(From left) Sandy Milillo, Maureen Ferrari, Jo-Ellen Hazan, Keith Mait and Toni Ann Naha helped North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center raise a record $87,000-plus at its Spring Luncheon.
Volunteers from National Grid included (left to right) Malcolm Minott, Fran Di Leonardo, Kathleen Wisnewski, Alanna Russo, Susan Eckert, Lauren Benetos and Carie Manticos, pictured with Dr. Nellie Taylor-Walthrust of the Guidance Center.
On May 7, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center welcomed seven employees of National Grid to its Leeds Place location on Brush Hollow Road in Westbury, one of the Guidance Center’s three sites.
The seven volunteers — who brought with them new large decorative planters, several beds of petunias, geraniums, catmint, hostas and juniper bushes, along some white paint—spent the day planting, painting and cleaning the Leeds Place signpost, giving the building a fresh, friendly look.
“National Grid is happy to partner with North Shore Child & Family Guidance at their Leeds Place,” said Kathleen Wisnewski, National Grid customer and community manager, who was part of the volunteer team. “The planting and beautification project performed by employees from our Customer and Community and IS Teams is another example of how National Grid gives back to the community we live and work in. It’s nice to know that the people entering the Leeds Place will be greeted by beautiful flowers to help brighten their day.”
Fran DiLeonardo, director, IT customer service management at National Grid, was enthusiastic as he put his all into the project. “It was another great day making a difference in the community that we live and work in!” said DiLeonardo. “It’s always rewarding to put the time aside and make it happen; that’s why we keep coming back!”
“I love meeting new people and learning about the good work they are doing to support folks in their communities who need a little extra help,” said volunteer Susan M Eckert, IT Infrastructure and Operations at National Grid. “It was very inspiring!”
This is the third time this year that National Grid has volunteered for the Guidance Center. “We are very proud of our partnership with National Grid,” said Lauren McGowan, director of development, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center. “Everyone is so generous with their time and talents. The volunteers all worked tirelessly to help make the Guidance Center’s Leeds Place office an attractive place for our clients to continue on their path to healing.”
If your company would like to discuss opportunities to volunteer at the Guidance Center or support our mission in other ways, contact McGowan at LMcGowan@northshorechildguidance.org or call her at (516) 626-1971, ext. 320.
I wonder what young people think of the endless parade of public figures – government officials, businessmen, entertainers, professional athletes, college coaches and administrators – crashing and burning before their eyes. Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best when he wrote: “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”
A few years ago, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, where I am the Executive Director, asked 1,200 high school students from all across Long Island to tell us their concerns now and for the future.
One of them wrote: “I don’t think this world is ever going to get better. To live in this world you have to be very, very strong, because if you’re not, the system will walk all over you. . . . You really cannot trust anybody but your family, and not even them half the time.”
Relationships, illness, divorce and death weighed heavily on their minds. One wrote about the dissolution of his parents’ marriage, “My parents are getting a divorce and now there is talk about my mother being forced to move out of the house and my father move in and I have no say. I have lost faith in the court system. I thought we had the right to freedom of speech, but I guess actually being heard is another story.”
Another talked about his fears: “I am afraid of a lot of things; mainly dying too young and not getting to live to my greatest expectations.”
We asked, “When you’re confused about life who helps you sort things out?” Almost three-quarters said their parents and their friends fill that role. Far from rejecting parents in favor of peers, family is part of the solution, not the problem.
In an all-day gathering of teens and adults that followed the release of the results of the student survey, the young people talked about well-meaning parents who are overwhelmed with trying to make ends meet, with little or no time for substantive discussion with them; and they talked about teachers who they admire but who are too preoccupied with preparations for standardized testing.
In a small group discussion that day, a parent said: “What stood out for me the most was the observation by several of the kids that they need support from adults to tackle the challenging issues they face. Often, adults complain that kids are apathetic, lazy, unmotivated or apolitical. Maybe it is our own apathy and fears that prevent us as adults from helping.”
And, a teacher said: “Listening to the depths of emotion and world concerns from the students, I came away feeling that we are missing the boat with our kids. I know this is a generalization but, so many young people are walking around with such powerful feelings that we as adults are not helping them with. Our schools appear to be more interested in control, assessments and achievement scores than the life events that affect our children.”
As I reflect on the voices of young people all across Long Island, I am reminded of a simple truth: connections count. It is the good connections in their lives that enable our children to bounce back from private crises such as illness, divorce, drug addiction, child abuse and death, and keep them from being weighed down by the daily drumbeat and demoralizing impact of public scandal and corruption that beset us.
Note: This story appeared previously in Newsday.
In this file photo taken on June 30, 2018 a person holds a sign during protest against US immigration policies on the international bridge between Mexico and the US, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images)
Just the other day I had a conversation with a young father who, along with his wife, bought their first house. He described moving from their apartment to his in-laws’ home in preparation for the big move. He spoke about how discombobulated their 2-year-old daughter was as a result.
Now, imagine if instead of a move to a new house, that child was unceremoniously taken away by strangers and placed in an unfamiliar setting, with people she never met before, for an undetermined period of time. Picturing this sends chills up my spine.
The separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents at our southern border has generated enough finger-pointing to overshadow the focus on the long-term traumatic impact of the zero-tolerance family separation policy on the children, especially the youngest ones.
The subjects of debate include which president bears the greatest responsibility for the separation policy; whether an area enclosed by a cyclone fence used to involuntarily house children is a cage or a shelter; and whether a zero-tolerance policy is an effective deterrent.
