[The first words from the 1st grader I tutored this morning]
Me: “Hi bud! How was your weekend?”
Him: “My dad screamed at [dad’s girlfriend]. He was defending me after she screamed at me.”
We quickly moved on with our lesson on digraphs. I had him mimic me…
“Watch how my lips open and my tongue touches my teeth for the TH sound. Thuh Thuh Thuh Thuh. You do it. Touch your tongue to your teeth….”
After our first session, I wrote how his eyes welled up with tears when I said “You are SO smart! Has anyone ever told you how smart you are?”
After our second session, I wrote how tears streamed down his face for thirty minutes as he talked about his Daddy’s girlfriend, who screams at him when he visits on the weekends.
Today, our third session, his first words recount being screamed at and then watching adults scream at each other.
He’s a male ethnic minority, reading far-behind is peers, growing up in poor, divided homes, with unmarried parents. Because at least one of his parents is in an unmarried-but-cohabiting relationship, this little boy interacts with his father’s live-in girlfriend (who “follows my daddy wherever he goes”) in a stressful scream-filled relationship. He regularly hears adults scream at him and with one another. Consciously or unconsciously, he is already learning ‘adults communicate by screaming.’
Given these two adults’ tenuous relationship, my little buddy may eventually adjust to a new “normal,” if Daddy’s girlfriend and her kids leave. But, then again, a new girlfriend might move in and the Adjustment Cycle will resume.
A pattern in the prisons
I cannot, and would not, venture to predict this little boy’s future. But the general future of boys like him with similar backgrounds is well-documented and, sadly, quite predictable.
Our prisons are filled with men who had strikingly similar stories as children: ethnic-minority males, poor upbringing, broken and/or divided homes, parents’ significant others cycling in/out of their lives, and low literacy levels. With each new grade level, their school work will worsen and their frustration will increase. The longer they observe their closest adult family members living out unhealthy patterns, the more they will follow those patterns in their own interactions. The more adults cycle in and out of their lives, the more they will treat relationships with detachment and objectification. Their family’s financial poverty will limit their opportunities and, often, sense of hope. And, they will suffer racist wounds my white children will never know.
As these little boys grow, they will be held more responsible for their own actions (as they should be). Some will eventually stand in courts before a judge, who will hold them accountable for their crimes. When they get out, some will call pastors like me from their Halfway Houses or ring pastor’s doorbells asking to use the showers in the church building (both of which happened to me last week).
Society will then discuss their many “poor choices” leading to their imprisonment and present adult difficulties. There will be much truth in these discussions about their “choices.” And yet, as with so many issues of the human heart and ‘free will,’ the full story is more complex.
Learning like a parrot
The neurology of Learning is quite clear: much of our learning, especially during our youngest and most-formative years, happens through Mimicry.
As little children, we ‘parrot’ adults’ words, accent, voice inflection, walking patterns, communication styles, food preferences, favorite sports team, the list goes on. As we age, the number of people we ‘parrot’ grows to include peers and others we admire. The Mimicry changes and becomes more nuanced, but it never stops.
Un-learning years of mimicked dysfunction can feel as difficult for some people as un-learning the accent they grew up speaking.
But my little Reading Buddy, and countless like him, aren’t doomed to become a Statistic. He just needs more people investing in him, tutoring him, listening to him.
In other words, he needs more adults to mimic…
‘Watch how I interact in this stressful situation…see how I didn’t scream?…notice how I treat my wife and my children…see how I spoke to that person? Can you use a respectful tone the way I just did? Notice how I use my free time?…’
“we must help the weak”
My little friend is weak educationally, relationally, and emotionally. With the tiniest bit of sacrifice on my part (just 30 minutes each week), I’m trying to help in the little ways I can. Hopefully, I can help him in more ways later on. I’ll invite him to Renovation Community’s summer day camp and feeding program and I’ll ask his school counselor if there are other ways our church and I could help his family.
You can help children like my little buddy, too.
If you’re near me, ask me how you can help at the elementary school where I serve. Or, just call up your closest public school and offer to volunteer in whatever way they need.
Give your time to those who desperately need it.
“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Acts 20:35
