I’ve always hated Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Holidays are stressful times for many people, but they are especially difficult for those of us who are adoptees or have had a history of foster care placement.

As an adoptee growing up in a huge Christian family, I couldn’t feel the joy and sense of belonging that they felt.  Instead, I was an imposter who pretended to be happy and “grateful” for being “saved” from the foster care system, for having a home and lots of gifts under the tree.  But I knew I was there to fill a void in my adoptive parents’ lives and to make them feel normal and complete.

I was surrounded by people who believed that I was only supposed to focus only on my life post adoption.  Everything that happened before wasn’t supposed to matter.  We couldn’t talk about the past because it might make somebody sitting at the table feel bad about my loss, and their own.  Somehow, the toys and holiday cheer was supposed to erase the trauma and unacknowledged grief of being separated from my biological parents.  And it was supposed to erase my adoptive parents’ inability to bring their own children into the world.

I actually resented my adoptive relatives for their privilege.  The privilege of being able to sit at the table and talk about who looks like who.  The privilege of talking about births, names, roots, memories, photos, and shared history.  The privilege of being able to celebrate how they plucked me from the foster care system and added me to their family.

“When we got Stacey.” 

 “We chose you.” 

 “Like our own.” 

Those were the simple phrases that got uttered during conversations and made me want to stuff myself head first into the cooked gut of the turkey.  And there was always a cousin or two who reminded me that I wasn’t cut from the same cloth as them.  Their whispers and giggles at holiday gatherings made me paranoid that they were talking about me, making fun of me because, as they said, “my real mama didn’t want me.”

I was the small, silent observer choking back tears, faking smiles, wondering about my “real” family, feeling guilty for wondering about my “real” family, and wishing I could be reborn into better and more authentic circumstances.  Most times I got through holiday gatherings by withdrawing to some quiet corner away from everybody.  I was that kind of girl who would rather be alone than be surrounded by a whole lot of people and still feel like an outsider.

By the time I was 12 I was right back in foster care.  I spent so many holidays in the homes of strangers.  Black people.  White people.  Christians.  Catholics.  Jehovah’s Witnesses.  In the boondocks.  In the ‘hood.  My foster parents did the best they could to include me in the day’s events.  But I often felt guilty for being this dark shadow, this fleshy burden in their homes.  I felt bad that they were obligated to keep me safe and buy me a gift so I wouldn’t feel left out.  After the dinners I stowed myself away in my borrowed room so they could be themselves without this stranger in their midst.

And then there were the holidays in the youth shelters and group homes.  Some of my foster brothers and sisters got to go home for the holidays.  For some of us it wasn’t safe.  So we stayed behind, opening donated gifts that were marked “boy” or “girl.”  The fact that the gifts were anonymous worked for me because then I didn’t feel like I owed anybody anything.

I had my first Christmas with some of my biological relatives when I was 16.  Years before that I had fantasized about how wonderful the holidays would be with them.  I thought I’d finally be surrounded by people who looked like me.  People who would create a space for me in their home and hearts.  People who would love me unconditionally.  People who would keep me this time around.

But the fact is, they believed they owed me nothing other than edited versions of the truth.  All those years separated and our divergent life trajectories had made us into different people with nothing in common accept blood and genes, and even that was debatable. 

So there I was again, an outsider at Christmas in a family with secrets.  I resented my biological relatives for their privilege.  The privilege of having stayed together while I was separated from the family.  The privilege of talking about births, names, roots, memories, photos, and shared history that I was cut off from.  And we couldn’t talk about that big elephant in the room – the painful and tragic events that led to my adoption.

Over the years many wonderful people in my life have reached out during this time of the year to invite me to their homes.  I always say thank you, but no.  I know they mean well and they’re coming from a genuinely loving place.  But there’s still the little girl in me who is grieving the loss of her parents, who still resents having been abandoned, adopted, and having spent the rest of her childhood as a ward of the state after a failed adoption.

I’m not sure if the people in my life feel bad for me or if they worry that I’m in some dark corner curled up and depressed this time of the year.  And I’m not sure if they take my declining of their invites personally.  I want them to know that sometimes I do curl up and sleep the day away.  I do grieve during the holidays.  I acknowledge my losses (and the love I’ve gained).  And I count my blessings.  But I refuse to sit at somebody else’s table and being that outsider.  Your happy moments with your family only reminds me of what I lost.  For some adoptees and foster kids, grieving that loss is a lifelong process.  It’s okay to let us take that journey and to define when and where we want to enter.

A few years ago I started what I call an “orphan party.”  Every Thanksgiving I invited people to my home who considered themselves orphans.  Some were foster kids.  Some had parents who died.  Some hated their families.  Some were outcasts because they were gay, had AIDS, or just didn’t fit in the family dynamic. 

The parties were not formal.  Some of my guests got dressed up.  Others rolled out of the bed dripping with sadness and eyes reddened from a night of drinking or getting high to numb their pain.  My kitchen was open from 4 to 10 pm.  We ate.  We laughed.  Some of us cried.  We watched “The Color Purple,” quoted scenes, laughed at painful scenes that weren’t supposed to be funny.  None of us had to pretend.

My orphan parties covered the silence and chased away the loneliness and pain of loss.  They helped me survive the holidays.  But I thought I’d share some useful tips for those of you who are helping foster youth during this time of the year.  I got these tips from one of my friends who is a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) who works with foster youth. 

1. Prepare the foster youth in your care for the holidays in your home

Have a discussion with the young person about your family’s holiday customs. Do you celebrate over multiple days, or is there one “main” celebration? Are there religious customs? Will gifts be exchanged? What should they wear? Who will they meet? What preparations need to be done in advance? Will there be visitors to the home? Will they be taken on visits to the homes of other family or friends? And in all of these events, will your youth be expected to participate? Knowing what to expect will help to decrease anxiety around the holidays. Avoid surprises and you will decrease seasonal tensions.

2. Prepare friends and family before you visit

Let people know in advance about new family members in your home. Surprising a host or hostess at the door with a “new” foster youth may set up an awkward situation — such as a scramble to set an extra place at the table — making the young person feel like an imposition right from the start of the visit. Your preparation of friends should help cut down on awkward, but reasonable questions such as “who are you?” or “where did you come from?”

3. Remember confidentiality

You may receive well intended but prying questions from those you visit with over the holidays. If your young person is new to your home, it is natural that family members ask questions about your youth’s background. Understand that questions are generally not meant to be insensitive or rude, but simply come from a place of not knowing much about foster care. Think in advance about how to answer these questions while maintaining your youth’s confidentiality. Use the opportunity to educate interested family and friends. Discuss with your young person how they would like to be introduced and what is appropriate to share about their history with your family and friends. (Remember, they have no obligation to reveal their past.)

