in the wind | tweets in the space ending 03.29.14

• > Bill Nye speaks up | myths about poverty + responsibility

• > did someone finally make an app too mean for teenagers? http://bit.ly/1fUtOqs

• > what do you think? 185 movies for kids 2-6, 7-12 + 13-17 from Common Sense Media http://bit.ly/1fUq8ou 

• > not yet | kids haven't given up on TV sets or paper magazines + books - but you knew that http://bit.ly/1lSQH1e

• > shaming | a small idea from Raising Adults

• > New England pediatrician blames 'anti-vaxxers' for new measles outbreak http://thebea.st/1nnAsuQ

• > respect | a small idea from Raising Adults

• > Brilliant! My high school had a sane 8:35 start time - how about yours? http://nyti.ms/PAwsbN

• > a thought-provoking examination of the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case from the pages of Religion & Politics http://bit.ly/1lTe08q

• > measles, mumps + other bumps | another heartfelt "thanks a lot" from a pediatrician to anti-vaxxer #parents http://thebea.st/1gLruSR

• > Drug Dealers Aren't to Blame for the Heroin Boom. Doctors Are http://bit.ly/1hNc6Dw New Republic

• > taming | a small idea from Raising Adults

• > encouraging | a small idea from Raising Adults

• > something new | a lovely video from Tom Fletcher http://lnkd.in/aKNKvi

• > Common Sense Media's 2014 Learning Awards for children's digital media (age 3-13+) http://bit.ly/NQgmsD

• > problem or crime? | 5 Offenses That Can Land Kids (But Not Adults) In Jail http://rol.st/QgRZ9A @RollingStone

• > ...and that's when it occurred to him... | the Bible

• > culture soup | a small idea from Raising Adults
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culture soup | a small idea from Raising Adults

If parents, teachers, mentors, coaches, employers, youth workers—all of us who nurture kids—learn to really, really listen,  those kids will tell us most of what we need to know to understand them. And raise them better.

What they’ll describe, and what we can see if we look hard enough, is the cultural soup we’re all in. It’s our soup in the sense that it’s derived from the distinctive flavors each living generation contributes to the mix…thus it’s everyone’s soup. You may like it or not; you may find it too salty for your taste, or too pungent. I haven’t bumped into many adults of my generation who think it’s too sweet.

Be that as it may. It’s not just our soup. It's created by all of us together...crowdsourced if anything ever was.

In my years as a youth worker, writer and visual storyteller I’ve had the good fortune to sample quite a mix of youth cultures across North America—from Florida to Alaska; Long Island to Long Beach; rich, poor, middle-class; majority, minority; mainstream, fringe—and for all the differences, I am struck by how much common experience there is across the board. I wouldn't call it a monoculture but the similarities between kids growing up in wildly different geographic, ethnic and socioeconomic settings; people who on the face of it appear to share little in common, is really something. There are massive forces at work, some hidden, some in plain sight. I think learning to understand and even appreciate that leads to a deeper, more generous appreciation of individuals who are both seasoned by and contribute to the the flavor of the current culture  soup.

Or not. Some adults are so uncomfortable with their offspring, they would just as soon skip a generation…or two. It’s shocking to me how often it’s turned that the question behind the questions I heard from someone in business or the Church (or both) was: Do you think we can survive if we skip a generation? Can we just ignore them and hope they’ll go away? 

To which my answer is: Believe me, ignore them and they will go away...from you at least.

— from Raising Adults

...and that's when it occurred to him... | what folks believe about the Bible

…and that’s when it occurred to him that the people he was talking with hadn't read the Bible, didn't read the Bible, weren't really planning to read the Bible. They knew sentences from here and there – taught by someone to prove a point ... and that, apparently was all they wanted.

These folks said they believed the Bible but, really, they believed what they believed about the Bible. Which, he thought, explained a lot about how they treated their neighbors.

encouraging | a small idea from Raising Adults

Instead of taming our children’s dreams and aspirations, why not encourage them? The verb to encourage means to put courage in. There’s a line in the Bible that says we ought to encourage each other to love and good deeds.

I really like that. There’s so much that discourages children—taking courage out of them. That’s why I like Junior Achievement, the economic education agency that puts ordinary businesspeople in classrooms to help kids learn how to find (or even make) their place in the economy.

And it’s why I like Compassion, the child development agency that creates hope for kids by training them to live well and to make a living wherever they are in the world.

I place high value on teachers who are in a position to encourage kids; and youth workers, mentors, coaches, service industry employers, grandparents, law enforcement officers, entertainers, neighbors...we’re all in positions to encourage kids to attempt great things; to learn from both succeeding and falling short; to be wise in assessing what can and can’t—and what should and shouldn’t—be changed; to change what can and should be changed for the better; to gracefully accept what can’t or shouldn’t be changed; to live productively and generously.

We’re well positioned to encourage kids that way. The Big Question is: Do we have a surplus of courage—not pandering rah-rah but real courage—to share with them? And if not, can we get it?

What this comes down to on a practical level can be framed in learning and teaching an uncomplicated skill that helps children understand where to look for encouragement when they need it. I don’t know whose metaphor this is (I first heard it from Max Paul Franklin). Each person we encounter is a fueler or a drainer. 

Drainers take energy from us either because they are empty and have nothing to give or because they are selfish. 

taming | a small idea from Raising Adults

As a kid I was taught to believe that any boy could grow up to be president—and any girl could grow up to be that president’s mistress. Don’t hit me; that’s the America where I grew up. To make any sense of that, it helps to recall that just a hundred years ago, women were excluded from voting in U.S. elections—and they weren’t the only ones. Incredible. It also helps to reflect that, following 1920, quite a few baby women grew up to prove that a woman’s worth does not end in the House but extends to the Senate (and the Courthouse, and the Statehouse). That said, women in the U.S. still make considerable less than men who do the same work, so…

From just after the second world war to roughly the start of the Second Gulf War (with short breaks for mild to medium recessions), American children were taught to believe they could have it all—or certainly a large part of it—as wage earners in the planet’s largest economic middle class.* These days children are taught to believe they’ll be lucky to get a job that pays enough to afford food, housing and transportation. 

