Student Needed Empathy And TLC, Not Abuse And Condemnation

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Dec 17, 2015 | Anton Media

The reprehensible act that wound up getting Deputy-School Resource Officer Ben Fields fired from the police department.Several weeks ago I read three letters to the editor in another newspaper that focused on the importance of classroom discipline and respect for authority, and I have not been able to get the incident out of my mind. The letters were written with regard to the high school girl in Spring Valley, SC who was thrown around like a rag doll and body-slammed by power-lifting Deputy-School Resource Officer Ben Fields. Her crime? Refusing to turn over her cell phone. The incident was captured on two cell phone videos.

Here’s how the violent arrest was described by CNN:
“The videos show the officer standing over a student, seated at her desk. He puts his arm near her neck, then yanks her backward. The desk tips over and the student crashes onto the floor. The uniformed officer doesn’t let go, sharply tugging the student toward the front of the classroom. She flies out of her desk and slides several feet across the floor.”
Although the letter writers were critical of the deputy’s actions, there was not a scintilla of sympathy for the victim expressed in their reflections or, seemingly, any wish to know or even wonder about her back story.

Maybe they didn’t know that her grandmother had become her caregiver for years because her own mother had lost custody of her due to criminal activity. Perhaps they were not aware that her grandmother died a week before the classroom incident. Or, that her cell phone was her only personal property, a comforting transitional object.
This information is sourced but isn’t “reportable” in the news because of her age and status in foster care. If the media “outs” her mother and grandmother she becomes identifiable. But surely the school must have known. And if they didn’t, they are negligent.

Did they do anything to comfort the grieving girl or just call the school resource officer to discipline her and bend to their authority? Why didn’t they call the guidance counselor or school social worker instead of a law enforcement officer? Did he know she was grieving? Did school authorities tell him? Would it have made any difference?

CNN also reported the following: “Curtis Lavarello, one of more than 46,000 people employed full time as school resource officers [across the country], has seen this kind of scenario ‘played out hundreds of times, … and it’s one that can be handled so simply.’ But he can’t explain why this one was handled as it was. ‘We saw a pretty routine discipline issue become a criminal issue in just a matter of minutes,’ said Lavarello, head of the School Safety Advocacy Council. ‘It escalated needlessly’.”

Discipline and respect for authority are completely beside the point in this case. Those issues are for another discussion. What this teenage girl who was grieving needed was some empathy and TLC and not physical abuse by school personnel and condemnation by judgmental outsiders.
Andrew Malekoff is the executive director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org. The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the publisher or Anton Media Group.

Helping Teens Grow Through Wilderness Program

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Nov 9, 2015 | Anton Media

By Andrew Malekoff

Even though the chill of autumn is well upon us, it’s always a great time to enjoy the outdoors—and it’s also important for a youth’s development to keep their connection to our natural world.

With teens so immersed in texting and video games and other tech-focused  pursuits, they often lose both the connection to each other and to the world around them. That’s why North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center designed our Wilderness Respite Program, which provides a unique opportunity for at-risk adolescents to participate in nature activities that foster individual growth, leadership skills, self-esteem and friendships while also promoting environmental stewardship.

Following is a “slice of life” from the program:

During one of the planning meetings for an upcoming hike, a few of the boys tried to take control of the situation by dominating the other group members through physical posturingand verbal banter. That all changed once the teens drove to the state park and departed from the van. We found ourselves immersed in the forest, with no pavement, stores, traffic lights or any of the usual trappings of the home neighborhood—the kind of pure, natural environment many of the teens had rarely if ever experienced.

To our surprise, the boys did not volunteer to lead the way. Instead, they followed the girls, who became models of leadership. Little by little, all of the teens learned to work together, decoding the trail markers located on trees and rocks. Relying on their growing awareness of themselves and the direction of the staff, the teens gradually learned to hike at a controlled, measured pace, rather than starting out in a sprint and tiring as the day wore on. Although this was emphasized during preparation meetings, it was in the “doing” that this learning was integrated by the hikers, who soon learned how easy it was to get worn out.

