Recently my wife introduced me to a book written by Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn, called Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. I have only read the first few chapters, but thus far find it particularly insight-filled. Here is one paragraph from the chapter on the importance of nurturing sovereignty in our children:

"For one, the honoring of a child's sovereignty means acknowledging to ourselves the reality of those very stages and temperaments. It might mean that the messages an infant gives us are responded to because we are the baby's major interface with the world. If the baby cries, we pick her up, we hold her, we move in with our presence, our listening. We attempt to provide comfort and a sense of well-being. By doing so, we honor her power to have the world respond to her, we accord her that respect and teach her that the world does respond, and that there is a place for her, that she belongs. And we do this as an intentional practice, whether we feel like it at any given moment or not."

While I'll admit to not reading this entire document, it looks very good from my initial scan. It is meant as a resource manual produced by Best Start: Ontario’s Maternal, Newborn and Early Child Development Resource Centre in 2006. Here is a paragraph from the Executive Summary:

"All people benefit from a sense of belonging, to their families, culture and communities. It is especially important in the case of parents caring for young children. Parents need to feel supported by family, friends, the community and by service providers. Aboriginal people, through a long history of assimilation and discrimination, may not have this sense of belonging. This may impact their health and sense of worth, and may result in feelings of despair and hopelessness. There are many things that service providers can do to foster a sense of belonging in Aboriginal families with young children, connecting parents to the information and supports that they need in a respectful and caring manner, and acknowledging their strengths."

Here is a link to the pdf A Sense of Belonging: Supporting Healthy Child Development in Aboriginal Families

© Copyright 2000 - 2007 The Hindu

"NEWS about school-related violence, be it vandalism or violent death have been coming in from various parts of [India] with alarming regularity. It is vital to look at the risk factors contributing to violence and discuss preventive strategies."

Here is one of their prescribed preventive strategies that I really like: "Unconditional positive regard: To nurture a sense of belonging to the family, parents need to show unconditional positive regard to their children. They should express love to their children for what they are. Conditional love ("You are my son only if you come within the first five ranks" and assorted variants of the same message) wrecks a child's sense of belonging and self-esteem. A teacher who expresses unconditional positive regard evokes positive behaviour and interest in students than one who relies on threats and punishments. For example, class XI A in one school was notorious for being `unruly and unmanageable'. A new teacher joined the school and gradually Class XI A was seen to be quiet and well behaved during his period. By the time they reached Class XII, the class was quoted as a role model." ...

Risk factors

Partiality and Victimisation: Some teachers classify their students into `good', `average' and `bad'. Blatant partiality towards `good' students causes frustration and anger in others. The `bad' students are often victimised for any anonymous acts of indiscipline. The labels stick. One student of std. VIII resolved to shed his `bad' label in the next year. But to his dismay, he found that his previous class teacher had taken the trouble of briefing his new class teacher.

Exposure to violence: Exposure to violence both off and on the screen can breed violence. Students exposed to domestic violence either as a victim or as an observer are more prone to violence. Corporal punishment by teachers conveys the message that it is legitimate to hit someone if they make a mistake. When the student feels that another student has erred, he will resort to violence. Media also has a significant influence on youth behaviour. The incidence of suicide climbed in Germany following a TV series about the various modes of suicide. Glorification of violence in movies and TV programmes like WWF entice students to mimic the violent behaviour.

Being teased /bullied: Students who are victims of bullying could become violent in an act of revenge. In most firearm incidences in U.S. schools, it is a victim of bullying who pulled the trigger. In India, firearms are controlled and thankfully, such incidences are negligible. But it is worth remembering that victims of bullying are emotional landmines.

Learning as a burden: School and parents put undue pressure on students to deliver marks in the board exams. This is epitomised by certain residential schools, which have a daily schedule from 5.00 a.m. to midnight. Some children burn out. Some score high marks but at a tremendous emotional cost. One `successful' student asked, "Is there a medicine to forget whatever I went through in the last three years?"

Prevention

Two main strategies would help in preventing violence. First is reduction or rectification of risk factors. Second is promotion of protective factors. Protective factors not only protect but also act as a buffer in the presence of risk factors.

A confiding relationship: This relationship has to be nurtured by the parents by listening to the child whenever he/she has something to say. By actively listening and offering comments, the parent encourages the child to communicate with ease. A student in a confiding relationship is able to discuss any issue, including frustration, sadness and anger with parents. Counsellors and empathetic teachers can fulfil this role at school. Every school should have trained counsellors. Minor issues can be sorted out early, before they intensify.

Unconditional positive regard: To nurture a sense of belonging to the family, parents need to show unconditional positive regard to their children. They should express love to their children for what they are. Conditional love ("You are my son only if you come within the first five ranks" and assorted variants of the same message) wrecks a child's sense of belonging and self-esteem. A teacher who expresses unconditional positive regard evokes positive behaviour and interest in students than one who relies on threats and punishments. For example, class XI A in one school was notorious for being `unruly and unmanageable'. A new teacher joined the school and gradually Class XI A was seen to be quiet and well behaved during his period. By the time they reached Class XII, the class was quoted as a role model.

Self Esteem: High self esteem guards against violence, emotional problems and suicide. A student's self esteem can be improved by unconditional positive regard by one significant adult (parents /teachers) and encouragement and opportunity to excel in some area. Every student should be recognised for his/her unique strength in whichever area he/she chose to focus on. It need not be restricted to academics alone. It could be sports, music, arts, writing, anything.