4. Arrange meeting your family in advance, if possible

The hustle and bustle of the holidays can make it particularly chaotic for your young person to participate in your family traditions. Anxiety may run high for young people already, and the stress of meeting your relatives may be a lot to deal with. If possible, you can arrange a casual “meeting” in advance of “main events.” If it is not possible or practical to meet beforehand, make a list of names of some of the people they’ll meet and their connection to you. You can also encourage a quick call from relatives you plan to visit to deliver a personal message of “we are excited to met you” so that your youth knows they will be welcome.

5. Have extra presents ready to help offset differences

It should not be expected that all relatives purchase presents for your youth. Be prepared with other small gifts and for those family members that express concern over not having brought a gift, offer one of your “backups” for them to place under the tree. Extra presents may be addressed “from Santa”, even for older youth, to help offset a larger number of gifts other children may receive at the same time. Children often keep count of the number of gifts received (right or wrong) and use it to compare with other kids, so sometimes quantity is important.

6. Facilitate visits with loved ones

The holidays can be a busy time for everyone including foster parents and caseworkers. But it is especially important during this time of year to help your young person arrange for visits with loved ones. Don’t allow busy schedules to mean the postponement of these important visits. Try to get permission for your youth to make phone calls to relatives (if long distance charges are an issue, ask if calls can be placed from the foster care agency or provide a local business or individual to “donate” by allowing the use of their phone). A youth may wish to extend holiday wishes to relatives and friends from an old neighborhood, but may need your help getting phone numbers together. Use the opportunity to help the youth develop their own address book.

7. Help them make sure their loved ones are okay

Young people may worry that their family members are struggling through the holidays. If homelessness has been a regular issue, the winter season may bring cold weather and extreme hardship. Your youth may experience guilt if they feel a loved one is struggling while they, the youth, are living in comfort. Knowing that a biological parent or sibling has shelter from the cold or has their other basic needs met may ease a young person’s mind through the always emotional holidays.

8. Extend an invitation

If it is safe and allowed by your foster care agency, consider extending an invitation to siblings or bio- parents through the holidays. It need not be an invitation to your “main” holiday event, consider a “special” dinner for your youth to celebrate with their loved ones. If this not a possibility to do within your home, consider arranging a visit at a local restaurant (ask the caseworker is it would be appropriate for the visit to be unsupervised or if your supervision would suffice). Extending an invitation to their loved ones need not signal to a young person that you support their bio-family’s lifestyle or choices — rather it tells a young person that you respect their wish to stay connected to family. You will also send a message to the youth that that aren’t being put in a position to “choose” your family over their bio-family and that it is possible to have a relationship with all the people they care about.

9. Understand and encourage your youth’s own traditions and beliefs

Encourage discussion about the holiday traditions your young person experienced prior to being in foster care, or even celebrations they liked while living with other foster families. Incorporate the traditions the youth cherishes into your own family celebration, if possible. Use the opportunity to investigate the youth’s culture and research customary traditions. If the young person holds a religious belief different from yours, or if their family did, check into the traditions customarily surrounding those beliefs.

10. Assist in purchasing or making holiday gifts or in sending cards to their family and friends  

Allow young people to purchase small gifts for their relatives, or help them craft homemade gifts. Help send holiday cards to those that they want to stay connected with. The list of people that your youth wishes to send cards and gifts to should be left completely to the youth, although precautions may be taken to ensure safety (for example, a return address may be left off the package, or use the address of the foster care agency) and compliance with any court orders.

11. Understand if they pull away

Despite your best efforts, a young person may simply withdraw during the holidays. Understand that this detachment most likely is not intended to be an insult or a reflection of how they feel about you, but rather is their own coping mechanism. Allow for “downtime” during the holidays that will allow the youth some time to themselves if they need it (although some youth would prefer to stay busy to keep their mind off other things — you will need to make a decision based on your knowledge of the young person). Be sure to fit in one-on-one time, personal time for your youth and you to talk through what they are feeling during this emotional and often confusing time of year.

12. Call youth who formerly lived with you

The holidays can be a particularly tough time for youth who have recently aged out of foster care. They may not have people to visit or a place to go for the holidays. In addition, young people commonly struggle financially when they first leave foster care. A single phone call may lift their spirits and signal that you continue to care for them and treasure their friendship. Be sure to include these youth on your own holiday card list. A small token gift or gift basket of homemade holiday goodies may be especially appreciated.

Most importantly, it is essential to let adoptees, foster children, and those who have aged out of the system know that they are not alone and they are not to blame for their losses. One of the best things I learned about being in foster care was the I could collect people along the way and create my own family.

Want to stress out an infant?

Have a mother look at her baby with a “still face,” no expression, interaction or words.  Before long, the child will do everything they know to engage and connect with their parent.  If the parent doesn’t respond, the baby can experience acute stress and anxiety.

Want to see what I mean?  Take a minute and check out the Still Face Experiment, in which a mother tests this theory, with dramatic results.

Watching this video, I can’t help but think of the many parents I’ve seen in public spaces who seem to take good physical care of their children, who are typically well-groomed and neatly dressed), but who appear to be very disengaged from their babies.  Often, these parents are teens plugged into their phones and/or iPods.  I’ve seen some of these infants and toddlers do everything they can—just like the baby in the video—to get their parents’ attention.

Frequently, the child resorts to improper behavior, which does get the parent’s attention, but in a negative way.  The parent often scolds their child with a mean mug on their face, sometimes curses or even hits the child for interrupting them.  Ultimately, the only “reward” they receive from exercising their natural instinct and need for their parent to interact with them is the message that what they want is bad and wrong and will result in punishment.

Decades ago, experts weren’t aware of the importance of high levels of engagement with babies, even newborns.  Today, we know that the more positive, loving, nurturing and attentive interaction a child has with their mother/parent/caregiver, the stronger, healthier and happier that child will grow up to be.  They are more likely to succeed in school and in life if they have received the proper attention when they need it most.

Speaking of school, there might be a link between the “minority” achievement gap that is epidemic throughout public education in our country today, and the fact that low-income children are said to suffer from a 30 million word gap that causes them to start school behind their wealthier peers.

In this groundbreaking study, Betty Hart and Todd Risley entered the homes of 42 families from various socio-economic backgrounds to assess the ways in which daily exchanges between a parent and child shape language and vocabulary development. Their findings were unprecedented, with extraordinary disparities between the sheer number of words spoken as well as the types of messages conveyed. After four years these differences in parent-child interactions produced significant discrepancies in not only children’s knowledge, but also their skills and experiences with children from high-income families being exposed to 30 million more words than children from families on welfare. Follow-up studies showed that these differences in language and interaction experiences have lasting effects on a child’s performance later in life.