The hike was a challenging one, lengthy and with rough terrain. It was an experience most of the teens felt was beyond their capabilities, but once they realized they could overcome these perceived limitations, they felt exhilarated. They also developed a noticeable respect, admiration and affection for each other. Tired and done-in, the group gathered around some rocks, leaning on one another for support, warmth and belonging.

Self-discovery took another turn on a canoeing trip by the same group. The teens were faced with strong winds and an unfriendly current as they attempted to learn basic canoeing skills on Long Island Sound. All of the teens experienced a great deal of frustration, disappointment and anger as they struggled in teams to control the direction and progress of their canoes. They learned that the elements and obstacles proved too formidable on that day for us to reach our destination, when after three hours of tiresome paddling, we needed to turn around and paddle back to our starting point, rather than continue to our original destination six miles away.

But the trip wasn’t by any means a failure, because learning how to handle disappointment is just as valuable as experiencing success. The group learned that when the challenges of the wilderness became tiring and weather conditions on the water became burdensome and oppressive, they had to reach inside themselves to summon up additional strength to overcome frustration, anger and fear. So, even though the trip had more than its share of disappointments, the teens were able to carry over the feeling that they could handle it when things don’t go smoothly.

These wilderness outings to excursions on both land and sea were successful because they all serve to prepare the teens for unknown challenges ahead.

For more information about the Wilderness Respite Program, contact Director Bruce Kaufstein at 516-626-1971, ext. 316.

Bio: Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.

Originally Published in Anton Newspapers

Another School Shooting, More Talk And No Action On Mental Health

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Oct 26, 2015 | Anton Media

It wasn’t necessary for the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook to validate that there is evil in the world. But it did affirm that if the massacre of six-year-olds isn’t off limits, then nothing is. Sadly, we are reminded of this again after the senseless killings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR on Oct. 1.

As after Sandy Hook, mental health experts offered tips to speechless parents about how to soothe their children. Their advice: reassure safety, limit media exposure, offer distractions to prevent obsessive worry, watch for angry outbursts and depression and if symptoms persist, seek professional help.

I imagine if parents speak to their children from their guts instead of their heads and hearts, they’d say, “It’s a cruel world, evil is everywhere, watch your back and don’t trust anyone.”
Since Sandy Hook, there have been 142 school shootings. After some time passes, Umpqua Community College will become another tombstone in our collective psyche, alongside Columbine, Virginia Tech and many more.

The two major talking points will continue to be preventing gun violence and promoting mental health. On gun violence, the discussion is about maintaining the right to bear arms and taking steps to keep certain guns out of uncertain hands.

The gun lobby is formidable. On the other hand, it seems that children don’t have a voice until they are in the ground. Children die, grieving parents become tireless advocates and laws are passed named after their deceased children.

Yet, although the Sandy Hook tragedy ignited a national discussion on mental health, not much has changed. People with mental health problems often feel shame and suffer in silence, while major metropolitan newspapers exploit and discredit people suffering with mental illnesses with malicious name-calling that reinforces fear, mistrust and stigma.

Many people might be surprised by the fact that most violent acts are not committed by persons with mental illness. In fact, people with mental illness are disproportionately the victims of violence. New gun laws require that the names of individuals with severe mental illness who are designated as dangerous be recorded in a national database. Whether this will improve public safety or generate a witch hunt that further stigmatizes the mentally ill remains to be seen. In any case, what it doesn’t do is address the problem of better access to quality mental healthcare that takes into account an individual’s needs and social circumstances in a holistic manner.

According to a subcommittee on mental health chaired by U.S. Representative Tim Murphy, 75 percent of all serious mental illness occurs before the age of 24 and 50 percent before the age of 14. Yet, only one out of five children who have emotional disturbances receives treatment from a mental health specialist.

Early screening by schools and pediatricians is a promising development. But beyond screening, many states only assure continued access to mental healthcare to children and families with Medicaid coverage, which leaves a significant number of children and adults in the lurch. The government throws the underinsured middle class and working poor overboard with no life preserver.

