Childhood causes and consequences

One of my strong interests during my retirement is childhood trauma and adult life outcomes.  Many of us know about PTSD, which stands for post traumatic stress syndrome. Well, kids living in poverty and trauma are often (but not always) exposed to continuous traumatic stress. Consequences can include learned helplessness, impulsivity, and decreased attention and concentration.

The way kids are setup from birth to age 5 can set them up for success or difficulties that are far reaching.

Several books and studies have informed my understanding. The ACE, adverse childhood experiences survey is a big one. I first learned about it in the book The Body Keeps Score. A general overview of stress for lay people is Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Both those books deal with stress overall, but have chapters that link to early childhood.

The surprising thing is that the consequences of this early stress to lifetime outcomes is something like 10X worse than cancer or drunk driving or cigarette smoking, some of the larger debilitators of our day. But it is a third rail, of sorts. People don't want to be told how to raise their kids.

On Kanopy (web video service via my library), I happened on the 5 part web series: www.raisingofamerica.com. Several fascinating things.

1. The US military has affordable sliding scale child care for all service member families. It's low cost and high quality.

2. The "pro-family" lobby is ideological, starting in the Nixon Era. Ostensibly aimed at keeping government out of the family, it often harms family. It often does so with an air of fiscal conservatism and anti-welfare arguments. Nevermind that these things reduce late-life poverty and other social ills (i.e. positive return on investment)

3. Child care often costs $10,000 a year to $16,000 a year per child. This is a burden or way out of reach for most middle class families.

4. The hardest are those families with nonstandard work schedules. Nurses who work split shifts or drivers who sometimes have mandatory overtime.

Alot of the policies aim for a national or state-funded program, funded via tax dollars. This could be beneficial, but is a big political fight. I'm curious what social policy labs could be done to introduce incremental change.

Putting on my policy brain, the startup costs of child care are very high. The business has to set up with various background checks, licensure, and training requirements. These can easily be on the order of 5k to 20k. While this isn't a big deal for larger centers, it is for a place that might want to only run a summer program.

I'm curious about whether Buddhist centers can venture into child care. Many catholic centers or schools do this. I did find a few centers that run in the Los Angeles or Denver areas. I don't know if these are run just for congregants/members of the religion, of if they serve a broader community.

In general, it may not be legal to informally babysit for more than 1 family and accept pay. Like, it may be technically illegal if I watch the kids of 3 families for a day at my house, unless I certify several things.

I think good programs like Boys and Girls Club or Big Brothers/Big Sisters understand a lot about the screening requirements.  Certainly, keeping kids safe is vital. But are there other ways than pretty onerous screening? It seems to be the case that, just to volunteer for a day, you technically are supposed to be screened. This then means organizations have to look for volunteers that are worth the cost of screening, so they demand up front commitments that are pretty large.

Cameras may be a big solution to the problem. If the kids are recorded and there are rules (like two adults in the area at all times), this can avoid sexual misconduct or neglect.

Crisistextline does an interesting thing. They provide crisis counseling via text. Everything is via text, so they are monitored in real time (the text-based analog to cameras) and logged.

I worry about barriers to entry for helping.

Lastly, who really wins from childhood trauma? Who is against wiping it out? Nobody is really against it. But some people feel like the nuclear family should solve it individually and without interference (even help is interference). And others feel like it's a waste of money.

There's not a ton of common ground, unfortunately. I don't see a grand bargain. And as long as states keep the costs of screening on businesses (and states CAN choose to pay for the background checks!) innovation will be stifled.

Keep getting back up

As I do my own practice, I'm constantly falling off the path. I have an intention, and I have a desire to not chase after greed, to not chase after aversion, to not chase after wishful thinking. But the old habits are strong, and I inevitably fold back into those old habits.

This is not a catastrophic failure. In fact the law of karma emphasizes that our actions and the results of our actions follow pretty clean laws. Getting stuck and realizing it is part of the path. So many people don't honestly realize it. So, give yourself credit for the awareness.

One of those laws of karma is that habits can be broken but they are very hard to break.  It takes time to create a new habit that takes the place of the old habit.

So with this, it really emphasizes the paramita of persistence. Of meeting setbacks with renewed sense of purpose. We want to be careful not to grit our teeth and force something, because we can create a new habit of forcing without having much impact on the old habit of our wandering mind. It's nice to just notice when I have fallen off the horse. Sometimes I'll just say oops. Or say "look, I fell off the horse." Or say the classic,  "I see you Mara I see you Mara."

Keep getting back up on the horse. There's no other way to learn to ride.

With that said, there's an important sense for me to remember the middle way. The middle way here is to be between forcing things and making too many excuses. There is one friend of mine who has great earnestness for this journey of Buddhism and calming the mind. But they also have a lot of habits. And I see them making a lot of excuses for why they can't take a moment to follow the breath or making other excuses of why they don't practice consistently. I've advised them not to push too far, but to set very very simple goals for consistency. Maybe just a phrase to be repeated once a day. Maybe just reading the same passage before bed. 

And they don't have to do it consistently. What I mean by that is it's okay to mess up and skip a day. But the thing to be very careful about is to make excuses about skipping a day and then skipping another day and then another day. Because that reinforces the old habit that the spiritual path and the path of calming the mind is not that important. It reinforces the old habit that dealing with the world is the most important thing, so important that you can't take 2 minutes a day to work on your mind.

I feel like it's one of those friendships. The friend keeps complaining about something, maybe drinking too much. And they asked for help. But then they just never follow through with even the smallest steps.* There is some attribution of their failure to their lack of will. But I also understand that willpower is a finite resource, and the poll of our addictions is very very strong. But the second or third or 15th time they say I'm going to do better next time... At some point The helpful thing to do is to point out the pattern period and it's important to do so not from a I'm telling you so kind of mentality. But to do it with a really genuine open desire to help the other person. To do it with care and right timing so that it can actually be heard.

Sometimes people just like to wish for things and not put in effort. And that's fine but those are not people I like to be around, because they create problems for themselves and other people. I want to help people wish for things that they can achieve, to put in the effort to achieve them, and to achieve them. 

And in Buddhism, amazingly, calming the mind completely is possible to achieve.

*I don't live near them, and they aren't very good at communicating. So I don't know if they are being consistent or not. But when I ask them to tell me about their practice, it doesn't sound consistent. I hope I am wrong. Ultimately, their practice benefits or hampers only themselves, not me.