Judge Ernestine Steward Gray submits our Guest Article for September. Judge Gray has served with the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, Section "A", since 1984. She served as 57th President of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and Immediate Past President of the YWCA Board of Directors. Her vision is to help create and enhance a system that truly values our most precious resource ~ our children.
Say It!
By Judge Ernestine Steward Gray
Many of us are familiar with a poem by Amanda Carter entitled “If a Child.”
If a child lives with criticism,
he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
he learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
he learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame,
he learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance,
he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement,
he learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise,
he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness,
he learns justice,
If a child lives with security,
he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval,
he learns to like himself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship
He learns to find love in the world.
Several months ago an email from Beliefnet.com caught my attention. It was entitled: “You Are So Beautiful. Now Say It.” The basic premise of the article was that “how a woman sees herself and how she thinks other people see her is deeply connected to how she feels about herself.” In essence when women begin to let feelings of “worthlessness, self-consciousness and inadequacy insinuate their way into their lives, those feelings interfere with their relationship with themselves and everyone else.” We are familiar with the situation where the victim comes to identify with and bond with his or her captor (Stockholm syndrome) or where the battered woman begins to see herself and talks about herself in the same derogatory terms as her batterer.
When I initially read this article, I thought “wow, if this is true for adult women, what of the children who are on the receiving end of the many negative descriptions of them. I have been thinking about the article ever since and trying to figure out how I could use it to make the point that it is critically important for us, as a society, to stop, now, the negative messages that we send to our children.
The young people today are referred to in many negative terms, i.e. amoral, bad, delinquent, deviant, doofus, gang members, lost generation, mall rats, remorseless, ruthless, self-centered, sociopaths, super predators, the numb generation, the blank generation, troubled, violent and wayward. If children are bombarded with these negative images, they soon become what we say they are.
As professionals involved with children and youth, the work that we must do is laid out clearly before us. In order to change the self-hatred that many youth exhibit, we must develop new language which sends positive messages to our children. Language and words that create and boost self-esteem have as much power as negative language.
It starts in the home. First of all, children should be told repeatedly that they are brave, good, pretty, smart, valued and wanted. Most of all they should be told that they are loved. That love is not conditioned on anything other than that they are who they are. These messages should be reinforced by messages that make it clear that they are expected to have these desirable traits. It should be communicated to them that these desirable traits are inherent because that is the way their ancestors were and that is how all people are.
Next the effort should carry over into society in general. In schools, churches and synagogues, the play ground, in essence, in “the village.” Teachers should make it clear that they expect good things from the youth. Each success should be praised while being characterized as expected. Failures and short comings should be referred to as “out of character” and unexpected. The messages should be sent that the failure can be corrected because of the ability of the child attempting to make the correction.
We must help our young people see that within them is the capacity for good and help them develop ways to nurture and develop that capacity. The first step is to “Say It.”
Let’s make sure that our children no longer have to live with criticism, hostility, ridicule, shame, intolerance, discouragement, lack of praise, unfairness, insecurity, disapproval, lack of acceptance and lack of friendship.
