How Strong is Your Influence?

Provocation. Yes! That is the way I will end this blog entry. The essence of this blog over the past ten weeks is highlighting the stranglehold that poverty has on shaping the minds of Americans, primarily its youths. The recent economic crisis only strengthens my advocacy for putting more urgency and time into the hearts and souls of our tomorrows. The presidential campaign for many was historical for its acceptance to wipe away the four hundred year lead one ethnicity had over another ethnicity. Nevertheless, I gathered that when people strongly unite things can change and enthusiasm about that change can be infectious.

Considering that Barak Obama is operating on the one drop rule, we embrace him for what he has adopted as his being. However, he can not stay suspended in air no longer than we hold him perched upon our shoulders. We have a lot of Barak Obama’s living right in your neighborhoods of all races. The walking wounded and lost. A lot these kids are operating with their life lines strongly rooted on the back bones of the past. There are far many more that have their tentacles latched to the backs of free handouts and instant gratifications. The irony is everyone is here in America and if he or she is successfully in the game of life the competition is healthier and more vibrant. The chances of less homelessness and poverty increases. The chances that all races have better opportunity to reach the century mark in life is good for everyone.

We are sadly conflicted with history and the past. We are sadly drawn to instant heroism to the point we create [she] heroes. Until we find solid resolutions to separate us from our past, in particularly how we cultivate our youths, we will forever be confound with our yesterdays. The clarion call that went out to Americans far and wide was change. In life change is inevitable. However, will the change that cometh of the horizon or from behind door number two be favorable to your wish list. Probably not, because wishing and making things happen are two distinctively different things. The mettle of the human is the exemplary effort that person puts in to making not just self better but that of others. Thus, the linkage of a unified chain of events strengthens the existence of everyone it comes in contact with daily.

Making yourself more accountable to you and your fellow citizenry is step one in the detachment of the past. Making yourself a positive instrument that is so infectious that people find what you have to offer to insatiable to resist is step two. Making your integrity impenetrable is step three. Be whom you say you are going to be. Making yourself live by the examples that you set forth for others is step four. No. Step five is not wishing you had lived a better life before today. Step five is be an active and positive participant in the game of life. Whether you accept your role or not, you are going to be a positive or negative role model. So, if you are going to be one, why not make yourself into the best one in town.

Your Example Could Be Inspiring

I know a young man who should be feeling good about his chances in life, but instead he has been skirting the line between jail and hell. This young man that I speak of has just turned seventeen years old and four months. He is projected to graduate high school at the age of twenty one. Sadly, they want let him stay the long. He has made his friends his priority and his family has been relegated to bystanders. His life has been embroiled in strife for as long as anyone in his family can give a clear answer. YOU might know this young man.

Similarly, this past weekend there were a teenager about the same age shot dead and his partner in crime was critically wounded with a bullet to the back. These young lads were attempting to rob a man in his own driveway, but had the joke turned on them. They might have been under the impression that they were the only persons in America with a gun. Nevertheless, there are some good examples to pull from too. I always refer to President Bush’s mother and father when I want to borrow a core family value piece. This example has nothing to do what my political belief but instead on what stock we place on family expectations. Their premise in life for their children is for the children to receive a college education, earn your millions first, and then pursue political aspirations. They know for a fact that when a child of theirs hit pay dirt, they are putting in work of high quality for the first eighteen years .

On the front end, we have to immediately become better stewards of being great parents; we can no longer settle for the good parent label anymore. On the back end, we have to snatch these lost children up by the shirt collars and put them back in the game of life. Being good means you are coming up short on something meaningful to you and to someone you love. Being great means you are hitting your mark and you are on your way to something larger than you. We have to raise the bar on expectation (s) and vigorously pursue what the heck we set out for in life. The days of aiming low with the intent of hitting something high has to be a forgone conclusion. Since we can not reattach the umbilical cord, how about just simply reach one, teach one. Our young adults can use what you are offering.

I am Convinced I am Confused.

If you take your lead in life from the one place people say provides the worst examples for children, then are you a little puzzled by all the buzz going on in the world today? In the same television viewing, you can be convinced and confused by all the rhetoric that is supposed to be destroying/helping America . The political pundits almost appear to be going door to door looking for the next catch phrase to snow Americans. If the poor people can not get up and the rich people can not stay up, then how can we begin to win the war on the under privileged children and young adults in our society. If the people that have garnered all the education and walk around with the constitution in their breast pockets can not get in the same ball park on what is wrong with the USA, then you can imagine what is happening to our youths.

