About Childhood Memories

Doug Wallace is an attorney and author of the memoir, Everything Will Be All Right. Wallace grew up in generational poverty, and along with seven siblings, was abused by an alcoholic father for most of his childhood and adolescent years. When asked, what would he most like to change about the past, Wallace simply responds, "My memories." Wallace wrote the following article titled "About Childhood Memories."

How often do you see or hear something that brings back memories of your childhood? No doubt, the memories you invoke are soothing reminders of days gone by—a time when everything was a new experience and stress was not a big factor in your life. What most people don't know is that many children born into impoverished families spend their adult life trying to forget their childhood. They don't have good memories so they block it out. Consider this:

• A child living in poverty is often isolated, impaired and undermined by their surroundings.
• Persistent adversity assaults them from their earliest memories, continuously reinforcing its destructive impact upon life at home and at school.
• They were born into an environment of crisis and stress, yet additional stress is heaped them as they grow older.
• One or both of their parents displays violent and/or criminal behavior.
• One or both of their parents is an alcoholic or drug addict making steady employment unlikely.
• Their parents are too drained to provide consistent nourishment, structure and stimulation of the type that prepares other children for school and for life—hence they behave differently at school.
• Their older siblings experience failure as soon as they enter the world outside the family and rapidly come to the conclusion the future holds little promise. Low expectations are shared memories among siblings.
• Consistent failure among siblings and other family members convinces them that they are also born to fail.
• Failure is compounded and reinforced by not learning the social skills necessary to merge into mainstream society.
• The child sees that other families live differently and have a stable family life, while their world remains bleak.
• The child has no reason to believe that anything worthwhile will be lost by dropping out of school, committing crimes, or having babies as unmarried teenagers.
• They lack the hope, dreams and a stake in the future.
• A culture of poverty encourages them to fight as the solution for dealing with adversity.
• The culture of poverty teaches them to take immediate satisfaction over long-term gains.

In short, the child has only a few good memories of the past and those are often drowned out by the bad. It is perhaps the one biggest thing they wish they did have- a good memory of the past.

Without a useful and self-respecting past that gives them a sense of self-worth and a future worth anticipating, the child is missing a critical piece of the puzzle required for building a successful and happy life. No one circumstance, no one single event, is the cause of a rotten childhood memory, but add them all up and it's easy to understand why so few ever escape the cycle of poverty.

Doug Wallace is an attorney, a successful entrepreneur and a published author. His book Everything Will Be All Right is scheduled for nationwide launch on October 1, 2009. Doug chose to write his story of growing up in poverty as a way to call attention to the unimaginable hardships for the generationally impoverished. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders Kindle, Sony Reader, and retail book stores everywhere beginning fall 2009.