Optimism and Children During Tough Times

While doing some research for my educational website RoccoBasile.org, I found a a book entitled The Optimistic Child, which talks about how Author Martin Seligman discovered that children find fights between mom and dad disturbing. He said, "We tracked a group of 700 children between grades three and six and asked which kids get depressed and go through their first bout of depression. We found 20 percent of them do, and that the thing which most leads to depression is parents fighting."

The doctor recognizes that fights do happen between family members, but he suggests keeping them to a minimum, and when it does happen, make up in front of the children, as his studies found this helps minimize damage to the children.

This all makes sense to me, because of my own observations with my charity work for Children of the City. They have a fantastic program called Strong Minds - Strong Homes (SMASH) is a volunteer-based program in Sunset Park in Brooklyn that helps children and their families so negative issues caused by tough economic times will not affect them as much. The volunteer-based charity meets children (Left) and their families and connects them with services they might not otherwise seek out on their own.

The goals of the Strong Minds & Strong Homes project are to:
1)Build a healthy community by increasing the connections between community members and service providers;
2) Empower parents to meet basic physical needs of their children by connecting them to food pantries, clothing providers, employment services, and other social services;
3) Equip the parents to raise healthy children by training and supporting them in using healthy developmental strategies to raise their children, which reduces incidences of neglect and abuse;
4) Increase any educational opportunities for children by advocating at local schools and connecting them with supplemental academic programs.

For the most part, Children of the City believes that mobilizing the community members to work together for the good of the entire neighborhood is the most effective tool for transforming communities. What's more, every year the organization conducts an outreach to over 500 families in Sunset Park, interacting with more than 900 children each month.

Our volunteers make preliminary assessments, noting the living conditions and any salient issues affecting children in the home, providing the families families with information about community services and also those that Children of the City offers.

Because many of the children live in poverty, advocacy includes working with parents to address areas that range from landlord neglect to helping parents secure proper food and clothing. There are always both language and cultural barriers that prevent families from accessing much needed services for their kids.

Then, once the needs of children and families have been assessed, Children of the City counselors offer counseling and advocacy to those who request it, or they provide referrals to other social community services.

These kids of services, along with optimism and calm offered by parents during touch times, can go along way to mitigate any negative effects on our children.

-- Rocco Basile