From the Editor: Healthy families pay it forward

Many years ago, when I was fresh out of college, I landed my first professional job as a counselor for delinquent teenage boys in a state institution. I was full of enthusiasm and the genuine desire to change the lives of the boys on my caseload. Having grown up in a loving, secure home, I figured I had plenty of caring to share.

What I didn’t realize in my naïve approach to such big problems was that I only had a few months to try to undo the damage done by years of abuse and neglect in these boys’ families. I don’t remember a single boy on my caseload who came from a healthy family.

Eventually I got burned out, as many dedicated caseworkers do. It took me several years after I quit that job to stop asking, “Are there any good parents out there?”

I needed to get some distance from the experience before I could restore my faith in the basic goodness of humanity. Editing Northwest Baby & Child and volunteering for other family support organizations helped me see that there are a great many good parents out there, working hard to create and maintain healthy families.

Last spring, I got a card from one of my former clients, who as an adult had been in and out of prison several times. He’d first been locked up at the tender age of eight, so there really wasn’t much hope he’d stay out of institutions as an adult. Those secure situations offered him the only continuity in his chaotic life. I remembered him fondly as a highly intelligent boy I gave books to and encouraged to use his intelligence to overcome his upbringing.

This “boy” is now in his late forties, and already a grandfather. The card ended: “I’ll never forget your kindness in my youth.”

I didn’t prevent this young man from going to prison, nor did I wave a magic wand and undo the damage of a terrible childhood. But I did give him the memory of kindness and encouragement. Not much maybe, but way better than nothing.

As I write this, we’re all feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems facing thousands of Americans on the Gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina. The news is full of images of suffering and despair, of homeless evacuees who don’t have any security beyond being alive right now. Yet amid all this bad news, millions of Americans are doing what they can to help, whether it’s a small church group gathering quilts to send to refugees, or the Red Cross gathering money, supplies, and willing volunteers to help. Every contribution makes a difference.

When we look at the myriad problems in our world today, it’s hard to imagine what one person or family can do to create change or make things better. But who’s to say that the one small act of kindness you perform on a given day won’t have big repercussions?

Last week in our neighborhood, I watched a young mother and her two young children set up a bake sale at our park to benefit the Red Cross hurricane relief efforts. Two years ago, this woman’s family had to evacuate their home after a powerful winter storm blew seven huge trees into their house. Neighbors gathered with chain saws and wheelbarrows to clean up our hard-hit neighborhood, and this family received help and encouragement as they prepared to leave their home for several months while it was rebuilt. Knowing what that help meant to them, they’re paying it back now with their effort to help other victims of a natural disaster. In the process, this mom is teaching her children about caring, generosity, and doing what you can to make the world better. They’ll undoubtedly take this lesson their mother taught them and remember it all their lives. Perhaps they’ll teach it to their children too.

It might be only one neighborhood bake sale at a time, or one dollar bill put into a collection tin, or a small favor done for a stranger, but each act of generosity and kindness does have a ripple effect in the world. I couldn’t solve all the problems those locked-up boys had, but that would have been a poor excuse for not trying at all. As that one boy-now-grown man wrote: “I’ll never forget your kindness.”

Perhaps that’s the best outcome of all: kindness remembered and passed on, and on, and on again.