It Takes a Village to raise a child Essay Example

and communities work together to support learning, students learn to earn higher grades and feel more successful in school and even in life. Not only the parents teach the children, but also the community who surround the child should share the responsibility of enlightening him with the knowledge of differentiation things which is good and which is not.

“Keeping children healthy in body and mind is the family’s and the village’s first obligation. But we all know that no matter how conscientious a parent might be or how committed to preventive health a community might be, children will inevitable suffer from disease and injury”(pg. 122). As parents we try to do what’s best for our children. We try to keep them close to us. We really need more than just the mother and father to keep our children’s development going in the right direction. As the parents seek jobs and health insurance they seem to be kicked to the side if their child is born with a birth defect.

The companies see this child and won’t even give the parents a chance at the job because they fear that the child’s medical condition will cost them too much. Then the child is left out of getting help and where will these parents go next. Our communities are not as close as they were when I was a child in school. In that time many years ago communities helped one another with food clothing and medical needs. I do believe it takes more than parents to raise a child even in these days.

“There is no place like home in children’s lives. Brain research

reaches us that felling “safe and protected” are essential to healthy neurological development. Home should provide an emotional as well as a physical haven” (pg. 131). In our children’s lives they seem to wonder who will help them. A child can sense when they are loved and also when they are being neglected. A child who is praised and comforted can cause them to excel in school because of the support system they have in their lives.

“Stories like the sudden death of a young life really sadden me. But they also anger me, because no one will take responsibility. Although the parents both mother and apparently absent father, were primarily responsible for this child, it is too easy, as the neighbor suggest, blaming only them” (pg. 134). I believe that if neighbors and other people in that same neighborhood would just watch and see if something doesn’t seem right and start asking question this horrible death of this young life would not have happened.

“In a small area of racially mixed cooperative housing complex in Harlem that is home to all most a thousand families, neighbors make a point of getting to know one another. This complex has its own security patrol and a newspaper that spreads world of births, deaths, and other community news. Residents place a special emphasis on giving young people a stake in the lives of the community. ” (pg. 135) If all community was like this there would be less neglect and death among the young people in the world. The more we keep in touch with what our child doing and where they are the more

we will know they are safe.

The CASA survey recommends steps we can take, if we have the will to protect children: vigorously enforcing the laws that prohibit the sale of cigarettes and alcohol to minors; establishing “drug-free” (pg. 166). If everyone looked after their own kids as well as looking out for their neighbor’s kids this world would be a better place. “In the end, though, our children will reach a point of independence when we can’t watch over them or counsel them or see that others do. That is when character takes over and when they need their shovels.

Developing the “iron will and necessary skills” to shovel our way out from under whatever life piles on is a lifelong task for us all” (pg. 168). “Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with Mankind” (169). They strengthened my belief that children are born with the capacity for faith, hope, and love and with a deep intuition into God’s creative, intelligent, and unifying force” (pg170). When a child gets to be five or six and they begin to ask questions about God we need to be read, (if possible) to give them the correct answer.

This is the stage that they develop their inquisitive spirit. We need to be ready for these questions with a loving heart. “Even if our children were being raised to become the best informed, most artistic, and healthiest children that the world has ever seen, it would all come to nothing unless they found some things beyond themselves”(pg. 184). We have to let our children reach they best and still

be watching from the sidelines. “The real problem for families today is the many challenges they face in raising their children according to the values they hold.

That is, in part, what this book is about: how we can act together as a village to strengthen families and enable them to obtain from outside institutions the assistance they need to raise strong children and to protect themselves from influences that threaten to undermine parental authority. ”(pg. 312) When we help one another in raising our children let us reach even more children on the way. “A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit. ” (Greek Proverb, pg. 317) “The children are cradled in the family, which is primarily responsible for their passage from infancy to adulthood.

But around the family are the larger settings of neighborhood, school, church, workplaces, community, culture, economy, society, nation, and world, which affect children directly or through the well-being of their families. ” (pg. 317) As we go through this world we need to reach out and become more than just a neighbor. We need to become a village where everyone helps one another. If we can do this we are doing the great commission the Lord told us to do. “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. ” (Matthew 28:19-20) In the book “It takes a village to raise

a child” is a popular proverb with a clear message the whole community has an essential role to play in the growth and development of its young people. “Nothing is more important to our shared future than the well-being of children. For children are at our core, not only as vulnerable beings in need of love and care but as a moral touchstone amidst the complexity and contentiousness of modern life”.