What have you heard in this political race that inspires you that a better day is on the horizon? Yes! History can be made in about a week from this blog entry, but in just will history have been made? That one I will have to ponder long and hard over the coming months and years. The irony with the 2008 presidential election is I do not believe anyone knows either side’s theme. What is a true and blue mission statement from either side that you will see come to fruition? Will either party take this invisible anvil off the backs and minds of our young people so that our discarded youths’ richness can be tapped into so they can have a better tomorrow. I am overfilled with the Sara Palan jokes and all dried up on the Barrack Obama’s teleprompter speeches. I am devoted to seeing our children get their due service to which its going to take better roles from parents and government.

You see the teenaged mother wandering the streets with the belly budging and the clothing shrinking. You see Lil’ Jay Rock bopping through the mall or up and down your streets during school hours on consecutive days. Oh! I saw in the paper just three days ago where three teenagers were locked up for robbery in Mobile. I remembered, a young fourteen year old girl I know with a learning disability is scheduled to give birth this week. Sadly, she is not at grade level and is probably three levels below her peers. I have encountered several other teenaged mothers whose babies were placed in other responsible adults’ care, all because the young ladies found out that babies put brake shoes on your life style. All and all, do we care as much as we say we do? There appears to be more excitement about the presidential race which ends on Tuesday night as opposed to the plight of repairing the broken main that exists for children in every hamlet and crevice in our society. Can the level of excitement being generated for this election be rolled over to a commitment to resuscitate your neighborhoods?

Is One Person Enough?

I have taken liberty combing through blogs that have relevance to my subject area. Some of them have all provided intriguing commentary on whether a single person can be an effective parent or not. I do not want to knock anyone for getting in the puddle and getting dirty at parenting. What I do have concerns with are the decisions made that leads to single parenting that often times bleeds over to ineffective parenting. Parenting in a two parent household is a huge challenge all by itself, even if you have two working middle class people doing it. If you are left holding the bag, then perhaps you have to go at parenting alone. Simply reading this narrative will cause a stir, because if you are a single parent nine times out of ten you are going say “I know I am a good parent.”

Even when we know that we can not do the job, we get caught up letting our personal pride mascara our plea to reach out for help and to even come true with ourselves. Your indecisiveness and self aggrandizing righteousness only stands to set the compass off its target just enough that over time you are so far from your mark that two worlds exist in your home. High school students in Alabama are struggling! The majority of these students do not begin struggling in high school; their antipathy for learning was potted long ago.

I have been in the presence of a few single parents over the past two weeks and they have basically tried to find some new growth treatment for their hair. They have been running their work stations as base stations for a dispatch operation on call for disruptive school aged children. The problems are school and home and tend to manifest in bunches. The fathers of these children get free passes. I am going to leave these young women’s integrity in tack and say the men possibly are non supporters,, and possibly provides moral support intermittently. I feel there is no humanly way for a single parent to give a child every thing he or she needs. The same as in a two parent household, some children are going to do well no matter the circumstances. The principle will also play itself out in a single parent household.

Good people do not necessarily make good parents. The same can be said that good friends do not make good lovers. There is no child that needs to enter the world if the parent (s) is/are not committed to hunker down and give the child everything warranted to be a success. Anyone that decides to do the insatiable clashing of the bodies exercise has to without question know that its outcome can have lasting effects on the success of a child. There is even more need for us to get the female teenagers out the parenting business. This has become a mystifying equation that is stunting the growth of children entering young adulthood.

Does Time Matter?

There is this ever looming theory that we run our homes as though they are extensions of the federal government’s philosophy. The federal government operates off a two tier system using a conservative and liberal approach. In principal this system should work because it should balance out in what is deemed a pragmatic compromise. When this system is played out in the home people will immediately assume a two parent household. However, the system is still used in one parent households but without one side or the other present you do not get the fair trade off that is needed to balance out the value system.

Are homes parented under the conservative philosophy more apt to have sounder parenting skills and better educated children? Are homes parented under the liberal philosophy more apt to have lesser parenting skills and worse educated children? The society belief is that liberals favor hand outs and free tokens. The conservatives are rooted in the belief that they can be self supporting and void of handouts and free tokens. Consequently, we are faced with an ever increasing dilemma when it comes to young adults because no matter what system of parenting is active in the home, we are missing the mark. Are we as a society devaluing what means the most to us.

Time! Time is simply what it is. Though it is miss applied in many instances and when such is the case, it is non redeemable. You can reinvest your efforts later but you can not capture that missed opportunity. Often times when you reinvest your efforts you are already behind the power curb. The day your child shows up is the time you put your techniques on life into action. The day your child enters adulthood is the time you see the fruits of your labor come to fruition. It is time to give up the liberal and conservative approach and time to just get parenting right. Yes it is time to pick the right mate when you bring these loss souls in the world. It is your time to partner with a full commitment to these schools where you send your children. If you do not want to put in the time it takes to properly raise a child, then don’t do that….