And the health insurance industry is no better. Most private health insurers pay substandard rates that community-based agencies can no longer afford to accept. To add insult to injury, profit-driven insurance authorization denials kill people. For example, in 2001 Timmy O’Clair, a 12-year-old from upstate New York, committed suicide after his parents were unable to obtain mental health treatment for him due to health-insurance coverage limits.

Timmy’s death was the impetus for the passage of Timothy’s Law, which extended insurance coverage for mental health treatment in New York. Although the Affordable Care Act extends federal parity protections, profit-driven insurance companies have a very long way to go to meet their mandate for adequate networks of care. When they don’t meet the mandate, we must expose them and fight to have their licenses revoked.

Although this is a story about a school in rural Roseburg, OR, as it was in Sandy Hook a blink of an eye ago, it’s really a story about the thousands of children that community-based mental health agencies guide safely to shore every year, offering them the chance to see a brighter day. To do this we need to overcome stigma and fight for funding that allows for ready access to quality mental healthcare.

Andrew Malekoff is the executive director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visitwww.northshorechildguidance.org.

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Praiseworthy

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Oct 22, 2015 | Anton Media

In one week in September, soon after we commemorated the 14th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on our country, there were three widely publicized stories that revealed the ugliness of post-9/11 America.

At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, Republican campaign front-runner Donald Trump was questioned by a man who said, “We’ve got a problem in this country; it’s called Muslims. You know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American.” Obviously, the questioner felt comfortable asking this question of Mr. Trump, whose rhetoric about immigrants has been, to put it mildly, less than kind.

Mr. Trump tried to laugh it off. But instead of correcting the audience member’s false assertion about President Obama or challenging his bigoted smear of Muslims, he just let it stand.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Ben Carson, running close behind Mr. Trump in the campaign, asserted onMeet the Press that he would not be comfortable with a Muslim as President of the United States.
Just prior to these ugly interchanges, Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim boy living in Irving, TX, was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. A teacher who thought it was a bomb reported Ahmed, a ninth grader, to the police, who then arrested him.

President Obama invited Ahmed to the White House, telling him, “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

Although these stories were well-publicized, they represent only the tip of the iceberg in post-9/11 America. In recent years I had an encounter that is probably more typical than you’d expect.
During a roundtable group forum on immigration and youth held at North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center’s Roslyn Heights headquarters, a 12-year-old boy named Muhammad, who was listening intently to others tell personal stories about leaving their homelands and struggling to fit in after arriving in the U.S., decided to speak up.

With a trembling voice, Muhammad revealed that there were kids in school who taunted him. “They’ve been calling me ‘terrorist’ for years because of my name.” Muhammad is an Arabic name that means praiseworthy. But, instead of feeling proud, Muhammad felt like an outcast.
Muhammad sat slumped in his chair and spoke softly and guardedly, but clearly and eloquently, and he was heard. By the end of the day he had received so much support from the group for having the courage to speak out that he was beaming.

During the lunch break I approached him to ask him how he was doing. He said, “Everybody is telling me that I talk good. I didn’t know that I could talk so good. Nobody ever told me that before.” Muhammad left the meeting feeling praiseworthy, a feeling befitting his name—a name he was given at birth that he should feel proud to have.

Sadly, stories of racism and hatred against Muslims are not rare—not surprising given the recent example of Ahmed Mohamed’s arrest for his innocent work on a school project. I recall that shortly after 9/11 one Muslim mother who came to us for help revealed that she dyed her children’s hair to a lighter color so that they wouldn’t be viewed as “kin of terrorists.” Those are the lengths that one mother felt were necessary to protect her children and they display a sad commentary on our culture.

As we remember the thousands who were lost on 9/11, along with other acts of terrorism, we should not lose sight of the fact that profiling people of Middle Eastern descent as terrorists or as sympathetic to terrorists must be confronted. Such widespread profiling is detrimental and devastating to thousands of innocent children and their families, many of whom were not even born until after Sept. 11, 2001. It’s time to let our voices be heard and, unlike Mr. Trump, take a stand against bias when we hear it.

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