Results:

The results of the study were far more severe than anyone could have anticipated. Observers found that 86% to 98% of the words used by each child by the age of three were derived from their parents’ vocabularies. Furthermore, not only were the words they used nearly identical, but also the average number of words utilized, the duration of their conversations, and the speech patterns were all strikingly similar to those of their caregivers. 

[The researchers] found that the sheer number of words heard varied greatly along socio-economic lines. On average, children from families on welfare were provided half as much experience as children from working class families, and less than a third of the experience given to children from high-income families. In other words, children from families on welfare heard about 616 words per hour, while those from working class families heard around 1,251 words per hour, and those from professional families heard roughly 2,153 words per hour. Thus, children from better financial circumstances had far more language exposure to draw from. 

… the researchers also looked at what was being said within these conversations. What they found was that higher-income families provided their children with far more words of praise compared to children from low-income families. Conversely, children from low-income families were found to endure far more instances of negative reinforcement compared to their peers from higher-income families.  Children from families with professional backgrounds experienced a ratio of six encouragements for every discouragement. For children from working-class families this ratio was two encouragements to one discouragement. Finally, children from families on welfare received on average two discouragements for every encouragement.

To ensure that these findings had long-term implications, 29 of the 42 families were recruited for a follow-up study when the children were in third grade. Researchers found that measures of accomplishment at age three were highly indicative of performance at the ages of nine and ten on various vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension measures. Thus, the foundation built at age three had a great bearing on their progress many years to come. 

Within a child’s early life the caregiver is responsible for most, if not all, social simulation and consequently language and communication development. As a result, how parents interact with their children is of great consequence given it lays a critical foundation impacting the way the children process future information many years down the road.

The finding that children living in poverty hear fewer than a third of the words heard by children from higher-income families has significant implications in the long run. When extrapolated to the words heard by a child within the first four years of their life these results reveal a 30 million word difference. That is, a child from a high-income family will experience 30 million more words within the first four years of life than a child from a low-income family. This gap does nothing but grow as the years progress, ensuring slow growth for children who are economically disadvantaged and accelerated growth for those from more privileged backgrounds.

All that to say: talk to your babies, to your children, as much as you can, and then some.  Interact with them.  It’s easy to make fun of or feel self-conscious about the exaggerated facial expressions and high-pitched voices we associate with baby talk, but the fact is that we are biologically hard-wired to give the babies and children what they need most: our undivided attention, our voices, our faces, and our love. Without those ingredients, they are not likely to thrive. 

Alex Haley, author of Roots, understood the connection between family history and self-identity.

“In all of us,” he wrote, “there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage –to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning.  No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.”

Though Mr. Haley’s book specifically addressed black slaves and their desire to maintain their African identity, and their quest to recover lost connections as a result of the quagmire of centuries of bondage, the need to know one’s origins is a universally human theme.

Of all groups, adoptees know all too well about that hunger, yearning, emptiness and loneliness that Mr. Haley described. 

This is why many of us, even those who have wonderful relationships with their adoptive parents, are driven to search for answers to important questions: Who am I?  Where did I come from?  Who are my birth parents?  Do I look like them?  Do I have brothers and sisters?  Why was I given up? 

Imagine living a life without a sense of continuity and without access to basic information about your body, health, identity and history.  And now imagine being told by a state bureaucracy that your birth certificate is a secret; that your birth is none of your business.

This is the case in the State of New Jersey where adoptees have been fighting for 33 years to gain access to their original birth certificates.  Our last Adoptees Birthright bill passed the state senate in March 2011 but was subsequently vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie.  Now we have a new bill, sponsored by Senators Joe Vitalie and Diane Allen,  and the fight is on again.

This week I testified before a state senate hearing in Trenton, New Jersey in support of the new bill.  I support this bill because I believe that having truthful documentation of one’s birth is a civil rights and human rights issue. And I also believe that birth certificates are the missing link in the adult adoptee’s healing process.

The last person to testify at the senate hearing was Robert Allan Hafetz, an adoptee and family counselor from Doylestown, PA who has chronicled his own adoption reunion process in a book called Not Remembered, Never Forgotten.  Mr. Hafetz gave a scientific perspective on how unnatural separation from birth mothers causes trauma in the first hours of an adoptee’s life and can have lifelong consequences.  His testimony was a huge moment of revelation for me and I finally felt validated by my hunger to know after so many years of some people in my life suggesting that I’m obsessed with by birth history or that I should just “let it go and move on.”

Here is an excerpt of Mr. Hafetz’s testimony, which was adapted from an earlier essay:

It is from the moment of separation that the adoption experience begins for the adoptee.

On the first day of life we are nine months and one day old. We are one with the mother, existing as a mother baby dyad. The birth of the self has not yet occurred and mother and child exist in a state of harmony, literally, as a single being. Between them flows a virtual language of emotion, with affects functioning as words, and a familiar touch as a shared voice. Mother and infant are engaged in a complex emotional dialogue that teaches the infant trust, hope, and the nature of their unique world. The memories, emotions, and the struggle to bring them into balance dwell in the emotional domain of the adoptee’s mind.

At birth the limbic system is functioning and enables the infant to learn, dialogue with the mother, and to create memory representations. Adoptees can experience emotional memories as specific affects years even decades after they occur.

Many adult adoptees will speak of feeling sadness, emptiness, and isolation, often struggling for the right words to explain their feelings. It is very difficult for memories recorded in infancy to be explained or understood verbally after the child eventually develops verbal skills and advanced cognitive abilities.

Imagine having profound feelings and not being able to understand them, explain them, or ask for help in dealing with them. This is the great disconnect adoptees experience. The dimension of the mind that thinks, doesn’t understand the mind that feels, or the powerful memories that dwell beneath the consciousness.

As I listened to Mr. Hafetz speak, I thought back on past behaviors and past relationships and about all the people I pushed away because I was too afraid to be loved or to give it.

People told me that they’d never abandon me.  But my emotional memories, set in the early hours of my life, triggered fears that were exactly the opposite.  I knew I belonged, but I felt isolated.  At times I’ve felt isolated even in a crowded room.  To others, I may look whole from the outside, but there’s always something missing inside me.

There is, as Mr. Hafetz explained, an incongruence between the adoptee’s thoughts and feelings, which is the foundation of poor attachment, behavioral problems, power struggles, and trust issues that the people in an adoptee’s life can’t always understand.

“The struggle to bring thoughts and feelings into coherence can be a lifelong task for adopted children,” said Mr. Hafetz.

He eventually found a way to build a bridge within his mind and join parts of himself that were lost.  Like me, Mr. Hafetz searched for his biological mother.  But his reunion, like mine, was with a grave.  

Standing over our dead mothers brought us some answers, some healing from the trauma of our unnatural separation.  Mr. Hafetz and I were lucky enough to find our birth mother’s without access to our birth certificates.  So imagine how legions more adoptees can potentially be healed if they are given this key piece of paper that will allow them the choice to take their own journey from abandonment to healing.

