My Stimulus Package: The Family

So, this is a long one.  I apologize.  Am I breaking some sort of blogging etiquette by writing too much?  I feel like I am already crossing the line by writing in "Tracy’s blog."   I hope I don't scare off the faithful followers.  Anyway, if you are here for cute pictures of Lily with short descriptions, scroll down a bit.  If you are interested in what has been on Tag’s mind lately, feel free to read on.

 

The other night when Tracy was at a book club, I was at home entertaining Lily.  Oodles of fun.  After an evening filled with crawling around the house posing as an assortment of animals and eating several pieces of food from Lily’s “kitchen” that definitely weren’t FDA approved, it was time for bed.  Lily is pretty good at getting herself dressed so I sent her upstairs to get ready.  Moments later she came back firmly stating that she wasn’t going to go at it alone.  Her excuse:  It was dark upstairs, and yes, we are at the age of monsters in the closet.  My solution:  Just turn on the lights on her way up (simple enough, right?).  Apparently, this wasn’t the answer she was looking for, because she started crying.  I tried to plead my case to her, but to no avail.  I guess Dad’s word that there aren’t any monsters upstairs is no good.  I got up and started explaining to her what she needed do.  We got to the hallway, and I showed her the first light.  She turned it on and ran excitedly to the base of the stairs.  I pointed to the next switch and she turned it on as well.  Figuring out what I was talking about, she ran upstairs confidently (with me trailing closely behind her).  She got to the top, turned on the hall light, sprinted to her room and flicked the switch.  She turned around and gave me the sweetest look.  The look that melts Dad’s heart.  At that point, I would’ve bought her a car if she asked me.  It was if she just won her first race.   We high-fived and I headed downstairs asking her to turn off all the lights when she if finished. 

 

It took me a little bit to really draw some important conclusions from this seemingly innocent interchange.  I realized that what I really wanted Lily to do is to do it herself.  I am a pretty independent person and I thrive on self-sufficiency.  Naturally, I want my daughter to do the same.  However, there is a catch.  I can’t expect Lily to suddenly come up with solutions herself so early on in her life.  You have to ease into it.  After only one time, Lily now can go upstairs at night without problem.  This is a big step.  Eventually, she will get to the point where she is coming up with innovative solutions on her own to life’s problems.  I think this is what the purpose of being a parent is all about.  It’s our job to give Lily what she needs and teach her what she needs to know, but ultimately we want her to fall so she can learn to pick herself up.

 

As I started thinking more on this, I decided that this is a societal problem too.  It seems that too often parents are giving kids everything they don’t need and not enough of what they do need.  There are close to 2500 clients from my facility that help illustrate this problem.  Here’s one example.  Last week I had a client come into the facility to attend a drug treatment class.  However, he didn’t have a picture ID with him to check in.  This is a facility rule, but he didn’t get it.  Now for the record, I recognized this guy and knew his name, and could have easily let him attend his class.  I didn’t.  He was extremely upset with me and said that I was holding him back from being successful in the program.  He spouted off a slur of curse words and headed out the door.  I followed him and sparked a discussion while he waited for the elevator.  He explained to me that his ID was stolen a few days earlier and didn’t know what to do.  This man was 35 years old.  It turns out that rather than looking for a solution, he decided to show up knowing full well that our facility requires a picture ID.  It occurred to me that maybe he didn’t have the ability to find a solution.  After all, this is very characteristic of a criminal.  Rather than turning to socially acceptable ways of dealing with stress, they turn to drugs or alcohol.  When criminals are short on money, they rob a convenient store or break into a house,  rather than looking for a job or a higher paying job.  They resort to anger and violence without the foresight of the consequences.  Now for the record, I think that we all have hints of criminal mindedness that sprout up every once in a while, but for the most part, we know how to find acceptable ways of playing the cards that life decides to deal us.  Anyway, I explained to this client that rather than cursing and blaming other people for his problems, it would have been worth his while to get a mugshot from his probation officer, or a temporary ID from the DMV.  He thanked me, shook my hand, and headed off to the probation office.

 

I’m not quite sure where I wanted to go with this, but it came about with all this talk about an economic bailout package the last few days.  I’m not sure what the answer is.  I don’t understand much about the federal reserve or how banks fit into the picture.  I know that there is a lot of talk of a failing economy and I don’t know who has the answer.  I know that we pay way too much for gas and are getting if from the wrong places, and I’m not too excited about our house depreciating.  I do know that if I were to hand out $1,000 to each of my clients to “stimulate” their personal economic situation, it would probably be gone in a matter of days with little or nothing to show for it.  AND, they would still struggle to pay their rent next month.  This is sad.  Even sadder is the fact that most of them were never taught the simple things in life like balancing a checkbook, or how to interview for a job (or how to go upstairs without being attacked by monsters).  This is a problem not solely on the shoulders of the government or our schools.  It is a problem in our homes.  I am fully convinced that ALL problems can and should be solved within our homes.  So, HOW do we fix this?  I don’t know.  Should the government step in and provide health care?  I don’t know.  Should we all pay higher taxes to dissolve some of the disparity between the lower and upper classes?  Not sure.  I think I will fall back on the old fish adage.

 “Give a man a fish; feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish; feed him for a lifetime.  Teach a man to teach others to fish; feed a community for a lifetime.”