s/o tragic life - libs and cons come in please

[marie427]

Wrath, I do see what you're saying but like MX said above about the video that I didn't get to watch in that article, Donny's family doesn't believe that their way is the right way. Not saying every family feels the same way that family does, but based on MX's summary, that family knows there are better ways of living. And better has a very broad definition here.

[NitaX]

Pixy - sadly, I know this too on the sheets.

[druidp]

Aug 13, 2012 16:17:26 GMT -5 NitaX said:

Druidp - Right. Honestly, a success story is what kadams has written. That's what it looks like when community plus gov't programs, charities, etc. has actually helped someone. If she had not run across those people, her life would be different. Everyone was vested in her best interest. She'd be the person who after curing cancer would say "I want to say Mrs. Jones, my 2nd grade teacher thank you. Pastor Moore at the summer camp, thank you. Ms. Green at the counseling office. Thank you. You all pushed me to be who I am today. Without your support, none of this would be possible."

And then she'd say "I didn't build that." LMAO

/DEAD

[kadams767]

Aug 13, 2012 16:15:08 GMT -5 wrathofkuus said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:12:13 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

But that doesn't mean that we should avoid trying to reach them at all. I'm thankful for every person, every program that I crossed paths with in my life that put me on the road to the life I have now. Every parent other than my own that showed me the "other side", every teacher that pushed me into advanced classes and extracurricular stuff, every social worker and counselor that made it clear that my current life was not to be emulated. It works on some kids and to me, that's better than avoiding all of the kids.

I'm not saying don't try - I'm saying don't be shocked when most of the time it doesn't do anything. And I think I'm also saying that it's good to keep in mind that we ALL think our way is the right way, whether we're middle class, upper middle, old money, or proles. I think that's the best way to reach people, to throw out the assumption that you're going to "fix" them into being exactly the same as you, with the same norms and values.

I think we all agree that there is probably no way to reach everyone and that yes, some kids, unfortunately, are too far gone.

[kadams767]

Aug 13, 2012 16:17:26 GMT -5 NitaX said:

Druidp - Right. Honestly, a success story is what kadams has written. That's what it looks like when community plus gov't programs, charities, etc. has actually helped someone. If she had not run across those people, her life would be different. Everyone was vested in her best interest. She'd be the person who after curing cancer would say "I want to say Mrs. Jones, my 2nd grade teacher thank you. Pastor Moore at the summer camp, thank you. Ms. Green at the counseling office. Thank you. You all pushed me to be who I am today. Without your support, none of this would be possible."

And then she'd say "I didn't build that." LMAO

LOL! :-(

[pedanticwench]

IDK bunny. That seems like an overly simplistic answer to the problem.

Of course she should have had access to abortion, but I don't think that would have solved all of her problems.

[kadams767]

Aug 13, 2012 16:19:16 GMT -5 marie427 said:

Wrath, I do see what you're saying but like MX said above about the video that I didn't get to watch in that article, Donny's family doesn't believe that their way is the right way. Not saying every family feels the same way that family does, but based on MX's summary, that family knows there are better ways of living. And better has a very broad definition here.

These are the people that need to be reached, somehow. People who know there is something better, potentially want something better (at least abstractly), but have absolutely no freaking clue how to get there.

[pedanticwench]

Aug 13, 2012 16:24:01 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

These are the people that need to be reached, somehow. People who know there is something better, potentially want something better (at least abstractly), but have absolutely no freaking clue how to get there.

I wouldn't have a clue how to get them there, either.

[Deleted]

Aug 13, 2012 15:09:16 GMT -5 ttt said:

By "education", what does that mean, though? If he can do division and find the US on a map, does that really help prevent his having unprotected sex at age 13?

I haven't read further than this but wanted to respond here. Am I the only one here who has read "the other Wes Moore"? It's about two black males named Wes Moore, both with Baltimore connections. The one ends up in jail for accessory to murder, the other wins a Fulbright and was a speaker at the 2008 Democratic convention. Both are the sons of single moms and grew up relatively poor. It's fascinating.

For me the turning point in the beginning is when the one mother learns she has lost her grant to attend college bc the funding was yanked. She was pulling herself up by her bootstraps, slowly but surely, and then fell back down and could never get out. Education for herself might have saved her son.

[wawa]

Aug 13, 2012 16:29:27 GMT -5 @mrsbecky07 said:

Aug 13, 2012 15:09:16 GMT -5 ttt said:

By "education", what does that mean, though? If he can do division and find the US on a map, does that really help prevent his having unprotected sex at age 13?