If you support the right of  New Jersey adoptees to access our original birth certificates please drop a note to the President SenSweeney@njleg.org and Senate Republican Leader SenKean@njleg.org.

The digital universe is full of viral videos of adults beating children. I view them warily, alert for triggers that catapult me back into the days of being viciously beaten by my adoptive mother, the wife of a Pentecostal preacher with a penchant for sadistic violence in the name of “discipline.”

This latest video of a father, Greg Horn, beating his daughters with a cable cord for sneaking out of the house and for “twerking”—performing a popular sexually suggestive dance—zaps me to my childhood like a time machine.  Watching the father heap unthinkable abuse on his own children, young girls in need of dialogue, firm and gentle guidance from a nurturing adult, renders me speechless.

This is how my adoptive mother used to whip me.  Sometimes I was naked.  “I’m not whipping no clothes,” she’d say.  I can still see myself, like the two girls in this video, backed into a corner, small and quaking at the hatred she spewed with her hands and her mouth.  

When I watched this horrible video, my fingers found their way to my right cheek, where the scars my adoptive mother inflicted feel like fleshy Braille, conveying coded messages of abuse that I see in the mirror on my face, legs, arms, and back.  So many whippings.  So many whippings I can’t even count.  So many scars.  Some of them have faded.  Others I’ll die with.

As a young girl, I was not allowed to dance in my adoptive mother’s home–that would have been a reason for a beating.  In the Pentecostal religion, dancing and listening to rap and other kinds of music was forbidden, viewed as “worldly” and ungodly.

But beating me with an extension cord until welts formed, until my skin was broken was somehow seen as okay in my home and in the larger black community I belonged to.

For all the people who think that it’s okay to beat a child with a cord, take a look at my scars.  Look at them.  Look at them real good. 

Today I am 35 years old, and these scars have been with me since age 7, when my adoptive mother flailed away at me with a cord, much like the father did in that video.  The night she scarred my face is a night that I’ll never forget: the screaming, the pleading, the stinging, the smell of my own flesh burning, the electricity ripping through my body. The sound of that cord cutting the air.  Me kicking up my legs to try to block the blows.  Me saying, “Stop mommy!  I’m sorry mommy!  I won’t do it again mommy!”  Her grunting, yelling, breathing hard, spitting from her mouth, her voice sounding like a demon.

Every time I got whipped with an extension cord, the one thought that went through my mind was: I cannot survive this.

Why do we do this to our children?  Beat them and scar them like slaves?  And why do we call this good parenting?  Why do we say things like “we need more fathers like Greg Horn?”

Every morning, when I look at my scars, I never say, “I’m glad my mamma whipped me,” or “I’m grateful that she beat me like that,” or “those whoopings kept me out of jail,” or “they made me the good person that I am today.”  I don’t look at these scars and think, “This was love.  This was discipline.  Those beatings kept be from being beaten by the police or killed by some white person,” as I hear so many black folks say as a way to justify such cruelty against their children.

Getting whipped with a cord didn’t make me respect my adoptive mother.  They were the ultimate breach of trust.  The beatings put distance between us.  They made me fear her.  Hate her.  Want to kill her.  They didn’t teach me right from wrong.  They taught me not to get caught doing wrong and they taught me early on that violence was the way to solve conflict instead of using critical thinking skills and proper communication.  The beatings almost taught me to expect violence and to normalize it.

Ultimately, those beatings drove me to run away from my adoptive parents’ home and into the foster care system like legions of other abused black children who enter care.  And far too many are becoming “crossover youth,” foster kids who end up in the juvenile justice and then the adult prison system.  So if you think beating a child with a cord is good parenting, then don’t be surprised if your child ends up in one of these systems.

I watch this latest video and wonder what these girls are thinking, what they’re feeling toward their father.  I wonder whether he is reacting to the unsettling sight and thought of his young daughters flaunting their budding sexuality, over-reacting horribly to what might be considered a normal source of discomfort.  Or is he, like my adoptive mother was, an evil monster who can’t control his own responses, emotions, fears or frustrations?

I don’t know what the girls’ mother is like, but reportedly she saw the video online and called the police on her ex, the father.  He has been indicted on charges of corporal punishment, as he should be.  I applaud this mother’s actions even as she is being castigated by many people who think that she was wrong for calling the police on yet another black man who will likely do time.

As someone who miraculously managed to survive this kind of torture, I cannot for the life of me understand how anybody can rationalize this kind of behavior.  These videos are often trailed by long comments on social media and Facebook threads where many people blame and insult the children.  In the case of this “twerking” video, there were so many folk commenting that they were “little whores” and “bitches” that my stomach turned.

I drew from the well of my memories to put myself in those girls’ place.  I knew their pain.  Understood their jumbled emotions.  Tasted their fear.  Fingertips dancing over the legacy of hateful abuse that destroyed my childhood and marred my appearance.

No child deserves that kind of torture, regardless of what the parent (or abuser) might say to justify their choices, their lost control, anger management issues, and the unresolved pain and traumas they’re now inflicting on another generation.  Children need guidance, not violence. Love, not lashings.  Every child needs and deserves to feel safe in their homes.  Safe, not scarred like me and Greg Horn’s daughters. 

                                 What do you do when you and your spouse clash over whether to spank the children…and the conflict is rooted in black and white?

A father wrote to me recently with a very real dilemma. He is White, married to a Black woman. They have a young son. Problem is, this husband and father is at odds with his wife and her family.  He writes:

“Thanks for the website. I’m a white male married to a black woman; her family is heavily religious and very much believes in hitting children. We don’t hit our son but it’s a struggle at times to have to push back on their various paradigms concerning children and adults.

When my wife was pregnant, I had an argument with my wife’s sister when she insisted that she had the right to hit my son if he was under her watch (needless to say, I don’t leave him with her).

Recently, my wife’s mother tried to be very forceful with me, announcing that she was going to start hitting my son because otherwise it would confuse the other grandchildren whom she hits (I had to show her a side of me that made her realize that was not a good idea). I consistently see various adults in the family apply their hitting less for discipline and more for petty and angry responses to children in their care.

My wife feels intimidated by the family and, although she doesn’t hit our son, she doesn’t step in because there are many stronger personalities in her family. These dynamics go much deeper than a family thinking that physical punishment is ok. There’s black identity involved where yielding to these ideas smells like yielding to white culture (never mind the irony that some researchers suggest that the origins of both Christian faith and physical discipline in black families are in slavery as white masters pushed both onto them).”

The Black/White American divide over spanking is very real, as this concerned husband and father has expressed. He wrote to Spare the Kids in search of tools for coping with this huge cultural divide.

