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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2015)
Health Wellness & Nutrition: BACK TO SCHOOL From ‘Crack Baby’ to A-Student By Marian Wright Edelman NNPA Columnist he odds were stacked against Britiny Lee before she was born. Her mother was addict- ed to drugs, like Britiny’s grandfather and many oth- ers in their poverty-stricken Cleveland neighborhood. Britiny’s mother used drugs throughout her pregnancy and went to prison for a year just after Britiny’s birth. As a poor, Black “crack baby” with an addicted, incarcer- ated mother and an absent father, Britiny started life in danger. Being born into an unsta- ble poor family or to a sin- gle, teen, incarcerated, or absent parent are all known risk factors in America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline® crisis. The disadvantages millions of poor children and children of color face T Marian Wright Edelman autoimmune disease lupus, which got worse as Britiny got older. When she was 8 years old, her grandmother suffered a seizure when they were home alone and Brit- iny had to call 911 and ride in the ambulance with her grandmother to the hospital. From then on she was ter- rified of losing her grand- mother. Britiny’s mother Fe- licia, who had come in and out of her life throughout one of the many caregivers raising children in “kinship care” or “GrandFamilies,” headed by grandparents or other relatives who step in when parents are unable to do so. Sometimes a child is removed from parents’ care by the state and placed with relatives in foster care; in other cases, children like Britiny are placed informal- ly with relatives outside fos- ter care. More than 6 million children are being raised in households headed by grandparents and other rela- from birth along the contin- uum to and through adult- hood and can include: no or inadequate prenatal and health care; no or little qual- ity early childhood educa- tion and enrichment; child abuse and neglect; failing schools; grade retention, suspension, and expulsion; questionable special educa- tion placements; dropping out of school; unaddressed mental health problems; vi- olent drug infested neigh- borhoods; and dispropor- tionate involvement in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Entering the child welfare system would have been still another risk factor for baby Britiny but she was lucky. Her grandmother, who already had custody of Brit- iny’s older brother and sis- ter, stepped in. She brought Britiny home, too. Britiny says, “My grand- mother stepped up to the plate to raise us because she didn’t want us to go into the foster care system.” Brit- iny’s grandmother didn’t have a lot of money, but she was a stable source of love and support throughout childhood and Britiny flour- ished in her care. Despite doctors’ concerns when she was born as a drug-addicted child, Brit- iny was resilient and be- came a straight-A student who loved school from the beginning. Britiny’s grand- mother was her rock even while struggling with the her childhood, was strug- gling towards sobriety. Nine months after Felicia became sober, when Britiny was 10 years old, her grandmother died. Felicia remembers the moving moment: “[My mother] held my hand and she told me, ‘Licia, I want to go home.’ And I thought that she meant go home, like put her in the car and take her home. No. She was saying she was tired and she was ready to go home to Glo- ry . . . She looked at me in my eyes, and she said, ‘And God told me that you were ready, that you were ready to be a mom, that you’re going to be a good mom, that you’re not going to use drugs anymore, and that I could go.’” Britiny’s mother was fi- nally ready to step in, regain custody, and learn how to be the parent her daughter needed and deserved. To- day, Britiny is a high school senior about to graduate from Cleveland’s John Hay School of Science and Med- icine and dreams of becom- ing a cardiac surgeon. She recently received a Beat the Odds® scholarship from Children’s Defense Fund- Ohio. She says of her beloved grandmother, “She’s look- ing down on me. I’m sure she’s proud, and right now I just want to make her even more proud. I want to show her that she didn’t fight for me for nothing.” Britiny’s grandmother was and oftentimes community, connections. There is also strong evidence that chil- dren placed in kinship care experience greater stability, have fewer behavioral prob- lems, and are just as safe – if not safer – than children in non-relative care. In Britiny’s case, all of these positive outcomes came to pass, and after her grandmother “stepped up to the plate,” a child who could easily have become a statis- tic is beating the odds and is a star with a bright future. Book Review: ‘Child, Please’ Offers Insight Author reflects humorously on her own upbringing and how ‘old-school parenting’ served her in the long run Child, Please: How Mama’s Old-School Lessons Helped Me Check Myself before I Wrecked Myself By Ylonda Gault Caviness Tarcher / Penguin Random House Hardcover, $25.95 320 pages ISBN: 978-0-399-16996-0 Book Review by Kam Williams Despite doctors’ concerns when she was born as a drug-addicted child, Britiny was resilient and became a straight-A student who loved school from the beginning tives. Of those 6 million, 2.5 million children are living in households without their parents present. These rela- tive caregivers like Britiny’s grandmother are willing to care for the children, but often need financial or other help to appropriately meet their children’s needs. A number of states have used subsidized guard- ianship programs to sup- port kinship families and GrandFamilies. Kinship care has been found to help children maintain family, “In this wise and funny memoir, Ylonda Gault Cavi- ness describes her journey to the realization that all the parenting advice she was obsessively devouring, as a new parent, and sharing with the world as a parenting expert... didn’t mean scratch compared with her mama’s old-school wisdom as a strong black woman...” -- Excerpted from the book jacket oya Graham was at home watching TV coverage of the recent Baltimore riots when she spotted her only son, Michael, in an unruly crowd of kids taunting and throwing objects at the police. Without giv- ing it a second thought, the shocked, single-mother of six sprang into action and rushed right down to the scene to retrieve her misbehaving 16 year-old. Cell phone cameras caught Toya lecturing and slapping Michael silly as she dragged him away. T The video soon went viral and the debate began about whether or not the corporal punishment was appropriate. She was dubbed “Mother of the Year” by some and abu- sive by others. The incident reminded me of a bygone era when not only your own momma, but any adult in the neighbor- hood, might straighten you out if you were messin’ up. However, that strict style of upbringing has long since fallen by the wayside in favor of a politically-correct age of permissiveness. Nevertheless, perhaps the pendulum might be ready to swing back in the other direction, as evidenced by Toya Graham’s teachable moment about accountability and by the publication of Child, Please: How Mama’s Old-School Lessons Helped Me Check Myself before I Wrecked Myself. Ironically, this delightful memoir was written by Ylonda Gault Caviness, a sister who, for years, had appeared as an expert on everything from The Today Show to National Public Radio, where she would extol the virtues of the relatively-lax, modern parenting styles, much to the chagrin of her more traditional mother. Ylonda has belatedly come to embrace more of her mom’s supposedly-antiquated approach after becoming exasperated by the challenge of rearing her own three daughters. “Any fool could see, Mama had the whole motherhood thing down to a science,” she concedes. “Now, in my for- ties, I finally get it.” August 5, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 7
