Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl01352)

Dear Richard,

If you're talking about battling bureaucrats ... I did 23 years of that, & I
pity any child that gets tanged up in it. It's bad enough for the grown ups
I tried to help.

By "we", I meant our society. We have all the good ideas, & child
psychological, -sociological, - physiological research. I just listed a few
things amateurs can do to help, in my answer to Daniel. I also just saw an
example of what you can do with kids. I belong to the Friends of the Library
& we sponsored TV-Turnoff days. To make it easier, we had an activity going
on each of the 4 TV-Turnoff Thursdays, & the leaders were Friends members
with certain skills. We made sure that there was only a minimum of things to
prepare ahead of time. All of the events were well attended by little kids
with parents & we all had a ball. We had story telling, at the end of which
a state senator came & read the kids a book. He's going to send them all
certificates. Then we had crafts night, & they made licorice & fruit loop
necklaces, then we had a singalong with Cele playing the guitar, then we had
game night. What I'm trying to say is I think part of it is that people
don't know what to do with their kids. Part of it is also that everyone
works & they don't have time for their kids. One of the women in the Friends
group is newly divorced. She now lives near her parents, & her 3rd grader
goes to their house after school & they give him cookies & play with him.
That's nice for grandparents, & the kid is well taken care of till she gets
home from work. I wish I could have done more with my grand kids. They were
always out of the country. I think it would help a great deal if someone
were in charge of kids who knew what to do with them, until their parents
come home from work. Of course, if you have nutty parents who abuse their
kids, then that's a diferent ball game. I'm not talking about those kids
especially. So generally, when I said "we", I meant all of us collectively.
The knowledge & the money is there. It's just not being applied.
Liesel