Bird Droppings January 11, 2013

Looking for reasons

 

I had a rather exciting week as they go. I no longer have to drive down to Macon to pick up and drop off my youngest son at Mercer University as he attends Piedmont College and lives at home with his wife and daughter. However I do miss the drive even though I was always exhausted afterwards. Many times on my way down I will stop by a garden store that often has really nice plants and shrubs. On my last trip through I had asked about California White Sage and the owner was checking into getting some for me. On my last stop through the owner was splitting wood around back when I found him and as usual we got talking. Seems his nephew is autistic. As my life goes my son called around the time I was to pick him up and forced me back on schedule only an hour late or so. But what a discussion on learning and life I had with the owner. That will be another story along the way. It turned out to be so very cold and yet with so many things going on to keep it exciting between reptile shows and my oldest son talking about attending one this weekend the weather is sort of an afterthought and a good weekend ahead. It will be all about grandchildren this weekend.

 

“Come; let us put our minds together to see what kind of life we can create for our children.” Sitting Bull, Lakota Sioux

 

Nearly eleven years has passed since I did a research paper on the causes of issues with children. Many of the issues when I started back to teaching were not all that much different from the early seventies when I last taught. When I wrote the paper I was looking for commonalities among children who had issues in school and in life. I listed drugs use, alcohol use, jail time, probation, age, sex, drivers licenses, wealth, social status, child hood illnesses and whatever else I could find measurable numbers or information on. I did not question the students all the information was in school and the public records. As I looked deeper I came to the conclusion students specifically children with problems were made they did not just happen.

Indirectly we created each of the issues that manifested within the children I was reviewing. In my reading I found a website, Divorce Magazine.com, Help for Generation ex. and the following listed statistics. In 1970, 72% of the adult population was married and in 1999 only 59%. That was a shock in some ways although as I looked further more people are living together for a period of time rather than marrying. Another interesting statistic the number of divorces granted is down per 1000 people but up per number of new marriages. As I researched nearly eleven years ago in that group of students I found that two out of twenty eight lived with both biological parents.

 

“It seems that the divorce culture feeds on itself, creating a one-way downward spiral of unhappiness and failure.” David Brenner, New York, July 14, 1999, Associate director of the Institute for American Values

 

“There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.” Leon R. Yankwich

 

I used to prior to being addicted to NCIS found myself hooked on several of the Law and Order series; the TV shows which now seem to run all day long in one form or another. I am captivated by the errors and flaws within our society, perhaps because I work with children who are often a result of those same issues in family and or society.

 

“Having children makes one no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.” Michael Levine

 

As I researched deeper in reasons children have issues often I found issues were learned. The examples were so often set at home, drugs, alcohol and literally any of issues presented had been directly related to home situations. Children learn what they live both positively and negatively as Dr. Laura Nolte writes extensively about and is featured in her Children Learn what they live poster of the early seventies. Yesterday the news was filled with stories of teenagers, young people who had gotten into trouble.

I often think back to an incident in Minnesota several years ago, where a young man killed nine people in a shooting spree on the Red Lake Reservation. Elsewhere drug arrests and gang issues are often the case. I also thought back to a situation nearly six years ago, I was walking outside my room when a student came up sheepishly and hugged me and apologized. “I am so sorry for what happened”. It was only a few weeks prior this student was in a fight with another student in the cafeteria and I was pulling them apart. It was a strange feeling being thanked for breaking up a fight, by one of the parties involved.

Back a few years ago I was at a basketball game and parents were yelling at each other over their kids. This was in front of the audience; to a point a Resource Officer was involved. It really is no different than thirty five years ago when I coached basketball in MaconGeorgia and the kids liked this old crude gym better than the new gym. Parents could not fit inside and kids could just play basketball with no parents yelling to be heard. I just found my trophies from 1973-74 over the weekend as my wife and I were going through boxes.

 

“Life affords no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than the raising of the next generation.” Dr. C. Everett Koop

 

I never met the man but my father always spoke highly of him as he was my brother’s physician in Philadelphia when John was at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital. In later years, Dr. Koop was the Surgeon General of the United States. I am always looking for answers midst all the questions.

 

“Children are curious and are risk takers. They have lots of courage. They venture out into a world that is immense and dangerous. A child initially trusts life and the processes of life.” John Bradshaw

 

Perhaps it is the breaking of trust that causes issues to arise. Years ago I did a chart on the development of trust. The stages in how trust develops with a child and then into adulthood. We are born with what I called a universal trust, as an infant you instinctually trust, you learn to not trust and eventually come full circle learning to trust again.

 

“Trust evolves. We start off as babies with perfect trust. Inevitably, trust is damaged by our parents or other family members. Depending on the severity, we may experience devastated trust, in which the trust is completely broken. In order to heal, we must learn when and how trust can be restored. As part of this final step, if we cannot fully trust someone, then we establish guarded, conditional, or selective trust.” Dr. Riki Robbins, PhD, The Four Stages of Trust

 

I recently started reading again a book for the second or third time by Dr. Temple Grantin, Animals in Translation. Dr. Grantin’s unique view is driven by the fact that she is autistic. She looks at animals in a different light than most people do; she operates on that instinctual level without the encumbrances of emotion. She stills functions in a world of trust and maintains trust however that can be defined. In a family setting what more so than parents leaving could displace trust in a child let alone destroy trust, and then we want them to lead normal lives.

 

“When a parent is consistent and dependable, the baby develops sense of basic trust. The baby builds this trust when they are cold, wet or hungry and they can count on others to relieve their pain. The alternative is a sense of mistrust, the feeling that the parent is undependable and may not be there when they are needed.” Eric Erikson, Eric Erikson’s Eight Stages of Life

 

Sitting, writing here with my three sons all either graduated or in college is so easy to say we had no problems. Then I click to Yahoo News and see such things as the RedLake shootings and in our own community headlines of a young man who brutally beat his parents to death for no known reason. Looking at both stories was it this or that as to why a child would kill nine people and himself or kill their parents.

 

“Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.” Black Elk, Oglala Sioux, Holy man

 

In 1972 or so I met a young man in MaconGeorgia. At that time he was a year older than me and still is from last I heard.  In his Creek tribal name he is called Red Clay; he was and is an artist. My family has many of his pieces of artwork, sculpture, drawings and paintings. In 1975 or so he went through a divorce after his wife lost a baby. Every day that I have known him he was drinking. He was once the most requested teacher in Bibb County now an itinerant carpenter and professional feather dancer. Although I have been told he recently retired and is now a lead drummer in Pow-Wow circles. But a comment that stuck with me and an image. He painted a small acrylic painting that my mother has hanging in her office area. It is of three burial platforms in the prairie. The picture as he explained is the one in front a chief or man of importance, the second his wife and the third a small infant burial platform, his unborn baby from so many years ago. He told me nearly twenty eight years ago he would not live past forty, he has barely but as I look back and think of how we respond and how we set that example for our children.

I started reading Kent Nerburn’s books now many years ago at the suggestion of a friend. Nerburn had taught at the Red Lake High School in Minnesota and when you get a chance please review his writing on his website about the incident there. So today as I wandered in my thoughts, a dear friend’s father passed away and I think back to that moment in my own life only a few years previous and keep them in my heart. I read a new posting from another friend who has beaten cancer and writes eloquently of the details in his own journey. As I think to children who live each day many in harm’s way not of their doing but simply of having been born into that situation I wonder at our society in all of its greatness have we left something behind. So today please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and to always give thanks namaste.

 

 

Wa de (Skee)

bird