Self Imposed Distractors

I am an avid reader and often I come across things that jump off the pages. According to the Mobile Press Register, dated September 6, 2008, a not so funny thing leaped from page six and hit me in the face. A 31-year-old mother was charged with second degree murder. She is charged with allegedly driving her 15-year-old son and his gang related friends to a fight. The incident ended in a fatal shooting.

On September 3, 2008, I was at a local high school for a scheduled meeting between the principal and some parents. The parents were seeking answers as to why their teenaged son had been physically assaulted and hit in the head with a baseball bat the day prior. While I was sitting in the administrative office waiting room an all out melee ensued. The children who were identified as gang related and non gang related who also had been waiting to see the principal began what eventually led to numerous fights among students. Other parents who had been waiting also incited the problem, and a couple of them hit students with a sense of glee. It took about one hour and fifteen minutes before they were able to bring calm to the situation. The Police were summoned but did not arrive until after the fights were under control.

I have not been readily exposed to gangs since I have resided on the Gulf Coast Region. The tragedy whether gangs exist or not is not my concern at this time. My concern is the distraction that children impose on themselves that not only inhibit their well beings but that of others who are pursuing the American dream. The odds are stacked against minority children each morning they open their eyes. When you enter this into the equation of a competitive work force, you can not afford to have the continued self inflicted gunshot wounds. That is not taking care of things that you can positively do yourself, such as fully investing in an education. There are many venues that our young girls and boys can validate their existence rather than wasting it on turf fights and marijuana smoke.

The pulse of the country is beating a lot slower these days and the excitement you are seeing comes from the anxiety of people not knowing when the economic situation is going to improve. Hopefully, teenagers entering young adulthood are paying close attention. Those that are not prepared for this ever competitive work market are destined for struggle. An eighteen-year-old female told me she was truly embarrassed at a job interview recently. She said the manager told her she was the better person for the job (Hardees) but he gave the job to another eighteen-year-old girl who had a high school diploma....

Do We Turn a Blnd Eye?

I am at a lost for words when I see constant push back for what is right or wrong with society. Let me take this one step further. The No Child Left Behind legislation is not the name of the mad scientist that scraped the scalp off the plight facing America ’s young adults. Principally, education woes were apparent long before President George Bush’s myth defying panacea that to this point has further stricken the education system with polio like symptoms. The problem with young adults not being prepared can not be tallied as a black, white, or brown thing. The problem deserves further exploration but not through myopic driven lens. The broader the perspective the more the opportunity that stronger solution based alternatives will prevail.

In order to get the most bang for the buck, Americans have to begin looking outside of themselves to have a just and clearer understanding of the plight that is festering in plain view. If for some reason or another you find yourself moving up in middle class and losing total sight of where you come from, then perhaps a touch of amnesia has separated you from reality. This type complacency has the potency to exacerbate the debate that needs to take place if a fix it plan is to ever manifest itself. There has to be some form of a guide or beacon up ahead that leads a lost person to prominence. The relationship and plan to raise a newly born child must begin at conception. If we agree with this notion, then why are so many people missing the mark? The first six years of life are monumental with a shear emphasis placed on the first two years. Nonetheless, we are continuously seeing the end result when at age 14-19 young men and women are oblivious to life endeavors.

Point The Finger at Who?

I have an insatiable desire to unearth the problem with under achieving that is set as an anchor on the backs of so many young Americans. Each time I thumb throw a book or hear a commentary on the television, my engine revs up at high idle. Another kid goes to jail, another kid gets pregnant, another kid physically assaults teacher, and another kid fatally wounded, My argument comes at a time when the economy has tanked. There is much talk and speculation that today looks like some of those gloomy days when soup lines were a saving grace. People with satisfactory jobs and skills to match are finding themselves in crunch time. This has to be even more of a daunting task for youths entering early adulthood who do not have a job, yet. Teenagers are becoming young adults despite the decline in the economy. Those that are ill equipped to nudge their way into everyday living only stand to be trampled in self pity.

Wherever life begins is the starting point to accept responsibility for how your children turns out in life. Sadly, this does not happen but in a few cases. When you miss your opportunity to effectively bestow upon your offspring the tools that it takes to be a strong individual force in society, then it becomes s societal problem to force feed your children what they don’t want to know. Society has allowed too many mothers and fathers to parent through default. These parents in many instances are overlooked and given credit for doing work with children they do not have a right to lay claim. When you look further into parenting through default, you actually see the make up in a household range from one to four children. The dynamics can be perplexing and misread, and often are in many families. In a household of four children where three children are doing well and one child is exhibiting behavior problems the quick read is the child’s the problem. The mother remains in the driver’s seat. Conversely, in a household with the same dynamics but the situation is two and two, you generally find the mother taking credit for the positive acting children.

