“We can choose to build kids or we can choose to build prisons”

– Retired General Colin Powell.

Attended a Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth Conference in Batavia, New York, yesterday. Some thoughts related to the key note speaker's presentation.

We live in the most age-separated society ever. Think of what adults do when they approach young people, adults avert their eyes and don’t speak or acknowledge the kids. The non-verbal message received is one of rejection.

How many adults does it take to raise a child? In generations past, every child had several adults exerting influence, now many children have NO significant adult influence in their lives. The needs have not changed, they are just not being met!

The news media is about mayhem and problems with kids. Two-thirds of all news is negative. Positive language is needed. Kids need to hear supportive and encouraging commentary from adults.

How to spot a caring successful healthy kid? A recent study showed the following data:

Every young person had at least one caring adult at home
At least six adults know their name
Relationship is important to them
A faith commitment is an important part of their life
They make rational choices

The work of raising successful healthy kids is a work of a people. Development of adult to child relationships is important. Each adult should get to know at least six kids. Know the names of at least 12. TALK TO KIDS. Look them in the eyes, making eye contact and ask them relationship questions.

All it takes is CARING. Raising successful kids is a cultural issue. We must change the way a community thinks about its youth AND we must change the way a community behaves toward its youth. Schools, churches, industry and corporations…all these institutions can help.

Tag: hchy

Service versus Community

Another article by John McKnight which again illustrates how "service" can hurt community.

He writes:

In a small, relatively isolated community on Martha's Vineyard, about every tenth person used to be born without the ability to hear. Everybody in the community, hearing and non-hearing alike, spoke a unique sign language brought from England when they immigrated to Massachusetts in 1690. In the mid-twentieth century with increased mobility, the people ceased to intermarry, and the genetic anomaly disappeared.

But before the memory of it died - and the sign language with it - historian Nora Groce studied the community's history. She compared the experience of the non-hearing people to that of the hearing people.

She found that 80 percent of the non-hearing people graduated from high school, as did 80 percent of the hearing. She found that about 90 percent of the non-hearing got married, compared to about 92 percent of the hearing. They had about equal numbers of children. Their income levels were similar, as were the variety and distribution of their occupations.

Then Groce did a parallel study on the Massachusetts mainland. At the time, it was considered to have the best services in the nation for non-hearing people. There she found that 50 percent of non-hearing people graduated from high school, compared to 75 percent of the hearing. Non-hearing people married half the time, while hearing people married 90 percent of the time. Forty percent of the non-hearing people had children, while 80 percent of hearing people did. And non-hearing people had fewer children. They also received about one-third the income of hearing people. And their range of occupations was much more limited.

How was it, Groce wondered, that on an island with no services, non-hearing people were as much like hearing people as you could possibly measure? Yet thirty miles away, with the most advanced services available, non-hearing people lived much poorer lives than the hearing.

The one place in the United States where deafness was not a disability was a place with no services for deaf people. In that community all the people adapted by signing instead of handing the non-hearing people over to professionals and their services. That community wasn't just doing what was necessary to help or to serve one group. It was doing what was necessary to incorporate everyone.