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Does
My Child Need Help? | Useful Kids
to Worry About I always worry that I'm not giving my daughter enough. Enough time, enough nutritious meals, enough of the right kind of stimulation before she turns 3- the magical age, experts say, when certain developmental windows start sliding shut. It can be stupid, toxic thing, this generalized fretting. In the midst of the most enjoyable moments, it blinks in my subconscious like a red-alert button, ever reminding me not to get complacent about her well being. But then I tour the Children's Crisis Treatment Center at 18th and Callowhill streets and realize how lucky she is to have a nail-biter like me in her corner. CcTC is a day-treatment center for kids ages 3 to 5 who have been diagnosed with social, behavioral or mental disorders stemming from experiences so horrific, they've simply flipped out. There's the little girl with naptime nightmares who saw her father murder her twin sister. There's the sexually abused boy so socially neglected he must be taught-taught-how to play with a toy fire truck. There's the child who kicks and bites, ever since being abandoned by his mother in a taxi. There's the girl from a home so emotionally impoverished she doesn't know what she's supposed to do with a doll. Most live in foster homes, or with extended family at wit's end with the hyperactive or sullen children they inherited from drug-addled mothers or imprisoned fathers. Others live with teenage matriarchs too consumed by their own needs to care adequately for the little ones who tug at their hems. Dr. Arlene Wallace directs CcTC's therapies for these wounded angels. Years ago, when she got into this field, she thought it was possible to deliver all of them to happy futures. Now, she says, her goal is simply to make their lives more bearable. She actually uses those words. More Bearable. "From Monday to Friday, from 9 until 3, we show these children a world where they matter," she says. Her staff uses music, speech, physical and occupational therapies to help kids manage their churned-up feeling of abandonment, rage, and loss. Success is measured in baby steps, celebrations made over behaviors that most parents take for granted; "One boy got through the day without biting anyone," says Wallace. "Another one smiled last week for the first time in six months. We rejoiced at that." She's sitting in an observation room in the center, behind a two-way mirror. On the other side, a dozen kids slumber on mats in a colorful playroom. A psychologist monitors them. Wallace is a warm, comfortably built woman with expressive brown eyes and pretty braids. The kids love to touch her. She hugs and kisses all 52 of them every day, loses sleep over them at night. Weekends are the toughest. "Monday mornings, we're braced for the worst," she says. "Did they get to eat and bathe? Did they see their mother's boyfriend beat her up again? They endure environments I'd never survive." Wallace is married but childless. She says the center's children are her babies. She knows she shouldn't have favorites, but one imp, D., she'd adopt him if she could. His behavior is wild, but he's also astoundingly empathetic, inquiring after Wallace's health like he's her peer. D. just turned 5, so he'll enter kindergarten at summer's end. Wallace prays the intervention he's received will help him interact normally in a mainstream classroom. "I'll worry about him," she says. I bid her goodbye and head home, my ideas of adequate parenting in heartbreakingly new perspective. That night, against standard household protocol, I honor my daughter's request to sleep in bed with my husband and me. I know I'm messing with the nighttime structure we've worked so hard to establish. But as a fold myself around her warm body and inhale the scent of her neck, I'm not worried about it.New York Times Programs that seek to reduce violence, drug abuse, pregnancy and other dangerous or unhealthy activities among adolescents are notorious for doing little too late and at too great a cost. But a new study has shown that by starting early- in grades one through six- to foster an interest in school and learning among children and to enhance their self-esteem, many of these risky behaviors can be averted and school performance and attendance can be improved through high school. At the same time, an independent analysis of the study showed, communities can save money over and above the cost of such a preventive effort. The findings of this 12 year study, published today in the Journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, showed that coaching teachers and parents on how best to encourage young children's involvement and interest in school and teaching children how to interact socially can have a significant long-term effect on their behavior and academic achievement. The study involved schools with students from Seattle's most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Some of the schools got the intervention program designed for the study and the other comparable schools did not. Compared to student who did not receive the elementary school intervention program, by age 18, those who did were 19 percent less likely to have committed violent acts, 38 percent less likely to indulge in heavy drinking, 13 percent less likely to engage in sexual intercourse, 19 percent less likely to have had multiple sex partners and 35 percent less likely to have caused a pregnancy or to have become pregnant. The effects on curbing sexual behavior and teenage pregnancy were achieved "without ever using the 'S' word" said Dr. J. David Hawkins, the principal investigator and a professor of social work at the University of Washington. "It's amazing to see these outcomes," he said. Students who attended the schools with intervention programs also were more likely to stay in school and to achieve higher grades, although there was no significant impact on their experimentation with drugs or cigarettes.
Jane
Quinn, who studied youth programs at the Carnegie Council on
Adolescent Development, praised the Seattle program as one of the very
best she has reviewed. Ms. Quinn, who is now program director at the DeWitt
Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, said the study has three "remarkable
features: One, the intervention is quite simple and straightforward,
something that any community could adopt; two, it works with people
who
are already involved in the lives of children and recognizes young
people as agents in their own development, and, three, it has powerful
long-term results- a six- year follow-up is very unusual." The study involved three efforts: with teachers in each of the six grades, with parents and with the students. During five days of in-service training, teachers were taught how to foster cooperative learning among students so that each child is rewarded for having contributed to the achievements of the group. Dr. Hawkins explained that the underlying goal was to help children "develop a commitment to school, to value education and to become emotionally attached to their school, teachers and peers." "This in turn can give them the motivation to live in a positive, responsible way," Dr. Hawkins said. Parenting programs were offered to the parents of every student in the experimental classrooms. Over all, 43 percent of these parents participated. Parents were encouraged to reinforce desirable behavior and to provide consistent discipline. They were also shown how to help their children succeed academically. As for the children themselves, their guidance started in school in the first grade with learning how to solve interpersonal problems, take turns and talk positively to themselves. In sixth grade the students were offered four one-hour training sessions in refusal skills- how to say "No" and still keep their friends. The full cost of the program over the six years of intervention was calculated at nearly $3,000 a child. However, Dr. Hawkins noted that if such a program were adopted in a school system, the actual ongoing costs would be lower because teacher training would not be repeated annually. But even at the full cost of the program, the Washington State Institute for Public Policy demonstrated that the intervention would be cost-effective if all that it achieved was a reduction in crime. The institute calculated a taxpayer savings of 231 percent just from the reduction in the number of felonies committed.
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