So, are parents the problem with their children’s underachieving in life? Is the government (proxy) responsible for the underachievement of our children? Or, shall we cast the blame to the teachers? When it comes to accepting responsibility for the oppression cast upon young adults no one wants to stand up and say it is my fault. Whether there is one parent or two parents in the home or involved with the child, does your child have the basic ability to perform these three simple tasks: read to comprehend, do arithmetic, and comprehend English? Ironically, children entering eighteen-years-old or high school completion can not read or write logically and comprehendingly. A lot of energy is wasted in my opinion over whether adequate money is allocated to upgrade schools and supplies. If this money does not reach its target audience then it will be said that is why there is a problem in closing the achievement gap. Simply, the children can not read the books they have. Hello! LOL! The avenue on the surface that would suggest the most traction in improving children’s productivity in life would be the parent (s).

A part of learning is conditioning. Parents have a huge part in programming children’s behavior. The preconditioning a child gets before he or she goes to school can be the charge that diminishes the learning curve. Early intervention is a combined campaign where the parent and the government unify to form the onset in child’s life to nurture the developmental growth and learning needed to succeed. Teachers can teach and be effective when parents and their children are in tune. The school administration is not the community parenting association. They are ineffective when they have to parent and teach.

Poverty in Early Adulthood

I have had the good fortunes of traversing the globe and seeing daily family struggles from a variety of angles. The one constant thing I see across America is the lack of emphasis placed on child development. Yes! The expectations set for most children is either non existence or meekly low. As recently as the day of this entry, I had a co-worker openly share that she was confronted with a teenager who dropped out of school in the sixth-grade. When he dropped out of school, he related that school interfered with his being a big time thug. This young man has just recently turned eighteen-years-old and does not have motivation to redress the issues that led him to his present predicament. He has joined many others in his peer group who have thrown in the towels to having a better life.

My motivation for exploring this topic grew when I heard that the high schools in the city I live were deemed manufacturers of school dropouts. There is enough blame to go around as to why children are not firmly given concrete family support from birth to adulthood. When you live in a world where grandparents earn their designation at twenty-nine years old, then you have to ponder. In addition, the age of conception is continuing to be lowered with far too many twelve and thirteen year olds given birth. I have no earthly idea who is the head of household in many of these instances. Children should have an opportunity to be children and to know that they are going to receive love and support. A big part that love has to be tough love that reinforces a commitment to high expectations. When you observe families in your neighborhoods you can immediately identify the parents who parent through default. Simply, the good child is mines and the bad child is yours, but neither one has put forth effort in both situations.

Poverty In Early Adulthood

I try to approach the art of growing up and maturing from a common sense aspect. Parents are engaged and in tuned with their children from birth to adulthood. If this is the simple formula for parenting, then why are so many kids not prepared when they enter adulthood? Simply remembering how my friends, my neighbors, and my family members struggled with the concept of earning decent money, I find myself curiously interested in unwinding the myth that the shackles of poverty can not be broken. There have been some startling statistics thrown around that ten percent of minority teenagers entering early adulthood will never go to college. This percentage has been tossed around as though it is a guarantee. Thus, what is more scary is the rate minorities continue to volunteer for incarceration. Many of them are under educated and have no vocational training. There appear to be an enormous anvil thrust upon children enduring poverty stricken upbringing. Furthermore, this inanimate object sees the blame cast on anyone regarding what causes the problem and what it takes to remedy it. Are children deprived of quality parenting, schooling, job training, and role modeling to compete in this ever evolving world?

Children born into poverty generally remain there throughout the better part of their lives, or so it seems. Considering that poverty has been involuntarily nominated the root cause of what prohibits a person from achieving his or her optimal best, we can see why the some communities are fixated on public handouts. Children are continuously being born to unwed and teenage mothers who in large part are not equipped to handle the rigors of such a responsibility. This unto itself is a disaster recipe for raising children and ensuring these children get the nourishment and guidance needed to be competitive in society. The alarming rate that children are inheriting their poor life gifts from mothers and distant fathers are saddening. In America we have the practically the same problems with the rich and poor and educated and uneducated. The same can be said for teen pregnancy, unwed pregnancy, crime, and incarceration. There is a consensus for many problems that identify the poor. I am amazed that underprivileged people continue to languish behind the door frame of poverty when the key has been designed and issued.