Parenting Advice Bunch

My cutest baby un the land
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I often speak to groups of professionals who work with children and families. In training Pathways staff, or at workshops I conduct for DFCS, social service agencies, and for other professionals, I frequently start by referencing one of my favorite childhood poems, The Blind Man and The Elephant, by John Godfrey Saxe. It helps to communicate something that I deeply believe, and it is this — people are complex and the “people business” is complex too.

It is vital that we maintain awareness of this complexity and realize that individually we understand a limited aspect of the whole, but when we come together and share our observations and impressions, we have a better chance of understanding the bigger picture and arriving at effective solutions to some of society’s most change-resistant problems.

This is true in our professional lives as well as our lives as members of families and community groups.

You know that uncomfortable feeling of being uncertain…don’t you usually want an answer, a decision as fast as you can get to one? It’s human to want closure, to believe you have the whole picture. We’re not comfortable with “not knowing,” we don’t much like ambiguity. Psychological research has shown for a long time that this is universal.

From infancy on, all of us try to make sense of the experiences we have.

Let’s consider Baby A, who gets a lot of attention, whose needs are anticipated and met without delay. Baby A’s parents’ hearts are overflowing with love that they happily express.

This baby is likely to grow up believing that the world is a pretty cool place, that people can be trusted, and that “I matter.”

On the other hand, Baby B’s start in life is marked by instability, his cries are ignored, he doesn’t get held and cuddled, he may hear the frightening noise of adult fights, and maybe he even gets physically hurt. What kind of “sense” do you think Baby B can make of the world? What kind of world view, or “philosophy of life,” might this child be developing?

Can he believe that he “matters?”

We all approach every new experience with expectations that reflect our world views, impressions that we’ve been refining since we first drew breath. So, when experiences confirm our world view, we say to ourselves, “I was right!” But, when experience challenges our world view, we don’t give in so readily. We’re apt to say, “It can’t be so!” and we set out to prove ourselves right.

In fact, we typically seek experiences that will confirm our beliefs and avoid those which will challenge them.

It takes a lot to persuade us to change, especially when the belief being challenged was acquired under unpleasant or frightening circumstances.

So, by the time he’s old enough to go to school, Baby B’s early experiences will have prepared him to fend for himself, to not trust anyone to care enough about his needs, to settle his differences with aggression, and he will be lost in the world of school and community where most people don’t hold such severe beliefs.

Conversely, Baby B may find himself in a school and community where many of his peers hold the same beliefs, thus reinforcing his view of the world as unfriendly and unsafe, a place where one has to protect oneself.

In our respective professions we come in daily contact with children like Baby B. In our attempts to help him each of us brings a unique perspective. When we all get together to talk about him and come up with a shared understanding, our efforts are challenged by “The Blind Men and The Elephant” phenomenon.

Baby B’s teacher is most concerned about his disruptiveness in her class.

His DFCS caseworker’s focus is on Baby B’s mother completing her case plan.

And Baby B’s mother is preoccupied with the intrusiveness of all these agencies in her life, and she’s unsure how to meet their expectations.

Meanwhile, Baby B’s therapist worries about his “low self esteem.”

How does such a group arrive at a consensus?

I call the model that guides our work at Pathways the Kaleidoscope Model. Just as a slight shift causes the pieces in a kaleidoscope to form a new pattern, a slight shift in awareness causes our worldviews to shift and make new sense of our lives and our options.

“Kaleidoscope” helps us to remember that the goal of our work is to help individuals shift their worldview to accommodate information and realities that had been excluded.

So when we meet a child whose behavior reflects a lack of trust, we first attempt to understand this lack of trust and ask ourselves how we can help him begin to trust again.

Behavior change follows swiftly (and more importantly, this change is lasting) when a young person is willing to risk examining his worldview.

Witnessing this shift is a great reward and honor.
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Growing up in India, a very complex, multifaceted culture, I remember reciting a poem about 6 blind men and an elephant. In 2nd grade (or so) our teacher would split us up in groups to enact famous poems, including one about the blind men who went to study an elephant (I got to play one of the “blind men”).

On many occasions as an adult I have racked my brain for the words to this poem. Memory being what it is (mostly just complicated by experiences and urgencies that push old stuff back to make room for what we need to remember for every day life), my strenuous efforts to recall what I had memorized in second grade yielded no results.

I was so delighted when the wonders of the internet reunited me with these long lost words!

The Blind Men and the Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approach’d the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a wall!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!”

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a snake!”

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he,
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Then, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a rope!”

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!

MORAL~

So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
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Photo Credit: Marcus Rodder

Even as the world around us changes at a dizzying speed, the fundamentals remain the same. I am reminded of the Mad Hatter ride at Disney World – the cups spinning madly in different directions while the plate holding them remains constant in its direction and speed.

I don’t know whether it’s age (after all, I’ve been doing this work for over 30 years!) or simply the accumulation of experience working with those who live in the margins of society, but I’ve decided to write a blog to share the thoughts, feelings and speculations that arise as I look both back and ahead. Most of these blog posts — which will come somewhat irregularly — will be about children and mothers caught up in the whirlwind of social services, juvenile justice, education and healthcare. I believe you will resonate with the human themes they will reflect.

I hope you will take a few minutes to read my blog posts as they come up. If you find value in what you read, we hope you will forward the blog to your friends… and that you will take a moment to share your thoughts. I hope you will agree that a wide-angle perspective helps us understand the laws of nature that bind us together as well as thecommonalities and differences that separate struggle from triumph.

Looking forward to an enriching, enlightening dialogue with you,

Dr. Sunaina Rao Jain
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We tend to agree that childhood is about learning, about preparing to become an adult. We agree that children need adults to watch out for them, to teach them what it takes to be an adult in our society, be successful and stay out of trouble. Why then ask such an obvious question as “What is childhood for?” Where’s the debate, the disagreement?

Here’s where:

We have different ideas about which childhood lessons are critical for healthy/happy/successful adulthood. Some say it’s obedience of the rules and ways of living that have served us well for generations. Others say it’s all about self-expression and fulfilling one’s destiny.
We disagree about how to teach the lessons we think are critical. Some say adults know best and should set out the lessons. Others say we should let children set the pace.
We certainly don’t agree on what to do when children, as they are likely to do, don’t follow our plans! What do we do with the clingy vine that won’t stray far from the spot where it first put down roots? And, what indeed do we do with the wild kudzu that takes over wherever it goes and grows?
Each of these questions is even more urgent when the children in question have been exposed to traumatic experiences so that their age, fragility and lack of safety make them more vulnerable. Their parents have often been victims of similar childhoods.

When these children come into foster care, when we meet them in the classroom, our usual ways of thinking about childhood and growing up, child rearing and discipline, our expectations of parents and our own assumptions about what it takes to “make it” in life… they are all challenged in ways we are often unprepared for. It’s as if we are gardeners who learn how to grow a plant from seed, but when bad weather and disasters happen, when a plant has to be moved to a new place… our knowledge isn’t as useful and our attempts to “will” the plant into growing in its new location are often unsuccessful.

Here is a link to a document that you will find very interesting and informative. It highlights how important it is for us to pay attention to how development unfolds and what happens when trauma short-circuits this process.

The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child is a multidisciplinary panel of scientists who bring together state of the art knowledge and its implications for public policy. As the document makes clear, we can’t afford not to provide every growing child with the optimal conditions for healthy development.
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