Poverty...

Poverty

As a child, I grew up in an authoritarian (Berger 299 ) household.  This is where there are high behavioral standards, strict punishment of misconduct and little communication.  My parents were very strict, had rules in place and they were to be followed at all times.  My father was military and he was a pastor of a church, as well.  My mom was a stay at home mom.  Together, they raised my two older brothers and me in a house where there was a lot of love.  I can not say that we were rich or of a higher social economic status, but we were not low class either.  We had all of our needs and most of our wants.  If I had to define our status I would say that we were middle class.  My family never ran out of food, but there were times when they may have forgotten to go grocery shopping.  In those times, my parents made sure the children ate and they just said they would eat later. 

Poverty is defined as the state of one who lacks a certain amount of items needed to survive.  Head start is a federally funded early childhood organization that provides education to low income families (Berger 281).  In my class last year I had a child who took all the extra food and hid it into his book bag and decided that he had to take it home so that his brothers and sisters would have something to eat.  As an educator, I know that if a child is hungry, he/she can not learn what is expected of them.  Abraham Maslow said that children need food, water and shelter in order to survive.

Children who live in poverty often have more than just one stressor to worry about.  Here is a list of some of the things children in poverty deal with on a daily basis:  Most of these children are raised in a single parent home where that one parent is doing the best that they can to survive.  They may get picked on in school, because they have to wear hand me downs from their older siblings.  Some children are not afforded the same education as others, because they have to leave school at such an early age to help out at home.  Living conditions are horrible.  They come in contact with mold, infectious diseases, lice and others things.  If they get sick they must deal with it because they are not covered under any insurance.  They are surrounded by crime in their neighborhoods.  They are very malnutritrion because there is no food, not enough food or unhealthy food.  When you stop to think about how some children grow up it really makes you say maybe your life was not so bad after all. 

My husband often times says that he grew up poor.  Today, he is very appreciative of everything he has.  There has been plenty times over the last six years where I saw him react to a certain event and I wondered why he did.  For example, my parents gave him a bed and a dresser.  He sanded the dresser down, painted it and made it look as if it were brand knew.  He spent hours on it as if it were a toy.  Then he just sat in there looking at his creation.  I had to practically beg him to leave the dresser to come and spend time with me.  I saw it as just another dresser.  Whereas, he saw it as something he had never had before.  As an adult, growing up in poverty can be whatever you make it.  If you want to wallow in the fact that you were poor and feel like you will never become anything, that’s fine.  But, if you want to realize that you want more for your offspring than you had for yourself, than you need to set your goals and limits that are going to help you get to the next level.  Sister Act I said it best, “If you want to be somebody and you want to go somewhere, you better wake up and pay attention.”

References

Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person through childhood (6th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.