I haven't read further than this but wanted to respond here. Am I the only one here who has read "the other Wes Moore"? It's about two black males named Wes Moore, both with Baltimore connections. The one ends up in jail for accessory to murder, the other wins a Fulbright and was a speaker at the 2008 Democratic convention. Both are the sons of single moms and grew up relatively poor. It's fascinating.

For me the turning point in the beginning is when the one mother learns she has lost her grant to attend college bc the funding was yanked. She was pulling herself up by her bootstraps, slowly but surely, and then fell back down and could never get out. Education for herself might have saved her son.

This makes me think of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Education isn't a "fix-it" it's a part of breaking the cycle.

[karinothing]

I think education is a good place to start (and I mean general life education, not necessarily the normal stuff everyone learns in school). Someone used to teach a program for at risk (for teen pregnancy) girls in our area. While she taught them life skills they also had very very frank discussions about sexuality and everything related to it. These were girls who were having sex so they focused on different types of contraception and they showed them how unbelievably hard it was to raise a baby. Some of these girls already had one kid so they also taught basic baby/kid care and taught about nutrition and health and what not. The program also provided counseling.

The program was amazingly successful but it was only budgeted for something like 14 girls a year and eventually the funding was pulled. But they were successful at keeping that girls pregnancy free throughout high school (I don't know what happened after).

SO I do think education can make a huge difference but I know that so many people would be opposed to a program like this (for religious reasons or otherwise). A shame really IMO

[kadams767]

Aug 13, 2012 16:25:42 GMT -5 pedanticwench said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:24:01 GMT -5 kadams767 said:

These are the people that need to be reached, somehow. People who know there is something better, potentially want something better (at least abstractly), but have absolutely no freaking clue how to get there.

I wouldn't have a clue how to get them there, either.

Me either.

[Deleted]

I haven't had a chance to read everything - but I think this is largely a result of nothing that ties people to society. While I loathe religion, the church was part of the network of things that kept people feeling part of society, and kind of obligated people to behave a certain way.

"Our modern life has taken away religion and family, and left us with trinkets." I am paraphrasing, I cant remember the exact quote, but to me that pretty much sums it up. When there is nothing to tie people to others, and there is no social "normality" to be measured by, there is nothing to keep people from squandering their lives.

[Deleted]

Aug 13, 2012 15:58:58 GMT -5 @mx said:

I don't think they see nothing wrong with it. If you listen to the scrapbook videos on the photographer's web site you hear in these teen parents' own words that this isn't how they want to live, many of them actually started out (by their accounts) in stable if working class two parent homes. Then someone died. Or succumbed to addiction. Or was sent to prison. And things spiraled out of control. A lot of these kids had PTSD diagnoses before they were in middle school. Because of addition, incarceration, and the resulting abuse and neglect they lost their childhoods. Almost all of them speak about beig sexually abused at some point. They speak very clearly about wanting a better life for their children and regret for things in their pasts. But they don't have any tools to move past it--and now most of them are viewed primarily as a mental health diagnosis (or at least they feel that is how they are seen).

This is what happened with my sister. She started out doing really well, then mental illness kicked in (which my parents didn't realize), followed by addiction and it went downhill from there. She knows her life basically sucks. She has a brother who's a doctor, a sister who's a lawyer and parents with Masters who emphasized education above all else. But if you all saw her at a low point you would think she was full of shit if she told you that. She just literally does not have the tools to move her life forward bc of her disease (borderline personality disorder most likely). She can do it in spurts but not long term.

Which brings us to Brideys post from earlier about mental health in this country.

[summer]

Aug 13, 2012 16:12:27 GMT -5 aw said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:03:43 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

But they can make it easier by providing recycling services, putting mandates on manufacturers on the distribution of waste, etc.

Same for social programs. You can make it easier for people to reach and use programs. The easier something is to use, the more people will be willing to apply for them.

Problem is that these things are just a band-aid. The money falls through and the recycling service stops picking up the recycling at someone's front door and people stop recycling. They aren't willing to take it to the recycling center themselves unless they actually care about the environment. The government can't make us care. It takes people convincing others why they should.

So when we provide these services for people that are simply a band-aid (services that the government simply cannot afford), what happens when the money is no longer flowing? We're back where we started.

I'll agree that these things seem to help right now, but they are by no means a solution. We need solutions.

You know what I really think. If our society actually saw the value in being a collective and paying into the system to make sure things never got this bad on all levels: poverty, school quality, healthcare, etc...then things wouldn't get to the point that we had to pull people out of holes this deep. If you invest at a basic level in our citizenry, it will pay back the entire society.

