Parents Who Hold Children Back

Doug Wallace, an attorney and author of the memoir, Everything Will Be All Right dropped out of high school because of gang related violence. Wallace learned first-hand what it is like to be a victim of violence and crime in the public schools, and how that experience can steal your life away. Wallace wrote the following article to call attention to the unimaginable challenges faced by impoverished children:

A few months ago I read an article in USA Today titled, Study: Poverty dramatically affects children's brains. This article makes the argument that certain brain functions of low-income 9 and 10-year-olds pale in comparison with those of wealthy children, and that the difference is almost equivalent to the damage from a stroke. It goes on to conclude that there's a growing body of evidence that malnutrition, stress, illiteracy and toxic environments in low-income children's lives affects their brains.

A parent's income may be a symptom of the problem, but it is not the problem. A parent's income does not hold back the opportunity of a child, but on the other hand, their lack of parenting skills can. Research conducted by the School Community Helping Hands Project by the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC),shows that the overwhelming majority of the children in poverty will experience dramatic improvements in behavior, performance and test scores if they receive the proper mentoring. In other words, remove the negative influences and the child's progress accelerates at sprinting speed—independent of the parent's income.

Parental characteristics, such as those that employers value, like reliability, diligence, and honesty are far more important than income when it comes to studying children in poverty—they are the critical factors that affect a child's behavior and improve life chances—independent of a parent's income. When parents are not reliable, when they fail in diligence, and lack character and honesty, their children will suffer in many ways.

Most families that become poor are headed by competent parents who can care for their children quiet adequately. When they fall upon hard times, they may need short term cash assistance, just as they would if their homes were destroyed by fire or flood, but their children will be fine.

But, when families fall on hard times and stay there for years, even generations, this means they cannot or will not find a way to adequately support the family. The children in this family often need help that goes beyond economic support. Their memories are storehouses of deprivation, neglect and bad experiences. They lack the ability to cope with the present or envision a future bright enough to justify postponing immediate gratification. Their only guide to behavior is simply to satisfy the impulse of the moment.

A childhood that never gave them the chance to make consistent connections between cause and effect leaves them feeling powerless to influence the course of their lives—a sense of defeat keeps them without hope and without goals. It's not the lack of money that is holding this child back. It is the parents. These children need the help of qualified role models to teach them how to function in mainstream society.

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.