Generational Poverty

Currently there is lots of public furor regarding "illegal immigrants" coming to America, taking jobs away from Americans, and costing the US taxpayers by utilizing services paid for by our tax dollars. What I see are folks who come here risking everything, including death, just to get here. Once here, they take whatever job is available. Typically these jobs are physically exhausting, dangerous, and low paying. There is no “40-hour work week”. Most newly immigrated people work 80 hours a week. They live 8 - 10 or more people in a small space so they can pay the bills. They aren't eligible for food stamps, childcare our housing subsidies, welfare or Medicaid. They work hard, earn money, spend money, save money, and send money to their families in Mexico. They take turns caring for the children. They don't come here knowing English in most cases, but they are acquiring English skills faster than any other immigrant group in the history of America. Most use a false social security number, so they are paying taxes into the US treasury, but often don't know they can, or are afraid to file taxes and receive a tax refund even though they likely qualify for one because of their low income.

The focus on undocumented workers reminds me of the focus some years ago on the abuse of children by their nannies. We have a near epidemic of children dieing in car accidents because they aren’t properly restrained. This tragic reality is true for children of all races and ethnicities and from all socioeconomic strata. Yet a few years ago, our media and our private conversations focused on a relatively small number of children who are at risk of being abused by private nannies hired to care for them.

It seems to me that we are again focusing on the wrong issue. Within our own citizenry, families are poor and getting poorer. Poverty is very expensive and far reaching. Poverty is a major risk factor for so many other issues such as child abuse and neglect, risk of school failure, early sexual behaviors, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol dependency, domestic violence, gang involvement, teen suicide and homicide, juvenile criminal behavior, adult criminal behavior and on and on and on. The money required to address these latent effects is astronomical.

In America we have an underclass of people who speak English, have a social security number, are able-bodied and as intellectually capable as their Mexican counterparts, who live in public housing or receive housing subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, WIC and who visit food pantries and get help from churches and nonprofits to pay their power bills, medical and prescription co-pays, get help with heating costs, and help at Christmas for their children. These folks can't get a job because if they do their subsidies will be cut. They can't make enough money working jobs they qualify for to pay the bills and provide medical insurance for their children.

So these American families maintain their lives on welfare. Parents unknowingly teach their children how to survive in poverty rather than how to have educational and employment success. Perhaps these parents have no idea how to help their children succeed, or don't believe that such a path is possible for their family. They are surrounded by others who live similar lives, so they have no role models they can relate to who might guide them to a different kind of life. They never developed a work ethic and they don't see a way out.

Please understand. There are many families who find themselves in need of temporary assistance from entitlement benefits. I am not asserting that entitlement benefits or the people who use them are inherently bad. In fact, the benefits are vital life preservers for families who aren’t able to sustain themselves any other way. (By the way, Social Security and Medicare are also an “entitlement benefits,” so it is important not to fall victim to the belief that only certain types of people use entitlements.)

But our economy and our laws and the businesses in our communities must be designed to work WITH entitlement benefits so that each supports the other and people are able to work their way off of welfare. As the system exists, most of us would not choose to risk losing our children’s insurance, our housing, and food for our entire family just so that we can say we go to work every day. First, going to work every day must begin to translate into being able to provide for your family.

There has always been a segment of our society that isn’t able to succeed educationally. But historically, these members of society could go to work at a factory, learn a skill and do that skill over and over for 40 years until they could retire. Or they could join and retire from the military. In today’s world, the factories are largely absent and the qualifications for joining the military have become more stringent. The service industry is about the only employment available for those who aren't able to finish high school, or those who may be functionally illiterate.

But the service industry still behaves as if it employs high school kids ~ not heads of households. Service industries are making record-breaking profits and employing ever growing numbers of people, indicating they are profiting from the employment and underpayment of our most vulnerable working folks. Service industries must provide health care ~ or the US government must. Laws have to change so that minimum wage lifts a person working 40 hours a week out of poverty. If our nation’s laws don’t increase the minimum wage, then service industries such as fast food restaurant chains and big retailers should be required to pay a much higher minimum wage. This approach is now being used in cities such as Chicago, though the practice is being challenged in court.

Another factor which may be the most difficult challenge is instilling in people who have little or no work experience and who have been left out of the educational and economic landscape of our society, a burning desire ~ an internal mechanism ~ that makes it uncomfortable to have to receive entitlement benefits and that makes working the most attractive option for sustaining family and self.

This is challenging in part because these folks aren't likely to trust people who they feel are judging them or who just don't get it. And they are often times struggling with physical and/or mental health problems, substance abuse, have very limited literacy, no reliable transportation, and no deeply embedded work ethic that will sustain them through challenges on the job such as difficult work environments, bosses they don't like, and co-workers who might treat them poorly.

