Strong Parents Help Build Stable Children

Submitted by Griselda Williams, Manager Mental Wellness Services

Recently, several coworkers and I met to discuss our annual report for the Children’s Trust Fund (CTF), Missouri’s Foundation for Child Abuse Prevention. The grant funds mental wellness services at Community LINC, for children and youth ages 6-17. Mental wellness services are provided by a Child Therapist to include individual therapy, socialization, coping group therapy and often sibling group therapy.  As we were discussing interventions for children and youth our conversation naturally moved toward mental wellness supports provided to the parents. Some of the topics shared with Community LINC parents to support stable families and safety of children include:

• Protective Factors for Strengthening Families (taken from training offered via the Children’s Trust Fund).
•  Concrete support for parents in times of need
• Parent Resilience
• Social Connections
• Social and Emotional Competence
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development

• Parents as Role Model (Open discussion from the, Children See, Children Do video).
• Why Does My Child Act Like That? (We discussed the four archetypes for child misbehavior).
• How Well Do You Know Your Child? (Parents were given a handout with questions about their child’s favorite color, video game, best friend, etc. Parents met with their children to discuss their responses.
• Child Development for children birth to 5 with the Ages and Stages Questionnaire and Social, emotional and cognitive development of children ages 6-17.
• How to Help Your Child after a Traumatic Event (such as homelessness).

When parents have information and feel supported there is less risk for child abuse and neglect. These “protective factors” help families succeed and increase their resiliency during stressful times; like when they are experiencing homelessness. 

Making sure school isn't a roadblock for a homeless child

Studies tell us that the academic performance of a homeless child is hindered both by poor cognitive and non-cognitive development and by the negative circumstances of being homeless. 

Homeless children are 4 times as likely to suffer from a developmental delay as other housed children.

By age 4, the average child in poverty might have heard 13 million fewer words than the average child in a working class family.

Constant mobility paired with chronic illnesses leads to extreme absenteeism. As a result, 75% of homeless children perform below grade level in reading, 72% below grade level in spelling, and 54% below grade level in math.

Homeless children who experience academic difficulties are more likely to drop out of high school.

Although homeless students are more likely to need special education services only 38 percent of students with learning disabilities receive assistance for their disabilities compared to 75 percent of housed children with learning disabilities.

These ongoing issues are noticeable when you consider that homeless children are twice as likely to be held back a year in school compared to other children.

So, what can we do to help in a short period of time?

Our Children’s Program Director teaches us that there are several things we can do to help kids academically. They boil down to (1) helping the parents navigate schools and services so that they learn to help their children and (2) teaching the students life skills to equip them to manage themselves at school.      

     

Lessons and skills taught in the Children’s Program are designed to be practiced in schools.

a.            Anger management

b.            Perseverance

c.            Goal setting

d.            Learned optimism – to have an open mind and a positive attitude towards school.

He goes on to share, “Students have difficulty thinking about the future and how their actions now are having an impact on their lives later in their life.  I have seen how goal setting lessons help students to think about the big picture.”

“In one lesson students make a road map with graduation at the end. Students determine their own personal roadblocks.”

“A 7th grader named Janelle had roadblocks like getting pregnant, doing drugs, skipping school, and fighting at school. Her roadmap was covered with encouraging words to herself.”

“The next lesson was based around where student saw themselves in 10 years. She wrote on her poster “I see myself in 10 years as a respectful, responsible young lady. I want to be in college or out of college. I want my mom and dad and family to be proud of my outcomes. But most of all I want to be proud of myself. I want to be happy.”

Next month, more about breaking the cycle of generational and situational poverty for children.

What do (homeless) children need?

We always look at studies with an eye towards what we can apply to our own programming. The seventh research brief in the series from the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness shifts the focus to the children.

We have long felt that the best impact we can have on homelessness will be through the children.  

The brief tells us that “poverty is linked to lower-quality parent-child interaction; children who grow up poor tend to have home environments characterized by more authoritarian parenting and fewer opportunities for in-home learning than those of higher-income families.” But, it goes on to say “enrollment in high-quality child care programs can moderate the negative impacts of poverty.”

The homeless mothers in this study were the least likely to obtain the subsidies that would help them afford child care. Even when they do get the child care subsidy, “poor parents with fewer economic resources are less likely to select center-based care and more likely to rely on relatives and less formal care arrangements than those with more resources.”

The decision to use the less formal child care arrangements has a lasting impact on their children.

“Center-based formal child care programs have been linked to positive developmental outcomes for poor children. High-quality child care can positively impact “language skills, cognitive growth, and socio-economic development among poor children.”

Would you be surprised to know that the brief reported that only 3% of the homeless mothers in their study enrolled their children in Head Start? While there is a grain of truth in the myth that the educational benefits of Head Start fade-out over time, according to Steven Barnett of the National Institute for Early Education Research, “nearly all studies that measured school progress find lasting impacts on grade repetition, special education and high school graduation.”

We have long guided our families to enroll their children in the wonderful non-profit day care up the street from us. The study reinforces the value of our plan to add a collaboration with another non-profit that can help place the kids in Head Start programs.

We’re also trying to teach alternatives to the authoritarian parenting style often seen in poor families.

In a 1995 book called Meaningful Differences, Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to understand why a curriculum they helped design gained only mediocre results for the children in a poor black Kansas City neighborhood. It led them to conclude that differences in parenting factor into the gaps between upper- and lower-income children.

Hart and Risley found that the average number of words heard in an hour by professors’ kids was 2,150, 1,250 for working-class children, and 620 for children in welfare families. More than that, the parents didn’t just talk less, they didn’t talk as kindly to their kids and communication could be summed up in the word “no.”

But parenting style can change, when the parent grasps the impact on her children. Our Senior Director of Programs was thrilled to read a response to a family problem solving question for one of our life skills modules. The mom said she wanted to change the way she disciplines – from yelling to talking in a calm and clear way to her children. She wants to stop punishing, and begin disciplining her kids. With a mom who takes responsibility and "owns" her role like that, there is lots of hope for her kids.