The scramble to find reasons and culprits for the recent riots in England has demonstrated again just how visceral is our desire to apportion blame. Once more, parents, particularly single parents, were right up there along with gangs, drugs and schools. Never mind that single parents may have experienced years of abuse themselves, or may be struggling to hold down two jobs to provide for their family; now it seems we expect parents to know where there teenage children are, and what they are doing, at all times. Pointing the finger to the bottom of the pile is easier than asking more troubling questions about our attitudes to those different to ourselves, about the values we have come to hold as a society, and the priorities we have placed on growth, wealth, advancement. Arguably we are all to blame once we buy into this way of life. Continue reading
Category Archives: Discussion
Some Summer Holiday Reading
Restorative responses that are high both on accountability and support are widely evidenced not only for their culturally transferability but their ability to achieve high engagement, ownership and accountability, and empower individuals to change. Step Up is a model that could also be adapted for use in schools, preventative services and a range of family service providers.
(Lynette Robinson, p32)
A series of three articles about the Step Up programme, developed within the youth justice system in the US as a dedicated response to adolescent violence to parents: Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, publications
Reader beware!
This poster has been on display until recently at my local underground station. We may quibble with the statistic, but it’s helpful to remember sometimes that the majority of young people do not offend in any way, in view of some the news items (here and here) that I have picked up over the last couple of weeks following the launch of a book by Dr. Aric Sigman. (The Spoilt Generation: Standing Up to Our Demanding Children, 2011, Piatkus Books) Continue reading
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The Learning of Shame
ON a recent Eurostar journey, I found myself seated in a carriage, judging by appearances, designated for parents and babies. Little ones cried, were fed and burped, everyone smiled; and if they fussed too much their long suffering parents walked up and down or took them to look out of the window. Not so, the woman travelling alone with a toddler three rows back. Whether from anger, frustration or simple exhaustion, this child screamed for the full two hours of the journey, interspersed with the kicking of seats and the hurling of fists, toys, legs and head at her mother, who worked desperately to calm her. At first passengers were patient, then heads were turned, and finally, as if one, they rose to stare. Not one, mind, offered to help. As if hypnotized, the mother took her child, still protesting, out of the carriage and the cacophony was thus muted for the remainder of the journey, till both returned, drained of everything, ten minutes before we arrived. As we left the carriage, a few kindly souls, fellow travellers, remembering their own attempts to pin a two-year-old child into a confined space for two hours, murmured pleasantries, or helped with her bags, to assuage their guilt. Continue reading
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HOLES IN THE WALL 