All My Children

Dear Amy,

I know that during this past week you have suffered pain like never before, the burden that you bear is perhaps the heaviest you’ve ever carried. Yet through it all God assures us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness”.

And one thing I’ve come to realize is that God has not declared that life is over because of an unplanned pregnancy. God has great plans for your future. You have not been disqualified from the race. In fact, He plans to draw you closer to Him and teach you to know Him better than you have ever known Him before. Once we realize that our main purpose in life is to know God and glorify Him, life comes into proper perspective. And I believe, Amy, the more you and I know Him and see life from His perspective, the more life and all its struggles and problems begin to be resolved. Continue Reading »

Transition homes in the community

This is an area where it is extremely difficult to succeed. Because of the stigma attached to the street children, people in the community generally fear to accommodate them in their own homes. There is a tremendous need to educate the community in this regard; already the project held its first seminar in the township to make people aware of the street children’s plight and of its difficulties in finding transition homes, before the children can return to their own families. The project has also approached the churches for transition homes, but failed to obtain a positive response! As a result, it applied to the local township council and was given a piece of land to erect a transition home but funds are needed to build such a home to accommodate the children. Continue Reading »

The Cotonou Seminar pointed out that ‘among the reasons most often heard from street children, that of the family was the most common to explain their departure from home‘. The immediate causes given by the Philippines on why there are street children all have to do with the family. Vanistendael also said the same: ‘the immediate cause is nearly always a dysfunctioning in the family‘. ‘The reasons why children take to the streets are complex and manifold. Broadly speaking, a distinction can be drawn between the push and pull factors. Continue Reading »

Getting started in a town

To state the obvious, one needs to identify the whereabouts of street children in a town and to try and establish how many there are. The usual places to find them during the day are the supermarkets where they will volunteer to push trolleys, the taxi ranks where they will wash taxis, parking areas where they will offer to wash cars, etc. It is important to remember the five `categories’ because, for instance, although part-time working children are street children, their situation differs from runaways or abandoned children. Part- time working children who attend school and sleep at home in the evenings are not a ‘problem’ as such, although care needs to be taken that they do not become full-time working children or runaways. Continue Reading »

There are many contributions that only parents can make to their child’s play. For example, no teacher, and certainly no age-mate, can be as deeply and personally involved in play that seems to relate to the child’s future as are his parents. Play is anchored in the present, but it also takes up and tries to solve problems of the past, and it is often future-directed as well. Continue Reading »

Years later, after his father’s death, the son became much more successful in his profession than his father had ever been. But he still had a hard time fighting his feelings of inferiority, the seeds of which, he was convinced, had been planted in this shattering experience. Afterward, he could never again trust himself when he thought he was doing well. Most of his memories of his father were a combination of a nostalgic desire for the paradise he had enjoyed before his father became convinced it was time to introduce him to the adult levels of stamp collecting, and his resentment over being suddenly criticized and made to feel inferior. Continue Reading »

On the other hand, such parallel investment in play can work well for a time and then backfire through adult motives. The following story is an illustration of the point, and it involves a partly happy but much more unhappy memory that haunted a highly successful man all his life. The man’s father was very much involved in stamp collecting, so the youngster needed little urging to become an avid stamp collector too. Continue Reading »

But even the magic of reading will not sufficiently affect many children if their parents do not place high value on “book learning.” The great emotional investment of parents in reading makes it uniquely attractive to their child, since then reading forms another link tying the parents closely to the child. I am sure that Jewish literacy was helped by the fact that it was customary on the day the child entered one of the yeshivas (Talmudic schools) for the father to carry his son, Continue Reading »

Contrary to adult fears—the usual motive for many parents to supervise and regulate their children’s games—even aggressive play in childhood serves often crucial civilizing functions. This is true if children are left to their own devices, in which case it only very rarely leads to mishap. Iona and Peter Opie, to whom we owe the most sensitive and comprehensive study of the games modern British children play on their own and under supervision by adults, write: Continue Reading »

The runner who times himself or tries to increase his distance and speed, while consciously exercising for his health, is subconsciously trying to prove himself to himself, and unconsciously trying to prove his worthiness to his parents or whoever has taken their place in his unconscious. With good reason the first great athletic competitions were religious festivals, or were intrinsically connected with them. Continue Reading »