You're Asking Me?
It’s hard to believe that for more than 20 years, I have been serving as Scholastic’s Senior Child Development Consultant. It’s a many faceted role; and I love it. Sometimes, though, I have to pinch myself and assuage doubts about whether I have the requisite wisdom to meet the role’s expectations. For example, teachers write in and ask poignant questions about the difficulties of certain children. The teachers want so much to help. I do my best to answer them on line (currently at e-ECT) and in print (currently in “Ask a Psychologist”, Instructor Magazine). Parents have sought my advice on e-Scholastic’s parent advising offerings. Many of their questions and my attempts at answering them were packaged into a small Scholastic book, “Raising Happy & Successful Kids”.
Occasionally, I am surprised at my responses to questions from teachers, parents, editors, publishers. In fact, I am surprised that I came up with any answer. The questions are challenging. I think to myself, “Huh, I didn’t know I knew that” or “Where did that response come from?” I guess there is something to be said for a Grandmother/psychologist’s lifetime of experience. At least it provides a mysteriously sustained mental reservoir of learning through living and working, or something like that…
The answers to questions amble into my consciousness when needed, and I, truly humbly, deign to share them. I am always amazed when they seem to make sense and work, at least according to my encouraging editors. Perhaps the most daunting questions are those that come from members of the media who turn to Scholastic at times of national crises or untoward tragedy. “What should teachers or parents say to kids about… “the Oklahoma bombing”, about “Katrina”, or a school shooting, the start of the (first) Iraq war, about the tragedy of “9-11”; about a massacre in a peaceful kindergarten in Pennsylvania; about a slaughter of innocents in our country or abroad; about “Ethnic Cleansing”, about the start of the (current) Iraq war, about ever more man made or man-handled crises,?
I struggle with the assignment to reassure children and their families, as well as teachers, during events that shatter all our taken for granted certainties. Whether I am calm or not, I must become calm and rational and reassuring, drawing on whatever I seem to know about being a child in a trying time, although I didn’t know I knew it until asked.
There have been some periods when we seemed to be burdened by one awful event after another. Thankfully, there hadn’t been any shared tragedies for awhile, until right now when none of us can escape the implications of a different, but all consuming crisis. So here I am face to face with the assignment to guide parents and teachers about a battered economy. The question is the same as it has been each time: “What to say to children?”
You’re asking me about an economic melt down? My education in economics began and essentially ended with the Samuelson text in college and maybe a few vague memories of lectures about Adam Smith and the “Invisible Hand”, a metaphor that easily sticks in the mind.
Next week, I will share my responses to this current group of questions. They too are responses that came out of I don’t know what corner of my mind. I am hoping you will ever so gently let me know if they make sense and improve them, if you will.
