Monthly Archives: December 2012

How to engage parents without being condescending

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Yesterday I had an astute mother and educator ask a profoundly important question: “How can I engage poor parents without being condescending?”

This friend is a teacher in a thriving charter school; she is also the mother of a nine-month old and the member of a moms’ group. However, as she pointed out to me, all of the moms in her moms’ group are of the same social strata (and they’re not poor). She knows from experience – in the home and in school – that what happens in the home in the earliest years of life is critical for setting a trajectory of learning. So how can we engage disadvantaged parents without looking down on them?

Honor Their Virtue

The first step in not being condescending is realizing that honor is more appropriate than condescension. For whom is it more difficult to participate in a moms’ group: the articulate, college-educated mom, or the single, poor, poorly educated mom? The courage to put yourself in a situation where you know that everyone else has more of everything (education, money, power, connections, etc.) for the good of your child is a truly honorable act of humility and courage. It should be honored as such.

But what if they’re not making ANY effort?

It is easy enough to see the beauty of a poor parent who overcomes obstacles to love their children. But what about the parents who just don’t seem to care?

If I’m not mistaken, every person – no matter how disfigured – has a story. It may seem like they have nothing else to offer. But everyone has a story. Listening to the stories of parents is a powerful way to avoid condescension for several reasons. It validates that they have something unique and valuable to share. No one else has their story. When parents share their stories, my sympathy skyrockets. If I was looking down on them a few minutes ago, when I hear their stories my heart breaks for them because my previous perspective was so shallow compared to the depth of their pain. Once I have heard a parent’s story, I can truly admire and celebrate – without pretense – the steps that they take toward loving and nurturing their children.

The challenge is bringing parents together to share their stories.

Doing Means Making Mistakes

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On Sunday afternoons, I teach an ESL class at our church. My students show incredible character in balancing multiple jobs, care for children and learning English. This past week they taught me something else: doing means making mistakes, which is an essential part of learning.

Their activity was to answer several questions, in a complete sentence, based on a paragraph or two that we had read together. They completed the eight questions, and I walked around the room and asked various ones to write their answers on the board until we had eight answers written in front of us. Then, together, we identified what needed to be changed to make the sentences correct. The changes included capitalization, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and, of course, content.

What struck me was that willingness to make mistakes and learn from them is essential to this process. My students did their best, but still made mistakes (far fewer mistakes, I should add, than I would in Spanish or French – to say nothing of Tagalog or Mandarin). Those mistakes provided the context for our learning because they identified the mistakes, and they fixed them.

Kids are no different. They need to learn the boldness to make mistakes – and learn from them. If they don’t take the risks of action, they cannot reap the benefits of learning.

How do you provide opportunities for you children to make mistakes and learn from them?

On teaching responsibility

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Have you ever heard the word, “sorry” said without a shred of authenticity by a young child? If so, you’re not alone.

Here’s a wise piece of counsel from the folks at Parenting is Heart Work:

To avoid having children say one thing (I’m sorry) while feeling something different in their hearts, we encourage children to say, “I was wrong for… Will you forgive me?” This statement doesn’t require an emotion but is an act of the will. A child should be required to take responsibility for an offense whether it was provoked or not.

Do you want to teach authenticity as well as reconciliation? This is a great simple step in that direction.

(This gem came from a Parenting Tip email. If you’re interested, you can subscribe here. I find it to be the most consistently helpful parenting email available.)

 

Family as the cornerstone of society

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Today I saw a quotation attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson posted on Facebook. It caught my attention, so I traced down the source: his commencement address to Howard University on June 4, 1965. It is well worth reading in its entirety – especially in our age of sound bytes.

In order to entice you, let me give you an aperitif of that speech, and a commentary on its implications for public policy and civic engagement.

Perhaps most important [as an obstacle to the well being of poor black Americans]–its influence radiating to every part of life–is the breakdown of the Negro family structure. For this, most of all, white America must accept responsibility. It flows from centuries of oppression and persecution of the Negro man. It flows from the long years of degradation and discrimination, which have attacked his dignity and assaulted his ability to produce for his family.

This, too, is not pleasant to look upon. But it must be faced by those whose serious intent is to improve the life of all Americans.

Only a minority–less than half–of all Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents. At this moment, tonight, little less than two-thirds are at home with both of their parents. Probably a majority of all Negro children receive federally-aided public assistance sometime during their childhood.

The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled.

So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together–all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.

President Johnson cites other powerful forces, including the terrifying force of slums in cultural formation.

Men are shaped by their world. When it is a world of decay, ringed by an invisible wall, when escape is arduous and uncertain, and the saving pressures of a more hopeful society are unknown, it can cripple the youth and it can desolate the men.

Yet among these and other forces, he puts his finger on the family. Here is what I think needs to be noticed at this point in history.

  1. White responsibility. President Johnson recognized the culpable cultural force of centuries of oppression. He did not look within the family exclusively when assigning responsibility, but addressed both personal and social responsibility.
  2. Family culture. The president who was known for his “Great Society” programs recognized that family was the cornerstone of society.
  3. Crippled community. LBJ saw that individuals aren’t islands, and nor are families. Communities where the families have collapsed are relational shanty-towns – and children born into this bear the relational scars.
  4. Work to strengthen the family. This was the sine qua non of renewal and restoration without which “all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough.”

There is, I think, one fatal flaw in the president’s reasoning. It is the notion that we can “create conditions under which most parents will stay together.” He was entirely right about the power of the family for cultural formation. He was spot on concerning the importance of unity and durability of marriage. He nailed the social collapse caused by entire communities in which the family fails. But, I would submit that it is impossible to “create conditions” for marital success without an animating Story that answers the question, “Why should I persevere when it is hard and I don’t want to?”

The family situation in 2012 is worse than it was in 1965. In addition to higher rates of divorce, lower rates of marriage, and higher rates of children born outside marriage, we have prison populations that could hardly have been imagined in 1965. In the intervening years, multiple generations have been initiated into patterns of social life in which marriage is foreign and almost incomprehensible.

The question now stands: Who will have the courage to offer a Story that can answer the Why question with beauty and power? Without that, we will only see an increase of what Kay Hymowitz has already chronicled as Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age.