But it is basic to individual success that a shift occur in the minds and hearts of all able-bodied, able-minded people so that they see a better future, want a better future, and are willing to work hard for it. And when they do work hard, they need to see their lives improve.

We are challenged as a community to find a way to help ~ without judgment ~ those who need our help. We are obligated as a society to ensure that people in our communities don’t go hungry, have equal opportunities to acquire the tools necessary to excel and prosper in our economy, and to find creative ways to lift up those who have only known poverty.

If we were to expend the financial, emotional, and creative resources we are currently using on the immigration debate to find permanent solutions to lifting up our own economic underclass, we could surely be successful.

Fake It 'Till You Break It

Like most people, there are things I have a wonderful internal motivation for, like eating, sleeping, seeing beauty in small things, pulling weeds, and watching nature. And, like most people, my internal motivation is very weak in other areas. Many of the things I am NOT motivated to do are pretty important.

Like cleaning house. I am actually related to people who have a clean and organized house ALL THE TIME, and some of them even have children. I'm pretty good about it now, but when I was a teenager and living as an adult, there was no one to make me clean my room, and the whole house was my responsibility. So, I psyched myself into doing what must be done by pretending I was cleaning house for someone else. Sometimes it was for a family whose mother was unable to clean the house, and her small children suffered from the nasty conditions of their home. As I cleaned, I had a mental conversation with others about the situation, and how I was helping this family, especially the children, have a better life by cleaning their home.

When I began college, I had an 11-week-old baby. So all four years were very difficult in many ways. But I met the challenge and did relatively well. I did REALLY well in classes. I did REALLY well as a mother (even as a housekeeper). But when it came time to stop whirring around at 100 mph taking care of EVERYTHING, I had terrible trouble allowing myself drift off to sleep. Everything I hadn't finished, every upcoming test or paper, every lingering bill that I couldn't pay because we had so little money kept running through my mind as I closed my eyes seeking restful, restorative sleep.

Once again, "pretending" as I thought of it, came to my rescue. I laid in my bed with my eyes closed and imagined that I was unable to interact, only hear as the authoritative male voice of a doctor said to my loved ones, "She's exhausted. She must rest. She is unable to keep going like this. It has taken a heavy toll. How long? Well, that depends. Right now, she must be allowed to sleep." Then I would hear the doctor tell me he was going to give me something in my IV that would make me go to sleep. I would fall asleep almost immediately after those comforting words, and with the "permission" I had been given to let others take over, because I couldn't do it any longer.

This happened over and over, night after night. It was before I knew anything about the mind-body connection or creative visualization. It was before I knew that I could create the reality I wanted or needed in my life by practicing it over and over in my mind. I didn't know that our brain doesn't know the difference between a real experience and one that is imaginary. I didn't know that my brain created synapses based on how many times areas of the brain were triggered, that every time I practiced something, real or imaginary, my brain was mapping it, and making it hardwired.

I should have had a clue about this when, every time my mother would come visit me, I immediately came down with a terrible cold or flu or some other illness that took me out of commission for 3 days. Someone was there to share the very heavy load. Someone else could cook the food, clean the house, care for the baby. After my 3-day illness, I was back to my old self, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound.

After graduate school, I found myself under a doctor's care (several doctors, actually). But the medical community was befuddled. They could find no physiological reason why I would wake up in the morning feeling good, and full of energy. But by the time I finished my shower and dried my hair, I felt as though I had lead pumping through my veins. I would drag myself to the bed and sleep, hard, drooling, long dream sleep for the entire day. Sometimes I could manage to get up to make my daughter, now in middle school, something for dinner, check in with her about her day, then it was back to bed. I slept 20 hours a day for a year.

If it hadn't been for my child's father who paid the bills, learned how to cook, learned how to be a single parent, and who was endlessly patient, I don't know what would have happened. I remember many times when we would try to go out to dinner. Nothing fancy, Steak N Shake, maybe. By the time the waitress got our order, I was feeling really heavy and I knew I wouldn't make it through the meal. By the time the food got to the table, I was laying in the back seat of the car, sound asleep. I didn't hurt anywhere. I was just "uber" sleepy all the time, and would fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I had created reality from the fantasy I used to help me go to sleep every night.

Of course, it was more complicated than all of that. I tried to find out why my body was responding the way it was responding. What mechanism was in place that caused such exhaustion? I saw a couple of acupuncturists who both said that we have energy that we operate from daily, and which is recouped when we have restful sleep every day. We also have an additional store of energy that we sometimes need in emergencies, when we have to get through a crisis. This store of energy is there for times of need, and not what we are supposed to operate from. They told me that I had burned through my "everyday energy" and I then began using my "reserve energy" until it was depleted.