This is a popular topic. When I speak to mostly White audiences, the question always comes up: “What should I do when I see a Black person slapping their child in the grocery store, on the train/bus, other public spaces, or even in my own family?”

There is no quick or easy answer.

Few Black parents are going to react favorably to a White stranger chastising them publicly about anything having to do with their child. But the “culture clash” isn’t the only thing to consider. These days, parents (especially Black parents, it seems) can be arrested and locked up for hitting their children. I am not against this. But it’s not always an ideal situation. Nor is it necessarily a solution to have a parent in jail, particularly a single parent, which increases the chances of their child going into foster care. And a situation that perhaps could have been addressed in a more constructive way ends up feeding two more bodies into the prison-industrial system.

Still, I will always put the protection and well-being of the child first and foremost. No child who is beaten or abused in any way should be forced to remain with their abuser(s).

When I am asked this question in a public presentation, I suggest that that the concerned White person should calmly, gently, with a soft voice, approach the parent and say something that conveys a sense of understanding and empathy such as, “It can be really stressful to deal with a child who’s not doing what you want them to do. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Of course I warn them to expect the Black parent to react with suspicion, if not hostility. Most would perceive even the most well-meaning White stranger as trying to get in their business and tell them how to raise their child at best, or someone who would and could turn them into the authorities at worst.

There is no simple, perfect, fix-it-all answer.

As for the father who wrote seeking advice about how to navigate the issue of spanking with his wife and in-laws, I commend him for taking a stand. Since his son isn’t getting spanked, his efforts have been successful so far. And even if his wife doesn’t oppose her family on the topic, her behavior speaks volumes and proves that people are teachable when it comes to corporal punishment!

I would advise him to calmly, quietly articulate his position when needed, and to avoid any attempts by his in-laws to goad or bait him into a debate on the topic. He could take advantage of his Whiteness if the topic does come up and say, “Well I don’t know if it’s ‘a White thing,’ but spanking our son is not an option in our family. We use other methods of discipline, and appreciate your respecting our rule of no physical violence.”

His in-laws aren’t likely to agree, and he can’t control their behavior, but as long as he is consistent in his messages on this topic and communicates in a calm, assured manner, they are likely to respect him. They might still challenge him verbally, but he could always turn the tables and play the “are you trying to tell me how to raise my child?” card with them.

As our society grows more diverse, the issue of how to protect children in public spaces becomes even more complex. As laws become less tolerant of physical discipline, the legal risks to parents and their children intensify.

Readers, I’d like to hear from YOU on this one! Please weigh in with what you would tell this father. I look forward to your comments.  

“There is no place for black children in this world,” intellectual giant and civil rights doyen W.E.B. Du Bois lamented in 1920.

His hyperbolic use of “this world” conveys the mean-spiritedness of mainstream life to the first generations of free black children growing up in what he called “a sneering, cruel world” of Jim Crow restriction and racial violence. 

Now, here we are in a new century, and black children are still growing up in an American society that fundamentally hates them.

Consider these recent examples:

On February 8, Joe Rickey Hundley, a 60-year-old white man who is the president of an aircraft parts company in Hayden, Idaho, allegedly slapped 19-month-old Jonah Bennett, the black adopted child of Jessica Bennett, a white woman.  The incident took place aboard a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta from Minneapolis.  The baby’s mother told authorities that the she was trying to calm her son as the plane prepared to land.  That’s when the drunken Hundley told her to “shut that nigger baby up” before striking the child across the face with his open hand and leaving behind a scratch.

It is 2013.  President Barack Obama is in his second term.  Against the odds, black people consistently manage to overcome the barriers of racism and inequality and achieve great things.  But the other side of the coin is terrifying.  Infuriating.  Unacceptable.

If a toddler sharing an airplane seat with his mother is fair game for this kind of racialized abuse, where is there a safe place in America for black children?  Not Chicago, where by the end of 2012, 270 schoolchildren had been killed by guns since 2007—70% of them black in a city that is 33% black.

Not Detroit, where 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was “accidentally” gunned down in May 2010 by a police officer as she slept in her living room while cameras for the A&E true-crime program, The First 48, rolled.

Not Sanford, Florida, where Trayvon Martin was slaughtered last year by neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman while returning home from the corner store with a drink and a bag of Skittles.  

Not in Jacksonville, Florida, where Jordan Davis, who would have turned 18 this month, was shot dead at a gas station by a 46-year-old white man for allegedly playing loud music.

Not in Morrow, Georgia at a Cracker Barrel, where Tiffany Hill, an Army reservist mom was stomped, punched and called a “nigger” and a “bitch” by Troy West who took his with the young mother calling him out after he nearly hit her 7-year-old daughter in the face with a door.

Not the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain, Ga. at a Walmart, where a 61-year-old white man named Roger Stephens slapped a crying two-year-old black girl four or five times, telling her mother, “If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.”

And not in public schools across there country, where children are arrested for engaging in normal adolescent behavior: a 5 year old was arrested for having a temper tantrum in kindergarten; a 12 year old was arrested for scribbling on a desk, a 13 year old boy was arrested for burping, and a 5th grader arrested for giving a wedgie.

The race of the abuser or killer isn’t the main point.  We all know that black-on-black crime remains at epidemic levels.  But these high-profile race-motivated travesties cannot be ignored or swept aside. The truth is, the United States of America has never been a safe space for black children.  The very notion of black childhood is tied up in the definition of black people as property, as sub-human, as dangerous, as the enduring metaphor of citizenship unworthiness.  The politics around black bodies continue to drive the contemporary cultural narrative, from news to art to public policy.

Perhaps the most telling example was the 2010 anti-abortion campaign targeting black women with prominent billboards that said, “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.”  Never mind that the Rev. Al Sharpton helped to get one of these billboards taken down in New York City—this ultra-right-wing attack on black motherhood, childhood and life itself echoes the enduring sentiment that black life is inherently dangerous, problematic, wrong.

A slogan.  A slap.  A gunshot. 

The litany of names of child victims keeps growing.  Our hearts should be beyond breaking at this point, yet each new victim shatters them a bit more.  The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow hasn’t left us—it has just gotten a makeover to fit into contemporary American life.  A black child growing up in America today is not safe in the air, on the ground, in their neighborhood, at school, or asleep in their home.

“Shut that nigger baby up!” 

At 19 months, baby Jonah might not have understood the racial slur, but he felt the slap.  He felt the hatred, the contempt, and the racism.  He may not yet have the language with which to process the history behind that moment, but I promise you, it is an awakening that he may never forget.

Today, black parents across America are in the same quandary that they were during slavery and the segregation era – ultimately they can’t protect their children.  And as a white adoptive mother raising a black son, Jessica Bennett had to face the same painful and terrifying truth.