But I'm certainly not going to wait for churches and volunteers to stop this gaping wound. You need a whole system of services. If people don't want their paycheck to go to taxes for poor people, why am I to believe that they are going to want to spend their time and personally interact with them. They may say they don't trust the gov't and they'll do a little themselves, but they may not. And as far as I know, they won't. And I'm sorry, when I was growing up in section 8 housing, etc, I didn't see a whole bunch of people volunteering their time to help out anyone I knew. At least I know the gov't will pay someone to do it and a gov't agency will pay people to research shit, and may make some attempt to spread resources out evenly. Otherwise I have to hope I live in driving distance of some benevolent person with a lot of time on their hands.

And we're not even talking about needing financial help. That's a whole other ballgame.

[pedanticwench]

I would like to agree with you Reeve, but it seems like poverty is a constant for all cultures and societies, even with religion.

What bothers me most is that people hang onto religious tenets while living completely separated from their faith. Which is probably why Kayla did not have an abortion. But 'm just guessing here, who knows?

And really, these people are tied socially. They're tied to people who live just like they do.

[kadams767]

Aug 13, 2012 16:39:53 GMT -5 @mrsbecky07 said:

Aug 13, 2012 15:58:58 GMT -5 @mx said:

I don't think they see nothing wrong with it. If you listen to the scrapbook videos on the photographer's web site you hear in these teen parents' own words that this isn't how they want to live, many of them actually started out (by their accounts) in stable if working class two parent homes. Then someone died. Or succumbed to addiction. Or was sent to prison. And things spiraled out of control. A lot of these kids had PTSD diagnoses before they were in middle school. Because of addition, incarceration, and the resulting abuse and neglect they lost their childhoods. Almost all of them speak about beig sexually abused at some point. They speak very clearly about wanting a better life for their children and regret for things in their pasts. But they don't have any tools to move past it--and now most of them are viewed primarily as a mental health diagnosis (or at least they feel that is how they are seen).

This is what happened with my sister. She started out doing really well, then mental illness kicked in (which my parents didn't realize), followed by addiction and it went downhill from there. She knows her life basically sucks. She has a brother who's a doctor, a sister who's a lawyer and parents with Masters who emphasized education above all else. But if you all saw her at a low point you would think she was full of shit if she told you that. She just literally does not have the tools to move her life forward bc of her disease (borderline personality disorder most likely). She can do it in spurts but not long term.

Which brings us to Brideys post from earlier about mental health in this country.

I'm sorry about your sister. And I think situations like these are quite common as well, unfortunately. It's almost a completely different animal than kids like Donny. Otherwise normal parents, raising otherwise normal kids and one kid experiences mental illness/addiction or what have you, I think a sort of denial kicks in at some point. The first reaction of most people I know would be to think that the third kid was just lazy/full of shit/rebelling, not that there was a deep rooted problem. I can only imagine what people's first reactions are when they realize that I'm well-educated woman with a seemingly great life on paper, while the rest of my immediate family is on food stamps and suffering from severe mental illnesses.

[marie427]

Aug 13, 2012 16:48:48 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:22:34 GMT -5 pedanticwench said:

IDK bunny. That seems like an overly simplistic answer to the problem.

Of course she should have had access to abortion, but I don't think that would have solved all of her problems.

Well, I didn't just say abortion is the answer. And she may not really have KNOWN she had that option, or that it wasn't a terrible idea. She was 14 and from extreme poverty.

I see what you're saying, and maybe someone from that area (I know there are a few on here) can correct me if I'm wrong, but this family lives in Upstate New York. And not really rural NY either - near Albany. I would imagine the services she needed if she chose to go that route are accessible to people in that area, at least physically.

[NitaX]

Pedantic -
I can see Reeve's point though. Let me use my church as an example, we tend to have a lot of youth/empowerment programs. We partner with local foundations to run after school programs. We're big adopt-a-school partners. We host community fairs. We host job fairs. If you're a member or a community member, you can get great information there.

At some point, you may actually attend the church, which puts you in contact with members who will act as mentors. I was at another church a few weeks ago, and it was their Founder's Day. The church itself had members who the pastor explained as "Broken." He recruited his membership in a apartment building. He helped them get into social programs with a faith based group. He did so much for his congregation, that I was just beyond impressed. And this was a small scale church. Nothing like a giant mega church, but he understood what his members went through on a daily basis. I mean, simply inspiring. One lady talked about how she didn't know how to be a good parent, etc., etc. The pastor's wife had training sessions with single mothers.

So, I don't think it's all about changing all behaviors, but it is about giving people the tools they need to make real change. Some of that also encompasses a change in behavior.

[pixy0stix]

Aug 13, 2012 16:48:48 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

She was 14 and from extreme poverty.