Somewhere beyond politics, the truth exists about the real impact of prolonged separation on children’s emotional well-being. Yet, even that has become a subject of debate.
Some supporters of the zero-tolerance policy argue that the separated children are probably better off because while they are detained, they’ll be more likely to get better health care, more recreational options and nutritional meals.
They forget to mention toxic stress. They will get that too.
The American Academy of Pediatrics affirmed that “Highly stressful experiences, like family separation, can cause irreparable harm, disrupting a child’s brain architecture,” and that “prolonged exposure to serious stress — known as toxic stress — can carry lifelong consequences for children.”
The consequences of this adverse childhood experience include learning difficulties, behavior problems, difficulty regulating emotions and increased and potentially debilitating physical and mental health issues.
As it currently stands, a large majority of the estimated 2,400 separated children have been reunited with their families, or placed with a relative in the U.S. following the June 13, 2018, executive order reversing the zero-tolerance family separation policy.
In viewing broadcast footage taken at several such reunifications, it does not take a trained eye to see the heightened levels of anxiety and dysregulation that the children are experiencing. Returning from what amounts to sudden and involuntary detention is just not the same as a return home after a month at sleepaway camp.
Despite the executive order reversing the zero-tolerance policy, recently released government data indicate that at least 250 children have been separated from their parents since that time.
The damage done to thousands of innocent young lives at the border was an unforced error by the United States. It was entirely unnecessary because it is not a deterrent for a parent who fears that his or her child’s life is in danger in their home country.
The fact that separating children from their families and placing them in an institutional environment can lead to irreversible changes in their brains is a violation of human rights and an atrocity.
The good news is that the children have a decent chance of recovering from toxic stress — provided that they and their parents get quality professional bilingual mental health counseling upon reunification. But what are the odds of that happening? The Refugee Mental Health Resource Network states that there is an increasing need for services for asylum seekers, and the demand far exceeds the supply of mental health professionals.
According to Allan Shapiro, a pediatrician and co-founder of Terra Firma, a nationally recognized medical-legal partnership located in the South Bronx, the office of the inspector general found that separated children placed in office of refugee resettlement care face a mental health staff-to-child ratio of 1:100. That includes staff who have not been fingerprinted or otherwise properly vetted.
To the extent that the federal government does not actively facilitate the children getting the quality mental health care that they need, we will forever bear responsibility for the havoc it will wreak on their future lives.
Andrew Malekoff is the executive director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center on Long Island, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. www.northshorechildguidance.org.
It wasn’t necessary for the slaughter of innocents at Sandy Hook elementary school on Dec. 14, 2012 to validate that there is evil in the world. But what it did is affirm that if the massacre of 6- and 7-year-old children is not off limits, then nothing is.
This perception has been so routinely validated since that fateful day there is the real possibility that we are becoming numb to mass shootings in America.
Psychic numbing is a psychological condition that leads one to feeling indifferent to horrific events. The quote attributed to Joseph Stalin, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic,” is an illustration of that state.
The sabbath day synagogue attack in Poway, Calif., is just the latest mass shooting in America and the second synagogue shooting in only six months following the Tree of Life slaughter in Pittsburgh.
After some time passes, Poway will become another tombstone in our collective psyche, alongside all the others that have occurred in churches, mosques, public schools, colleges, shopping malls, nightclubs, business offices, concert halls and more.
Shortly after the shootings, mental health experts, clergy and educators offer tips, wisdom and spiritual support to speechless parents about how to soothe their children. Their advice always is: Be available emotionally, be compassionate, limit media exposure, reassure safety, offer distractions to prevent obsessive worry, watch for angry outbursts and depression and, if symptoms persist, seek professional help.
I imagine if parents were to speak from their guts instead of their heads and hearts, they would likely tell their children: “It’s a cruel world, evil is everywhere, toughen up, watch your back, and don’t trust anyone.”
In 2019 alone, through the end of March and before Poway, there have been 70 mass shootings, 90 dead and 249 wounded across the country. These statistics can be found in any number of publications that have taken on the task of tracking mass shootings in the United States. They include USA Today, Mother Jones, Vox and the Washington Post.
When I was a child, I was an avid collector of baseball cards. I knew all the stats of my favorite players. I checked the box scores in the papers each morning after a game. Those were the numbers that consumed my childhood. Now it’s mass shootings. How many? How many dead? How many wounded? What team is the shooter on? Is he a lone wolf?
It is sad to say but I am no longer shocked. I know Poway won’t be the last nor will the next be the last.
In an interview with Bill Moyers one year after 9/11, psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton said, “I think we all have a double life. On the one hand, we know we can be annihilated and everybody around us by terrorism, by the incredible weaponry this world now has. And yet in another part of our mind we simply go through our routine. And, we do what we do in life, and we try to do it as well as we can.”
Lifton has a most unique perspective having studied the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb, the Nazi doctors, and the cult that released gas into the Tokyo subway, among many other horrible things people do to one another.
What he seems to be saying is that on the one hand we’re free to live our day-to-day lives, but on the other hand, we are never unmindful of these events. And, so we have a choice to make. We can let these events pass us by as a train in the night or get involved in something that really matters.
Students, like those from from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., have been models for transcending inertia and taking social action, at choosing hope over despair.
As one such student from Iowa said in an interview on PBS: “Change will not come on its own. We have to make it for ourselves. The adults have proven that they are unwilling to move beyond thoughts and prayers. We must force them into action.”
Take a stand.
Make waves.
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.