If you care about the safety of ALL children, I ask that you make your voice heard.  Please sign and share this petition I started on change.org: https://www.change.org/petitions/us-district-court-of-atlanta-send-joe-rickey-hundley-to-prison

Roderick “RJ” Arrington Jr. murdered by his parents for lying and not reading his Bible.

My heart breaks at recent news reports of a 7-year-old boy, Roderick “RJ” Arrington Jr. being (allegedly) beaten to death by his parents. The reason?  Because RJ didn’t do his homework, or read his Bible.

Roderick’s stepfather, Markiece Palmer, 34, is alleged to have beaten the boy with a spatula, belt and possibly a wooden panel, and shaken him, resulting in severe bruising and brain swelling. The arrest report described, “open abrasions on [Arrington’s] buttocks, severe bruising to his thighs, marks and bruises on his back and shoulders and evidence of previous beatings,” according to KLAS-TV.

In the police report, detectives say they found a broken broomstick, belts, cords, spatulas and clothing — all with blood on them, according to KSNV-TV.

Dina Palmer, 27, Roderick’s mother and Markiece’s wife, is said to have helped with the beatings, but mostly to have stood by and watched as her husband pummeled and shook the second grader, who had lived with his father and grandfather in Illinois until moving with his mother and stepfather a few months ago.

The couple has been arrested on two counts each of two counts of child abuse and endangerment and murder.

Most telling for me is that, when they found Roderick unresponsive in his bed the morning after the beating, their first call was not to 911. It was to their pastor, Kenneth Hollingsworth, who told KSNV that he was “as shocked as anyone that Markiece Palmer chose to call him before first-responders.”

What has not yet been reported is whether Hollingsworth was one of the many preachers who advocate child abuse as a biblical directive. But Hollingsworth is not the point. My concern is that there are religious leaders who advocate and strongly promote corporal punishment, justifying it as the word of God and citing scripture as “proof.”

While we have no idea how widespread this pulpit-driven child abuse might be, those cases resulting in murder make headlines, and remind us that children are too often the victims of religious dogma gone awry.

Tragically, the dynamics behind Roderick’s abuse and murder are not uncommon. Experts say that religiously-inspired beatings are increasingly common in Christian homes where children are home-schooled and the family belongs to a house of worship that advocates corporal punishment as an essential tool for discipline.

Larry and Carri Williams of Sedro-Woolley, Wash., adopted a girl, 11, and a boy, 7, from Ethiopia to join their family of six children. The parents, who home-schooled, viewed the new children (the only Blacks in a White family) as “rebellious.” In May 2011, Hana was discovered in the backyard—naked, emaciated, face-down—killed by hypothermia and malnutrition. The sheriff reported that Hana had been deprived of food for days, forced to sleep in a cold barn or closet, and made to shower outdoors with a hose. She often had marks on her legs from being whipped. She had been beaten the day of her death with a 15-inch plastic tube.

The Williams’ took child-rearing tips from a popular and controversial book, To Train Up a Child, by the Rev. Michael Pearl and his wife Debi Pearl, who head a church in Pleasantville, Tenn. The New York Times reported in 2011 that “More than 670,000 copies of the Pearls’ self-published book are in circulation, and it is especially popular among Christian home-schoolers, who praise it in their magazines and on their Web sites. The Pearls provide instructions on using a switch from as early as six months to discourage misbehavior and describe how to make use of implements for hitting on the arms, legs or back, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line that, Mr. Pearl notes, ‘can be rolled up and carried in your pocket.’”

The type of tube with which Hana had been beaten on the day of her murder, described by Michael Pearl as “a good spanking instrument … too light to cause damage to the muscle or the bone.”

According to the Times:

“The same kind of plumbing tube was reported to have been used to beat Lydia Schatz, 7, who was adopted at age 4 from Liberia and died in Paradise, Calif., in 2010. Her parents, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, had the Pearl book … they whipped Lydia for hours, with pauses for prayer. She died from severe tissue damage, and her older sister had to be hospitalized, officials said.

“The Schatzes, who were home-schooling nine children, three of them adopted, are both serving long prison terms after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and torture and she to voluntary manslaughter and unlawful corporal punishment. The Butte County district attorney, Mike Ramsey, criticized the Pearls’ book as a dangerous influence.

“The Pearl’s books were also cited in the trial of Lynn Paddock of Johnston County, N.C., who was convicted of the first-degree murder of Sean Paddock, 4, in 2006. The Paddocks had adopted six American children, some with emotional problems, and turned to the Internet and found the Pearls’ Web site, Mrs. Paddock said. Sean suffocated after being wrapped tightly in a blanket. His siblings testified that they were beaten daily with the same plumbing tube. Mr. Paddock was not charged.”

Some conservative Christian parents reject the Pearls’ teachings and have started a petition drive asking sellers like Amazon not to stock their books.

Some churches around the country are debating the issue, and many oppose corporal punishment altogether. And that is good. But what troubles me is the fact that parents who are vulnerable to extremist teachings do not possess the judgment or ability to prevent them from crossing the line from one heinous crime—beating children in the name of discipline—to snuffing out their lives altogether.

Nobody wins in these situations. If the parents are tried and found guilty and they have other children, those children are most likely to end up in foster care. Thus a practice allegedly used to build a strong family through forced obedience destroys multiple futures. One life is snuffed out, parents are locked up, and the remaining children are sent into a system that dramatically increases their chances of becoming (or continuing to be) abused, and to end up behind bars themselves for any number of infractions.

It would be tempting to blame those religious leaders who interpret the Bible to condone abusing the young, vulnerable and innocent. It’s too easy to point to books such as “Train Up a Child” as the culprit. The real issue and the core of the problem is the notion that beating children is an acceptable form of discipline, exacerbated by the widely-held misconception that punishment equals discipline in rearing a child.

As everyone from the federal government to educators throughout our nation’s public school systems jump on the bandwagon to prevent school bullying, it’s easy to forget that the entire history, culture and sociology of the USA are founded on a platform of violence and domination.  Children who bully at school are often beaten and abused in their own homes. Police routinely bully the most vulnerable among us. Military culture is built on regimented bullying at all levels. And the prison-industrial complex that swallows and spits out people like Markiece and Dina Palmer is a nonstop assembly line of violence, domination, bullying and abuse at every level.

And so, another child lies dead at the hands of caregivers who believed that this was an appropriate way to deal with what they considered an infraction: lying about doing homework and reading, ironically, the Bible.

How ironic that young Roderick was (allegedly) murdered for lying—something every human does at some point. The fact is that few adults have mastered the art of living in absolute truth. I believe that humans—especially children—lie because they don’t feel safe telling the truth, because experience has taught them that they will be punished for being honest.

This post isn’t about blame. It’s about our need to take a hard look at the role that religious leaders play—and the power they wield—in guiding parents and caregivers about children-rearing practices. These pastors need to create safe sanctuaries. They need to play a much greater role in teaching positive discipline instead of telling parents to bet the devil out of their child(ren) for lying, or other reasons, or no reason at all.