I would bet you she doesn't know that she's living in extreme poverty. They have money for Mt. Dew, an xbox, and a tv. They have a house, and money to party with. Therefore she can't be in extreme poverty. She knows she's poor, but isn't everyone? Which in the crux to the whole problem.

[NitaX]

Aug 13, 2012 16:52:50 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:48:48 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

She was 14 and from extreme poverty.

I would bet you she doesn't know that she's living in extreme poverty. They have money for Mt. Dew, an xbox, and a tv. They have a house, and money to party with. Therefore she can't be in extreme poverty. She knows she's poor, but isn't everyone? Which in the crux to the whole problem.

Best summed up with "When I was younger or lived in X Apartments, we didn't know we were poor. Everyone had the same experience."

[Deleted]

I'll throw in this pointless anecdote too. In MI, every kid who spent at least one night in foster care qualifies for a full ride scholarship to WMU. And I am sure most of the other state schools have similar scholarship programs. We (the county I am in) can't get one former foster kid to take it. Why? Because none of their friends or family members ever went to college so why would they want to leave the area and further their education? It's really sad.

[basilosaurus]

Aug 13, 2012 16:48:48 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:22:34 GMT -5 pedanticwench said:

IDK bunny. That seems like an overly simplistic answer to the problem.

Of course she should have had access to abortion, but I don't think that would have solved all of her problems.

Well, I didn't just say abortion is the answer. And she may not really have KNOWN she had that option, or that it wasn't a terrible idea. She was 14 and from extreme poverty.

She may not have even had the option given that she was likely on medicaid. Abortion isn't the only answer, but improving access to it is part of the solution IMO.

[druidp]

Aug 13, 2012 16:50:39 GMT -5 marie427 said:

Aug 13, 2012 16:48:48 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Well, I didn't just say abortion is the answer. And she may not really have KNOWN she had that option, or that it wasn't a terrible idea. She was 14 and from extreme poverty.

I see what you're saying, and maybe someone from that area (I know there are a few on here) can correct me if I'm wrong, but this family lives in Upstate New York. And not really rural NY either - near Albany. I would imagine the services she needed if she chose to go that route are accessible to people in that area, at least physically.

Not sure if the original story made mention, but if she were Catholic would she be less likely to pursue an abortion? (Going strictly off what I hear/read/think about Catholics, so ready for correction)

[heightsyankee]

Aug 13, 2012 15:04:16 GMT -5 Melissa W. said:

And it fucking sucks that with his behavioral issues he is suspended and spends less time being educated.

I have never understood this practice- kick the kids out who need school the most. It's lazy, if you ask me.

I wrote a brief tidbit in the other post about my sister. Anyway, she's in jail and my father has custody of her 2 kids. He was sending them to daycare while he picked up odd jobs- mostly house painting. Well, work has been slow and now he doesn't work enough hours to qualify for the voucher to send them to daycare so they are home with him. Now he can't look for more work.

I don't know what the answer is, but it isn't this.

[pedanticwench]

Hey, I will never discount the idea that attending religious services and having a strong connection with a church/congregation/faith/temple/what have you can be a remarkable benefit for those who are struggling.

But I still think there is something basic that we're missing when it comes to situations like this. What that basic something is, I'm not totally sure of myself.

[pixy0stix]

I can't remember if this has been touched, but the social stigma of using welfare programs has GOT to be removed. Anecdotes aside about skittles munching escalade drivers, this family is a perfect example. I bet the assistance they are on is based solely on what the kid needs, based upon the recommendation and insistence of the school and social services.

You can be poor "but have dignity", or you can admit you're poor and take the "handouts." I'll let you guess which ones have a better quality of life.

[pedanticwench]

You don't think these people are on government assistance?

[NitaX]

Aug 13, 2012 17:08:24 GMT -5 pedanticwench said:

You don't think these people are on government assistance?

Can't be. I didn't see no iPhone, fake nails, and skittles. And an Escalade. I need to see that first.

Pixy - Hand Ups. Not Handouts. YWIA.

[ringstrue]

Troy is like 15mins from me.

As for the kid with disabilities, treatment wise, he is in s good area with a lot of experts. This area is good for two things: healthcare and education. Having said that, Troy judicial system is FUCKED UP and not surprised they are messing with a freaking CHILD instead of getting him real, free, help. Troy is called the armpit of the area for a reason.

If you are working class, you are SOL here. There is NO industry. You could probably draw an outline of where former GE employees lived when they were intheir hay day cuz those are the trash ghettos now. It's horrible. And its an old area in general so we have student housing next to ghettos.