This scenario is complicated by the fact that on a global scale our kids are lucky—or fortunate if you prefer...or blessed. All children are born poor. We tumble into this space empty-handed. Our parents either do or don’t have the resources to support us comfortably. There’s a range of opinion about what’s comfortable. In a recent election cycle, $250,000 a year was identified by some as scraping by, and $7.25 an hour was declared to be an exorbitant wage. Both of these cannot be true (and in fact I’m reasonably sure neither is). Setting that aside for the moment, it’s probably fair to say that compared to most people who ever lived, we and our offspring were born into relative abundance. Most earthlings have never expected to own the roof that sheltered them nor travel in anything like their own private automobile. But things have been somewhat different on the continent I call home.

For most of the last century, North Americans surfed the global economy like long board riders—wiping out in the 1930s, then catching a succession of big waves in nearly every decade since. The first edition of this book was written as Wall Street dragged itself to the beach after a bone-crunching face plant. As I write today, the financial industry celebrates a banner year reflected in a Dow Jones average that climbed past 16,000. Who knows? As you read this the Dow may have passed 20,000. Or it may have retreated to 8,000. What seems clear is that another set of waves is always forming, then breaking. 

respect | a small idea from Raising Adults

Guilt is the appropriate blush response that says I did something wrong, I should make it right. Shame is a deeper blush that says I am something wrong and I can never be made right. I was well into my 30’s before I started to recognize shaming for what it is. Shaming is a lie. It’s a damned lie.

It turns out that, as satisfying as shaming can be, it’s not nearly as satisfying as mutual respect. My uncle Bryant Kendall…my coach Verlyn Giles…a youth worker named Shuford Davis…a campus worker named Bob Norwood…more  school teachers than I can name… All these folks treated me with extraordinary respect. They listened to me and took my ideas seriously. They asked good questions. They talked straight. They gave me training and responsibility. My uncle helped me learn to mow lawns well before I was allowed to touch anything with a motor at home. Teachers encouraged me to think outside the box and helped me learn to sort my thoughts and express them directly and economically. Verlyn Giles helped me learn to think and communicate under pressure. Bob Norwood asked questions that encouraged me choose between good and better. Shuford Davis asked questions that caused me to address spirituality with my mind as well as my heart.

Respect for kids isn’t a free pass on anything and everything; in fact, it can be very challenging in the best, most realistic sense. Respect springs from the knowledge that all of us are works in progress. None of us knows anything we didn’t learn and every one of us has a lot more ground to cover before we’re done for the day. Unless, of course, we decide to call it quits and live off what we learned in the past—unless we choose to embrace irrelevance. 

Shaming is a monologue. Respect is a dialogue. The surest way for me to show respect is to ask honest questions and listen carefully until the other person is pretty sure I’ve done my best to understand.

Respect is a learning posture that grants the possibility that what’s obvious to one person may not be a bit obvious to someone else. And that’s a pretty good place to begin any conversation. 

And isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh so that’s how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that.

—Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, William Morrow, 2001, page xiii 

— from Raising Adults

shaming | a small idea from Raising Adults

No one knows anything he didn’t learn.

That’s not a theological statement, if you’re looking for offenses against that form of correctness (I will be happy to discuss innocence and depravity in another forum). What I’m saying is that adults are acting unreasonably if they humiliate children because the youngsters haven’t yet learned adult things.

And not just unreasonable; mean. The message kids get is, “If you don’t know what I know, there’s something wrong with you.” 

Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelson called this adultism in their book, Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World:

The language of adultisms is, “Why can’t you ever? How come you never? Surely you realize! How many times do I have to tell you? Why are you so childish? When will you ever grow up? Did you? Can you? Will you? Won’t you? Are you? Aren’t you?

I have been that guy. Most notably (though, not exclusively) in my own home. When our daughter Kate stood at the threshold of adolescence, she sometimes seemed a bit, let us say...irrational. It didn’t last long, but the hormone bath her body gave her brain turned Kate inside out for a few weeks. Almost overnight she went from pleasant and engaging to surly and sarcastic (I have no idea where she saw that sort of behavior modeled). One night—I no longer remember the provocation—I marched into Kate’s bedroom and with language I don’t use against anybody told her we wouldn’t be putting up with her…um, nonsense.

The shock and pain in Kate’s eyes broke my heart because I saw I had just broken hers. I fled her room in a fit of self-loathing. I was particularly ashamed because my day job at the time was working with adolescents in a church. 

I knew plenty about puberty. But I forgot everything I knew when my own daughter got a little cranky. I viewed her with contempt for not being able to surf the hormonal tide surging through her body. I should’ve been flogged. 

Bill Nye speaks up | myths about poverty + response

in the wind | tweets ending the week of 03.01.14

the new apostles creed | what orthodox Christians have always believed jimhancock.blogspot.com

Interview | It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens | Danah Boyd http://bit.ly/1c0YLUW 

Demanding | a small idea from Raising Adults 
jimhancock.blogspot.com

@FrDark ! How did I miss this new(ish) novel!

affirming | a small idea from Raising Adults jimhancock.blogspot.com

​@DarrellIssa Light the future of 50M Africans @ONECampaign @HouseForeign 
http://t.co/ZLg0XEUjh7

Just back from Dominican Republic with @Compassion. I salute all who serve poor folk, but dang! Compassion is SO good at lifting people up.