I felt tremendously better after each treatment, but by the time I came back for my next treatment, I was depleted again. Finally, the acupuncturist asked me what I was doing when I left his office. "I clean my house, take walks, prepare meals, hang out with my daughter, driver her around, etc." He instructed me that from now on, when I leave his office feeling better, I am to go home and lay on the couch. He said that he is trying to build up my "emergency" energy stores, then he can work on the "everyday" energy stores. He said that every time I come in, he has to start all over again because I have used up all the benefit of the acupuncture.

So, I began learning how to pace myself. I'm still not great at it. But I am careful about getting a good night's sleep, eating healthy food most of the time, gentle exercise, doing work that is meaningful but that doesn't cause a depletion of my emotional energy, and spending time with people and activities that "fill me up" rather than drain me.

I am about to enter into a new stage in life. I am looking hard for a new career that uses more of my talents, and brings me more joy than my previous career. The work I have been doing for many years is the most important work I will ever do as a Child Protective Services social worker. But it is a job I could not do indefinitely without it taking a massive toll on my spirit. I have done good work, but need to move on now.

My daughter has graduated from high school and and entered college. Ihave finally come home to the mountainous town I love where I lived for 20 years before moving to be closer to my daughter's father during my "sleeping sickness." I'm awake now.

Knowing the power of the mind, you bet I'm picturing myself in the kind of career I want, in the house I want to live in with the mountains in the background, fruit trees, a grassy knoll, a large vegetable garden, and many flower beds bursting with flowers. I envision myself hiking with friends, having dinner with friends, going contra dancing on Thursday nights, joining a writer's club, writing and being published, going to Mexico to scuba dive, visiting a friend in Juno, and family in Great Brittan. I hope to harness my synapses to get me where ever I want to go, but I'm very careful now what I ask for!

Children's Needs

As a social worker who sees many children from a variety of different family situations, one thing that stands out is how difficult it is for young children to emotionally remain children in our society. Parents often tell me that their child loves video games, that TV or games are the only things that seem to entertain their children. Some parents have the TV on all the time, background noise that they don't filter for their children. Their children watch daytime "talk shows" that show adults yelling, fighting, and telling about the odd realities of their lives, the lies they have told, the many people they have had sex with, or whatever else has made them "interesting" enough to be on these shows.

Other parents structure their lives around adult activities, their children exposed to adult situations on a frequent or continual basis. They have lives filled with visiting adult friends, spending the night at one house, then another as the adults party and enjoy their relationships with each other. These parents seem to feel that, as long as their child has something or someone to play with, the child is "happy." Later, when the child is older and begins to have problems with peer relationships, teachers, and parents, the parents don't seem to understand that it was this instability and severe lack of what young children need that contributed to their child's chaotic and sometimes dangerous, belligerant and defiant behaviors.

A young child needs predictability in her life. She is beginning to hone in on people and things and to have a sense of connection with them. She needs to know the routine: dinner with the people I live with, bath, reading time, and bed time. She needs to sleep in the same bed most of the time. Not 51% of the time, but 90% of the time.

She needs to know that the people around her are safe, and they have good boundaries. She won’t know these things if they are present, but she will learn them quickly if they are not present.

She needs to be around adults who are sober, whose behavior is consistent, and kind. This is how she will find and connect to sober and kind people in her lifetime, and this is the behavior she will model throughout her life. If she becomes comfortable with people who are kind sometimes, too close so that she is made to feel uncomfortable sometimes, gruff or angry with people around them sometimes, and absent for periods of time because he or she is angry or high or “needs space,” she will develop an insecurity about people that will last well beyond her childhood.

She needs a parent (preferably two parents) who are constantly checking her environment to ensure that she is safe, that she isn’t being exposed to foul language, inappropriate media such as adult programming or music that is full of negative images, anger, lust, and sex. Her young brain is not equipped to handle adult situations or concepts. They become a source of anxiety until she develops the ability to block them out completely. I have had so many parents tell me that their kids love watching adult horror movies such as the “Chuckie” series, and they say their kids aren’t disturbed by what they see. In reality, the children have had (and may still have) terrible nightmares about the movies and the images of terror, bloody violence, and death. But the human mind becomes numb, and the child begins to act out the scary parts so that she is protected in some sense. She becomes the monster in her play, rather than the victim because that would be too horrible to experience, even in play. This is how children’s behaviors are impacted by inappropriate media. They act out and attempt to become what they are afraid of to ward off the terrible possibility that what they saw can happen to them.

Children have the same response to being victims of sex crimes by either adults or other children. Once a child has had a sexual encounter, that victim child frequently tries to act out what has happened to them on younger children. When they are successful, they are no longer a victim, but a perpetrator. Being a victim is emotionally much more difficult for a mind to deal with than being a non-victim. Children don’t see that what they are doing is attempting to stop feeling hurt. And their actions with other children don’t really make things better. They just change the dynamics into something more easily tolerated.