There is great danger in this punitive fundamentalism, which has no understanding of the science of child development or the all-too tragic consequences that destroy not just the children, but often entire families for generations, and ultimately, our entire society.

There is possibility in the debates now taking place about the use of religious dogma as a weapon used to abuse and sometimes murder children. It shouldn’t take a heinous murder to bring our attention to this issue. Let’s get to work so that no other young innocents are forced to sacrifice their lives and futures to this insanity.

Recently, I met with a group of adult adoptees who were torn about searching for their biological parents. Since I am an adoptee who was eventually reunited with my birth relatives, they asked me to share my experience since there aren’t many support groups or professionals who help adoptees manage their expectations during the highly emotional reunion process.

Some adoptees in the group said they were hesitant about searching for their birth parents because they didn’t want to appear disloyal to their adoptive parents whom they love deeply.  Others feared they’d find out horrible information or risk being rejected by their birth relatives.

A few people in the group said they didn’t want an ongoing relationship, but they were curious about genetic and medical information and the backstory of the events that led up to their relinquishment.  Someone in the group asked me if I fantasized about my birth parents when I was a child.

“All the time,” I said.

Who are they?  What do they look like?  Do I look like them?  Where are they now?  What do they do for a living?  Why did they give me up?  Will I ever meet them?  Are they even alive?

These questions occupied my thoughts as a girl growing up in a house with an abusive adoptive mother and a feckless adoptive father who didn’t protect me.  My adoptive parents did not accommodate my curiosity about my family of origin.  There was no room for questions or open and honest discussion.  My adoptive parents took my questions as signs of disrespect and ungratefulness.

“You’re lucky that somebody took you in and gave you a good home,” my adoptive mother used to say.  “If your real mother wanted you she wouldn’t have given you up.”

So, as I navigated each developmental stage of childhood, particularly the stormy period of adolescence when issues of identity intensify, my lost connection to my birth family made me feel incomplete, worthless and unlovable.  To get whole, I felt I had to find out who I was and where I had come from.  Knowing my birth story would give me a sense of continuity instead of feeling like a turnip that fell off the back of a truck.

But the law said that I couldn’t search for my birth relatives until I became an adult.  The details of my birth and adoption remained a state secret.  That meant that I’d spend many years yearning and fantasizing about a beautiful mother with a soft voice and loving hands, and a tall father with strong protective arms.  I imagined they had a big house with a room waiting for my return.  They would look like the Huxtables and they would never treat me the way my adoptive parents did. 

Meeting my “real” parents meant that I could erase the stain and shame of being an adoptee and a victim of child abuse.  I told the group that if loving people had adopted me then my longings for “home” might not have been as intense.

When I was finally reunited with my birth relatives, my fantasies did not match the reality.  I did not relate well to the people with whom I shared blood ties.  We had different values and incongruent expectations about the reunion.  I was disappointed because my fantasies had allowed me to create expectations that could not be met.  In my girlish fantasies there was no room for dysfunction, secrets, lies, betrayal, or rejection. 

No one warned me that adoption is almost always the result of some kind of loss or tragedy.  And no one told me that the tortured backstory of my adoption had remained buried in the day-to-day lives of my relatives for years until I came back looking for answers. 

I expected my birth family, just as I had expected my adoptive parents, to be open and honest with me.  To tell me everything.  Hold back nothing.  I thought that my reunion would help me strengthen the tenuous hold I had on my identity.  Bring me closure.  Help me heal from my childhood from hell.  But ultimately, my reemergence brought up bad memories and emotions for everyone involved. 

It took me over 15 years to finally accept that my obsessive questions and even my physical presence stirred up emotions in my birth relatives.  My face, which looks like my mother’s face, reminded them of her death, our family’s other tragedies, pain, losses, grief, shame, secrets, lies and even their own personal failures.  This reality was a far cry from the fantasy I had of being welcomed into warm arms by people who would promise to keep me this time around.

Though my reunion with my birth family was a disaster, this adoptee’s fantasies were not all bad.

I told the group that my fantasies helped me survive child abuse.  They gave me the drive to succeed, to be a good student and a disciplined athlete, to stay out of trouble, and to make something out of myself so that my birth parents would be proud if I ever found them.  My fantasies helped me refuse to accept the lies that came from both sides of the adoption triad.  My fantasies spurred me to always ask questions, to seek out the truth, to imagine an alternate vision for myself, and to get free from unhealthy cycles.

Ultimately, when I finally faced reality, I learned the two most important lessons of my life – I have the power to reconstruct myself, and, there is a difference between relatives and family.  Not all adoption reunions end like mine.  Good or bad, what you find will most likely mean an end to the unknown and torturous wondering.  You can achieve peace if you can muster up the courage to take the journey, learn to manage your expectations, and check your fantasies at the door.

If you are an adoptee who is thinking about searching for your birth family, here are some helpful insights to keep in mind as you navigate the process . . .

1. Expect the unexpected.  You will likely experience a range of emotions, from a sense of peace and the joy of seeing yourself reflected in people who look like you, to feelings of anger and grief about things that could have been.  Some, all, or none of these may be your experience and they can each happen at different times in your journey.  It may takes months or even years for you to integrate your relatives into your lives and vice versa.

2. Be honest without fear.  Be sure to talk openly and honestly.  If you need to take things slow, then say it.  If there are questions you have, don’t be afraid to ask them.  Don’t hold back for fear that the relationship will end.  And don’t feel like you don’t have a right to know your birth family’s history.  It is yours too.  You didn’t just inherit their genes.  You can only be free when you embrace the truths about the past.  Even if you discover bad things that doesn’t mean that the past will hold you hostage.  The secrets and lies will.

3. Take notes.  Bring a camera.  Keep a journal and write down your emotions.  Talk with a therapist, close friends or relatives, and other adoptees who’ve been through the process.  Your adoption reunion is not a journey that should be taken alone!  You need healthy ways to process and release your emotions.  Having someone you trust close by can help you not become blinded by emotions and the residue of child fantasies.

4. Let go of the secrets.  If you decide to reunite with your birth family then this means that all parties have to be willing to let go of secrets, shame, and guilt.  If people keep secrets then the potential joy, healing, and closure of the reunion will be thwarted.  Expect that unveiling secrets can be painful and overwhelming for your birth relatives and for you.

5. It’s okay to be angry. Anger is part of the reunion process.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing if you can get behind the anger – bad memories resurfacing, hurt, past pain, grief, loss, shame, insecurity, rejection, abandonment, and vulnerability.  Birth parents and adoptees may find themselves getting in touch with what they missed over the years because of the lost connection.  Don’t let your anger scare you into retreat.

