REACHING OUR TROUBLED CHILDREN

A society can be judged by how it treats its children, even those most troubled and disturbed. Many choose to 'throw away' those children who are deemed delinquent. But how did they become that way? It is not just their choices but it is also the failure of adults in their lives to truly reach out and guide these children. Court systems, Child Protective services, and our educational systems fail these children time and time again. They are shuffled off to placements and through psychiatric ceremonials only to become more bitter, more hardened, more distressed, and more disturbed. They sentence them to a spiritual death. We should be investing our time to teach new skills, to change the frame of reference, to show compassion and wisdom. We must have patience and journey with these children, to know that someone truly cares and that their pains and hurts need not be self destructive. But the issue remains greed. It is profitable to keep the status quo, the psychiatric establishment profits and so do others. No one wants to take the time to bother with these children, few are interested in social justice, few want to give the things that would truly rehabilitate.
I hope that there will be those who will wage a non violent resistance and to once again make our children a priority. We live in a society where there must always be winners and losers, it impacts every aspect of how we conduct ourselves, in courts, in politics, in business. If only we can regain a sense of our common humanity, and be able to develop concern for others, even the most troubled. We are creating the monsters by our failure to meet the true needs of our children, we are contributing to their demise. Hopefully we will soon awaken to this and make the important changes.

-Dan L.Edmunds,Ed.D.
www.DrDanEdmunds.com