All My Children

Some characteristics of play cut across different ages. Play integrates brain functions and blends the rational and the imaginative, the intellectual and the emotional, the linear (logical) and the nonlinear (imaginative, intuitive, and aesthetic), the mundane and the creative. As a process, play serves as a lymphatic system that lubricates, transports, and transforms the transitions of one phase of understanding into another. As a product, play—especially sociodramatic play—enhances development in language, cognition, social competence, and creative fluency. 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 »

Establishing a street children committee

Towards the end of the meeting of the community resources, it is important to ask those present to indicate whether or not they wish to commit themselves to becoming part and parcel of a proposed street children committee. It is important to indicate the implications of such a commitment which are, among others:

• to have regular meetings (possibly every two weeks), especially at first in order to get organised;
• to possibly become part and parcel of the care group to screen or assess the children;

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Getting organized in a town

As contact is being made with the children by the street animator, three to four committed people willing to get something off the ground need to get together. Their first step is to identify the possible resources within the community and to communicate with these people and organisations with a view to calling a first meeting of concerned citizens. It should be made clear that the meeting is exploratory and that people do not commit themselves in any way by attending. Such resources could include the following:

• Child Welfare in the town and township;
• Two priests/ministers of religion (preferably belonging to a ministers’ fraternal) one in the town and the other in the township;
• A lower and higher primary school principal/teacher in the township;

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A few gifts can actually be more satisfying than an overabundance— that is, if the commercialization of Christmas and the ubiquity of television advertisements have not aroused a child’s expectations beyond all reason. The giving of a few presents eliminates the ambivalence a child may feel about giving and receiving (discussed earlier). This issue is recognized by a children’s holiday which is celebrated in many European countries including Holland, Continue Reading »

The permanent underlying positive ties between parents and children were strengthened at Halloween—after all, adults made this outburst of naughtiness possible and encouraged it, with their merriment barely hidden behind their pretense of being scared. This holiday told children that deep down, despite adult demands to socialize the child, their parents did not totally reject the negative side of the child’s feelings toward them. Continue Reading »

Christmas is not the only children’s holiday which symbolically celebrates childbirth, fertility, and the rebirth of nature; May Day, which is hardly celebrated anymore in the United States, with its dance around the Maypole also used to be an occasion for festivities enjoyed particularly by children and youth, although with the active participation of the entire community. It was truly a day when “young and old came forth to play.” Continue Reading »

You might tell your child that although your beliefs are different, you still love each other and, of course, your child. If God is love, then that will overcome things that confuse us or make us disagree. Your joint openness and respect for each other will undoubtedly serve as a great comfort to your child.

In contrast, some interfaith parents wish to avoid these embroiled difficulties. They may believe that the best thing to do is to bring up a child without the heavy blanket of religion at all. They may feel that religion is either a burden or just something that will cause difficulty. But their spiritual path—and their children’s—is usually not so clear. Continue Reading »

If you have an interfaith marriage, what religion should you offer to your child? You have several weighty choices, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

You can choose one religion or the other, from the husband’s or the wife’s background, and make that the religion of your new family. For example, a committed Catholic father and a nominal Protestant mother might elect to bring up their child as a Catholic. The main advantage of this child-rearing strategy is that the child is raised in a single religious environment, as most youngsters are. Whether they are sent to religious school or not, children have a better chance to embrace religion if they concentrate on one coherent set of beliefs and practices. For the parent whose religion is not observed, the fundamental task is to keep an eye out for any possible resentment or guilt. Each parent must be entirely comfortable with the family’s choice of religion. Continue Reading »

The issues of religious choice and different concepts of God can be a major foundation upon which you build the structure of your family. Without clear and wise mutual decisions in those areas, however, it will be extremely difficult to raise your family without tension. But these decisions, important as they are, also require sound considerations in a number of practical ways. An interfaith family must deal with church or synagogue membership, religious school attendance, and the recognition of religious holidays and rituals. Continue Reading »