6. Find balance.  Your birth parents may want to rescue you because to them you are their baby even though you are now an adult.  And sometimes the adoptee might want to rescue their birth parents.  Your siblings may have intense reactions.  They may feel left out or they may have fears about the new place you might take in their parents’ lives.  Take things slowly.  Don’t rush or think that you’re going to move right into your birth relatives’ lives like nothing happened.

7. Don’t overreact.  The honeymoon period can be intense and overwhelming.  Sometimes there’s daily contact between the adoptee and birth relatives.  Any break in the communication may signal fear of rejection.  Don’t overreact.  All parties need time and space to process this life altering event.

It doesn’t take much to set them off.  Adults, too often Black, are joining a growing chorus on social media and everywhere else to sing the praises of beating children—too often Black—for one infraction or another.

Most recently, a viral surveillance video of a 9-year-old boy viscously biting, punching, choking and kicking girl toddlers in a daycare center, has inspired a litany of odes to everything from corporal punishment to outright abuse.  Here are some of the comments I’ve seen:

“WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! … the sound that should be coming from that kid’s butt, EVERY time, and I mean EVERY time this kid even talks about doing something like this.”

“He needs to be put down, like a rabid dog. I don’t care if he’s 9. If he is allowed to roam free, he will most assuredly be a serial killer.”

“THE TEACHERS, THE PARENTS AND THE KID NEED TO HAVE THEIR ASSES BEAT!”

“This kid needs an old fashion butt whooping!”

“I would beat the brakes of the day care worker & they better had got the boy out of my sight.”

“My fist was balled up just watching this video. Both the kid, the aunt, and the daycare worker need to be beat!”

“This evil 9 year old, should be charged as an adult, because he definitely knew what he was doing.” 

“If this was one of my kids omg I would be on death row right now cause him and everybody there would of been in there graves…real talk.”

Many of the commenters have called the child a “monster,” “thug,” “demon,” “menace to society,” and “pure evil.”  While some have called for him to be jailed or placed in a “psycho ward,” others see no redemptive possibilities for him; they predict that he will become the “next James Holmes,” a woman beater, a serial killer, or that he’ll end up dead before his time.

At the same time, the conversation about Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, 14, violating the cultural taboo against airing her famous family’s “dirty laundry.” According to The Los Angeles Times “Paris sent a threat into cyberspace, referring to a sustained lack of contact from her grandmother: “9 days and counting… so help me god i will make whoever did this pay,” after, “8 days and counting. something is really off , this isn’t like her at all .. i wanna talk directly to my grandmother!!<|3.”

After Grandma Jackson returned from what was a vacation with her eldest daughter, Rebbie, it was reported that Paris’ aunt Janet verbally abused and slapped her for inappropriate Tweeting. In the time between that rumor (later retracted by celebrity gossip site TMZ) and the calmer factual accounts, singer Gladys Knight said on “The Talk” show on CBS that she would knock Paris’ teeth out for such an infraction

My concerns are two-fold.

First, the 9-year-old boy in Vicksburg, Mississippi needs help, not an “ass whooping,” as so many are quick to prescribe.

Vicksburg police, who were given the tape by the owner of Kiddie City Childcare Center, said the boy’s attacks went on for 10 to 20 minutes, going unnoticed by a daycare worker whose back was turned during the assaults.  That worker, Sandra Trevillion, has since been arrested and charged with two counts of contributing to the neglect of a minor.

The video also shows an angry parent of one the abused girls entering the center looking for answers.  When other children pointed to a six-year-old boy, the father, 29-year-old Jamie Williams, stormed over to the child and slapped him.  

But he hit the “wrong” child, police said.

Williams, who was also arrested and charged with assault, said that when he picked up his one-year-old daughter on Monday he took pictures of her busted lip, bruises, and a bite mark.  He told his side of the story.

‘She (the daycare worker) couldn’t tell me anything, you know what I’m saying?  But everybody in the classroom pointed to the little boy.  You know, I was kind of angry at the time.  So, I just slapped him upside his head like don’t be doing my daughter like that. You know what I’m saying?  I ain’t trying to hurt the child or nothing.  You know what I’m saying? I got children too.”

Williams described how he hit the child.

“I didn’t really just cock back and try to hurt the child.  I know the child is still a child, you know, but at that point in time I had to do something.  I had to hit him a little bit. You know, quit hitting my child man.  Don’t be putting your hands on my child like that. You know, I ain’t try to hurt the baby.  I know he a baby, he at a daycare.”

As I watched this video I, like many others, was shaken to the core.  I was horrified, speechless, and sick to my stomach.  I didn’t quite know how to process what I was seeing. 

The boy’s behavior tells me that this is something he learned.  Something was done to him or he witnesses it.  The fact that he takes medicine should not be discounted.  Clearly he’s taking his aggression, frustration, and boredom out on weaker people. This is learned behavior. If children are hit for every inappropriate behavior at a young age, with nobody explaining what they’ve done wrong, then the only thing they are being taught is to act aggressively towards those younger and weaker than they are.

As infuriated as I was watching that child attack those toddlers, it never occurred to me that someone should beat him.  Violence against a child is never the right response.  And hitting somebody else’s child is illegal.  

It’s interesting that so many people say, “I would be in jail today if that were my child.”  What does it mean that, as a people, we are so quick to default to prescriptive violence? Don’t we realize that just puts more Black people into the prison pipeline and the foster care system?  The whole community needs to learn some conflict resolution skills, ASAP!

As horrific as that video of the 9-year-old boy attacking younger children might be, we need to be coming together—as families, as neighbors, and as communities—to learn the reasons behind such horrible behavior.  Look into his family background, his home environment, the medicine he’s alleged to be taking—maybe violent outbursts could be a side effect?

Just as it was startling to hear sweet, beautiful Gladys Knight talk about permanently disfiguring a troubled teen girl, and justifying it with cultural references (“I’m from the South”), I’m disappointed to see so many otherwise sane and rational adults revert so automatically to violent forms of punishment in the name of “teaching some respect,” “administering some good home training,” and “showing a child right from wrong.”

I submit that introducing violence makes effective discipline more difficult, because the beating becomes the central point rather than the child’s behavior choices being problematic.  It disturbs me deeply that Black parents especially are so very, very quick to talk about straightening children out through spankings and beatings.

The conversations that erupt in response to shocking videos and celebrity fodder are perfect examples of where the healing and growth needs to take place.  While it is neither easy nor simple to change habits and behavior, this is a challenge we must undertake.

We must slow the rush to judgment, criticism, condemnation and talk of “whoopin’ that behind,” and replace it with empathy for a child in crisis who might not have the language, skills or tools to adequately communicate what they’re going through—whether that child is beating others as he was probably beaten—or expressing concern for the whereabouts of an adult caregiver on social media.

You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.

What’s it gonna be?