Colbert
I. King
Blame
Won't Heal the Hurts That Last a Lifetime
The
U-shaped marks on the little boy's face had the
doctors stumped for a moment. Then she realized
what had caused them. They came from the ring
worn by the man who had repeatedly punched the
boy in the face-a child only 13 months old at
the time.
I
observed the boy this week at the Reginald S.
Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children in
Rockville. The marks on his face are gone now,
but he's not free of his emotional wounds. At
3 years old, he's already had a hard go of it.
Physically abused, in and out of foster care,
stung by repeated separations. The goal now is
to ease his distress, to make him feel safe again,
to help him bond with his new foster parent. That
is what his teacher and the social worker at the
Lourie Center have been trying to do.
The
center specializes in working with children from
birth through 8 years old who have emotional and
developmental problems.
He
wasn't the only child in the center's therapeutic
nursery for 3- and 4-year-olds. There was a pretty
little girl who was studiously cutting shapes
out of a piece of paper under the attentive eyes
of a teacher. Her short life, too, has been filled
with mixed messages. She has been abandoned, placed
in a foster home, adopted into a family with other
children only to see the parents divorce. Her
behavior can turn aggressive without warning -
to the extent that today she's not a good candidate
for regular Head Start.
And
there's another preschooler who made a giant advance
as I observed him through the one-way mirror used
by parents and clinicians to watch the children:
He played with a toy and muttered a few
words to the male assistant in the room - a welcome
sign of trust developing between a severely withdrawn
child and an adult.
This
week I saw children who have been kicked out of
both day care and grade schools because of their
behavior; children whose start in life has been
anything but emotionally healthy, anything but
warm, loving and secure.
More
than 1900 children-and adults trying to raise
kids with emotional and developmental problems-are
clients of the Lourie Center each year. Many of
the children know about neglect and abuse in an
up-close and personal way. They know what it's
like to be uncared for, to be belittled, to be
struck by a grown-up-and they know what it's like
to feel anger.
And
here's the deal. They won't remain children forever.
One day they may end up in high school. One day,
full of frustration and bitterness, they may come
across a gun. What then? As they say at the Lourie
Center: "The first years of child's life
last forever."
If
these children survive, and this is not certain,
the only question is what will they become. What
will be the effects of those childhood hurts?
These
children-many of whom are referred to the center
by social service agencies and public schools
in the District of Columbia, as well as Montgomery
and Prince George's counties-are the lucky ones.
With the center's early intervention, they will
get help before the scars become permanent-before
they become problems for themselves and their
community-before, as this country knows all too
well, they could become our worst nightmare.
Which
gets me to last week's column, "Now the Children
Have Guns" [March 10]. A number of readers,
noting my anti-gun stance, accused me of looking
for blame in all the wrong places. "What
about the responsibility of the parents? Not only
for allowing their children access to guns but
for raising kids to even contemplate murder,"
wrote one reader.
Another
said the problem isn't the easy access to firearms
but rather single-parent and no-parent families.
"Teaching respect of others, perhaps attending
a church, would do wonders for many of these potential
murderers."
Moral
breakdown, taking God out of the schools and multi-generational,
dysfunctional families were all fingered as culprits.
Asked one reader: "Don't you think that if
parents in today's society paid more attention
to what their kids are thinking and doing, that
much of the problem would be averted?" Said
another: "It's not the gun, it's the upbringing."
Allow
me to stipulate: Handguns don't get up off the
table and walk over and shoot someone on their
own. Human beings, albeit young ones, pulled those
triggers in Santee, Calif., and at Columbine High.
But just as it is wrong to say the problem begins
and ends with guns, chalking of youth violence
to unloving and inattentive parents and then washing
your hands of the whole thing doesn't move the
discussion very far either.
Stipulation
two: A child raised by loving and attentive parents
and instilled with morals and values in a healthy
home environment is probably less likely to grow
up wanting to kill or maim than the child who
is not.
But
as professionals at the Lourie Center, social
services and child welfare agencies will tell
you, that kind of home is simply not in the cards
for millions of children. So what do we do about
the kids with chaotic lives who grow into adolescence
attached to little more than their anger? What
do we do when there are no functioning parents
to hold accountable? Bemoaning the erosion of
morals and broken families won't produce children
who function well at home and school, any more
than telling me "You Marxist socialist communists
should all go live in China, then you'll all be
happy and the rest of America would be ecstatic
at your departure!" will cause me to back
off from my views on gun control (nice try though,
Kenneth J. Messina).
Call
it a divergence of views. Some organizations want
to devote their time and resources to giving kids
guns, drilling them in the commandments of gun
safety and getting them out on the range to shoot.
I'm more concerned about the children who aren't
getting the start in life that they need. The
Lourie Center says the early childhood experience
will "shape the way [children] will learn,
think and behave for the rest of their lives."
So
between the National Rifle Association and the
Lourie Center, I choose to support the group that
seeks to give vulnerable kids a healthy start.
Because the last thing this country needs is another
troubled child who grows up to be the kind of
youth who settles his frustrations and resentments
with a gun-or who puts a ring on his finger, balls
his hand into a tight fist and smashes a little
baby in the face.
king@washpost.com
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