School connectedness: This implies a sense of belonging to the school. It gives the students part of their identity and improves their self-esteem. The student's perception that a teacher is impartial and fair, is caring and compassionate, is available and shows love to all students unconditionally helps in shaping the student's sense of belonging to the school. Parents should also have a sense of belonging to the school. PTA meetings in the true sense can foster this. Most schools have sham PTA meetings where parents are expected to meet individual teachers to discuss the marks scored in the recent tests.

Coping skills: Participation in sports and extra curricular activities help in improving one's coping skills and guards against emotional problems and violence. Coping skills can also be taught.

Conflict resolution and anger management: Conflicts are a natural part of life and occur in schools too. At times, minor conflicts between students lead to violence. Students can be trained in alternate ways of resolving conflicts like negotiation and mediation. Students can also be trained in channelising anger in socially appropriate ways.

The curriculum has provisions to impart these skills. But, in most schools this time is stolen for other `important' subjects. In one school, the Physics teacher walked into a value education class for std. XI students. "Here is a summary of your value education sessions for the next two years." He paused and said dramatically, "Be good" and then announced, "From now on, Value education periods will be Physics periods".

Joy of learning: Schools should provide an atmosphere where learning a new concept or learning a new way of doing a particular task brings joy.

Parents too should ensure that their children enjoy learning. Once learning becomes a joyful activity, students would look forward to being in school and their sense of belonging would be high. Their vulnerability to violence would come down.

The author is a Chennai-based Consultant Psychiatrist. E-mail: mohanpsychiatry@yahoo.co.in

Some interesting commentary from Dr Justus H Lewis, PhD over at Transformasia:

I was reminded of the importance of a sense of belonging last week when I attended a professional development workshop, Psyche and Dialogue, presented by Professor Andrew Samuels, one of whose passions is the connection between therapy and politics. His latest book – for those who are interested – is Politics on the Couch: Citizenship and the Internal World. I recommend it.

A colleague shared how over the years, as he had worked with groups of dysfunctional teenagers, he had found that if he could hold the group together long enough for these troubled youngsters to feel that they belonged somewhere, then many of them, through making friends and finding personal support from within the group, were able with minimal assistance to resolve the issues that has previously disrupted their lives.

As I reflected on the power of a sense of belonging, I also recalled many conversations at the opposite end of the spectrum, with people who felt marginal in a variety of ways, never quite belonging anywhere. Typical of these would be people like myself who were born in one country – in my case, Scotland – who have settled in another, and who have spent most of their working lives in a number of different countries.

While these people are usually very self-confident and flexible, their sense of belonging tends to be tenuous.

Many of us derive our sense of belonging from our families. But in these days of far-flung family groupings, where face-to-face meetings are a rarity, the family can seem more of a fiction than a fact.

Another important source of a sense of belonging is the workplace. After all, we do spend the majority of our waking lives at work. But with the increase in part-time, casual, contract work, redundancy, mergers and downsizing, work can serve to remind us that the future may be unsettling and uncertain. We may end up feeling that life inevitably has to be ‘every man for himself’.

And yet, work is a collaborative effort. The workplace involves teams of people working together to achieve common goals, even though they may not feel personally involved in any way with these goals. This often leads to stress and conflict – conflict that may not even be acknowledged, because it is taken for granted as a ‘fact of life’ at work.

Professor Samuels recalled his experience of being invited to work in Israel with Israeli and Palestinian post-graduate students, students with totally opposite and deeply conflicting viewpoints. Professor Samuels was interested to find that when he abandoned traditional approaches to conflict resolution, and tried a different approach that focused on the ‘style’ in which he observed the students dealing with conflict, he found ways that made it easier for the students to talk to and understand the other person’s point of view. While this didn’t resolve their conflicts, it did provide a path to a deeper appreciation of the other side’s story.

This reminded me of the power of relationship intelligence in the form of the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI).

The SDI is a simple yet powerful instrument that enables people to understand both their own and other people’s motivational values – and consequently – preferred relating styles.

It is widely used in the workplace to assist teams to function more effectively and productively. As with any such personality assessment tool, it is a map and not the territory. People are vastly more complex and interesting than any personality assessment instrument can show. Nevertheless, the SDI has several very useful features that the people who use it find of enormous benefit in helping them to understand where their co-workers are coming from and to avoid unwarranted conflict. The SDI enables people to acknowledge, respect and honour differences; it gives people a language in which to talk about these differences in an objective, non-judgmental way; and following from this, it provides helpful strategies to prevent and resolve conflict in the workplace.

How it works is that the ‘score’ reflects back to a person both how they are motivated in ‘normal’ situations when things are going well, and how they are motivated in situations of conflict when things are not going well. In some people, there is a vast difference and this can be quite a revelation.

So what are the possibilities? We know that different people can do the same thing for very different reasons and this is one of the keys to a better understanding of oneself and others and hence an increased ability to have a sense of belonging and recognition of common purpose.

The primary motivations are a desire to achieve and get things done, a desire to understand and be fair, and a desire to help and communicate. Part of acknowledging our own and others uniqueness and individual differences is to understand that we are each motivated by a different combination and degree of these factors.

To Meet Each Other

How is it possible in a school that we meet each other, where we can listen to each other? And what space does a person with disabilities have to speak? Maybe he can’t speak verbally but maybe he can say something, through his body, through his smile.

- Jean Vanier, Unpublished conversation with students,June 2007