to make a better life for her daughter and granddaughters.  From the rising of the sun to her evening collapse on her narrow single bed, she worked.

 I can still see my Gram at “leisure,” watching As the World Turns -- while simultaneously ironing shirts, handkerchiefs, undershorts and even towels.  Once, when I was in elementary school, she was in a wheelchair for a few weeks following surgery.  She rigged a board across the arms so she could chop vegetables in her lap, and emptied the dishwasher by filling the board, wheeling herself across the room, transferring dishes to countertops, then starting over again.

 When Gram was in her 70’s, the family left on vacation, leaving her alone for a week.  She stripped and varnished the wood floors in 2 rooms. With Gram’s help, our shelves were filled with fresh jam and pickles, and whatever Daddy shot showed up in the crock pot.  In my third grade year, she made 100 unique open faced Danish sandwiches for my International Day at school; in 5^th grade, she sewed dozens of tiny uniforms for International Girl Scout dolls. I learned to work from her.

Her work was insufficient anodyne; it never is enough to hide, or kill, all pain and loss.  In Gram's later years, the liquor delivery boy became a frequent visitor to our house, and Gram’s work had to be re-done later by her sober grandchildren. But still, she worked.

I love people who work hard.  I have an affinity, an appreciation, for the laborers who surround me.  Kim, the single Vietnamese woman who cleans my building before dawn;  Mickey, a married Christian air conditioning supervisor for 25 years, and the college’s unofficial chaplain;  Steve, a plumber who stammers out great jokes while he keeps a small city’s worth of irrigation going.

Yet I try to remember that work was never meant to be my first priority.

Work is the joyful expression of the gifts God’s given me -- to teach, to bake, to read stories to children, and to write.  Work puts food on the table and gas in the tank, and there is no such thing as work that is beneath me. Work serves God, others, and my soul. I love to work, most days. Work is good.

But my first task – my real work, you might say – is to glorify God, and enjoy Him, and His creation.  The famous passage, known to all good children of the Reformed tradition from the Westminster Catechism,  is this:

Q:  What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

 And so, I did it.  I left work early yesterday, soul sick and disenchanted.  I then cleaned my house, made a hot dinner, watched a little humorous TV with my son, and washed the dog.  I read scripture, watched the sunset, and thanked God for all the blessings I could list.  And today, I’m better for the short sabbatical, and ready to enjoy God – and my job – again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We're Playing Jenga with Children's Lives

I love Jenga, ® a game of strategy where you pile small blocks up like a house of cards, then remove the blocks one at a time.  With each removal, the tower becomes more unstable.  If the tower falls on your turn, you lose the game.

How is the development of Florida’s children like a game of Jenga®?  Build a strong tower – or it’s going to fall down.  We lose.

RESILIENCY is the “ordinary magic” that builds child success, and most children are resilient, as Ann Masten of the University of Minnesota wrote in 2001.  Research tells us what our children need, to handle life as it comes:  a network of supportive relationships beginning with someone who loves them most of all.  This is Mom, but Dad, Grandma, several loved ones, and foster or adoptive parents can provide the same sense of safety.  When attachment fails in the family, some children are adept at recruiting other adults – people like teachers, scoutmasters, coaches, youth leaders.  Every love adds strength.  A secure base makes it possible for children to stand tall.

HOME is built on a foundation of relationships.  Home means food, shelter, clean air and water, shared purpose, a certain calm in life, and a fundamental belief that all will be well. Most often, faith plays a part in home.  Jobs for parents really help build a home.

EDUCATION is crucial.  Our children need to be safe and love each other, and they must also work hard and learn well.  Children must be educated without fear, so they can grow mentally, spiritually and physically, and this requires our investment.  A safe, high quality school system is home to many children at risk, and a free, developmentally appropriate, public education is the solid foundation of our democracy. In good schools, terrific teachers nurture natural curiosity as they pass down our American values of equality, hard work, and solving problems together. Children also need physical activity, fun, and adventures, and hope in the future to become responsible adults.

If the Jenga ® tower that supports a happy childhood falls, then watch out, America – your safe society is  the next to go.  So how’s our Florida “game” going?  In my Rollins College course, The State of Florida’s Children,   students report our near-bottom national rankings in every solid measure of children’s well being.  We’ve cut jobs,  prenatal and early maternal care, In-home interventions, help for childcare for single working parents, access to therapy for  children, child maltreatment prevention programs, seen an increase in high school dropout and school violence, and cut our public education budget for all of Florida’s children. More than half of our children can’t read at a 10^th grade level by graduation.  Our juvenile courts are more crowded than our colleges.  We are undermining the basic protective systems of relationships, home, and education.

Our Jenga ® tower is teetering, citizens.  Build for the future.  Support Florida’s children.