Every adult must accept their contribution to the shattered
childhoods that leave them feeling bullied on the streets
childhoods that leave them feeling bullied on the streets
There is a fundamental problem with the way we deal with vulnerable children - whether as politicians, police or ordinary members of the public. All these interventions come from the perspective of the well-adjusted adult, needing to preserve our own sense of safety. We project our hate on to these fragile and marginalised children and we disguise our revenge as legitimate punishment. As the debate around antisocial behaviour rages on, these children are often described as menaces to society. We pride ourselves on the strategies we put in place to control them, whether that's banning them from wearing hoodies in shopping centres or placing them under Asbos that prevent them from walking down a particular street.
I understand why the public feel bullied by young people high on drugs and suicidal non-caring. I come into contact with children like that daily at a charity that has been caring for exceptionally vulnerable children in London since 1995, Kids Company. Some 9,000 children use our programmes in 25 schools across the city, and many visit our premises each year to use our educational facilities, talk to one of our counsellors or just get a square meal. Some are volatile and violent. I have been threatened more times than I care to count.
But most adults' encounters with these horrors are momentary and accidental: we happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course it is unjust, and the anger builds up.
Imagine if the same bullying and terrorising happened in your home, carried out by the people who are supposed to love and protect you. Imagine trying to work out why your mother abuses and your father neglects. Imagine being a child subjected to humiliation, trapped behind closed doors. It's a dark existence with depleted aspirations. It is unjust, and the anger builds up.
Our response is to trap disturbed children and their victims in newspapers. Television programmes pursue teenagers in hoodies. At dinner parties, teeth chatter at the horror stories. Only yesterday Tony Blair admitted that the government "had not yet found a way of bringing the shut-out into mainstream society". The truth is, every one of us is responsible for the social fragmentation, for the escalation of violence, for the disrespect; for shattered childhoods. It's a systemic problem and every adult must recognise his or her contribution.
As a society we fail to protect and honour childhood. When the children were abused by their parents we were not there to stop it. When the children turned to us for help our services were under-resourced, often emotionally thoughtless and unwittingly repeating the abuse again. Too many abandoned children have been left to fend for themselves, like scavenging dogs fighting for morsels of professional intervention. Our contribution to this abuse is our complacency, our facile arguments, our pseudo-debates, our cosmetic short-term initiatives, our offensive neutrality, our readiness to perceive ourselves as victims, denying the children's damage.
Our arguments are bizarre. We believe disturbed behaviour in children is about the child making poor moral choices. Yet science shows that neglected and abused children do not have the brain chemistry to make appropriate pro-social decisions. The neurobiological tools for thoughtful choice are damaged as a result of adult thoughtlessness. Yet we point the finger of blame and watch the child, like a trapped circus animal, fail to perform to our expectations.
Our failure to take responsibility is, I suggest, where we are going wrong . We avoid our individual and corporate parenting tasks, our moral and emotional duty as adults, and so fail our children. We are competitive with our own kids, narcissistically refusing to grow up. We want our own prolonged childhoods, with the choice to have it all.
I'm not advocating suffering to absolve guilt. But where we can prevent or reduce the damage, we must take responsibility and take action. We must empower the child with the integrity of our acknowledgment. With apology we are able to accept responsibility for the failure, and not avoid it by blaming the vulnerable child. Truth empowers people, restores their sanity. Truth upholds justice for these children and us.
As a society, we have become diffident of being individually effective. We hide behind the belief that one individual cannot make a difference. We are afraid when others show care and stand up for something valuable. Committed individuals are seen as too involved, as if feeling indicates incompetence.
Our structures are failing children because we're scared of love. The expression of our humanity terrifies us into political cowardice. We deaden the space where creative solutions could thrive. So often those in power are too busy minding their own professional standing that on the way up they trample over the disfranchised.
We need, as individuals, to reclaim our portion of the action. The excellence is in the detail, in the middle space where one person's care and the other's need mutually transforms. Children need our protection, and they need our love.
By Camila Batmanghelidjh
· Camila Batmanghelidjh is the founder of Kids Company and The Place2Be, and author of Shattered Lives: Children Who Live With Courage and Dignity, published this month
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