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When I was growing up, my parents let me watch the Ed Sullivan Show before bed. I couldn’t just turn on the television whenever I wanted to. I only saw what they wanted me to see, when they wanted me to see it. And they didn’t have to worry about what I might find on the computer.

Everything is different now. Children aren’t protected from the media. They see it all: The grandmother who throws her two-year-old granddaughter from a walkway at a shopping mall. The little boy who finds a gun in his parents’ car and accidentally shoots himself. The teenage gunman who opens fire in a school cafeteria.

Trayvon.

Our children are exposed to violence all the time. Real-life violence, not just the violence in movies and video games. But nobody is talking about that. There is a certain silence about what our children are seeing and hearing, and the impact that may have on their development. A nine-year-old might walk away from a news story about Trayvon Martin and wonder if he, too, is going to get shot to death one day if he wears a hoodie. We don’t know what really happened that night, but we know that’s how a young child may interpret it. We know that it is a tragedy. And that’s something we have to talk about: You can’t be happy living in a world where you think you can be shot down while you’re walking home with a bag of Skittles.

Why the silence? Why aren’t we—as a society, as a community—talking about the level of violence our children are exposed to and what we can do to help them process it? I hear us talking about trauma, and children who are victims of abuse and violence themselves, but what about the children sitting next to them in school? Or the children who simply hear about that violence on television or Facebook? How many children heard about the former Fairfax County police officer and his 13-year-old daughter who died this week in an apparent murder-suicide? Too many.

Why the silence? Some people are saying that Trayvon’s death is forcing a conversation about race relations. I say it should force a different conversation, a conversation around the fact that this was a child, and other children are watching. We need to look at how violent our society is and remember that our children are in the middle of it all. And that is counter to childhood happiness. Childhood happiness is about being carefree, not being in the middle of the violence. We have 20 boys living on our Bethesda campus in our Greentree Adolescent Program (GAP), and I’m going to sit down with them and ask them what they think about Trayvon. I’m not going to tell them what I think—I’m going to ask them what his death means to them. It’s time to have a conversation.

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Author

Name: Dr. Sheryl Brissett Chapman

About: Dr. Sheryl Brissett Chapman, Executive Director, is a passionate, internationally recognized and award-winning advocate for children, youth, and their families, who struggle with extreme poverty, abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and disabilities and related trauma. An author and expert in child and family welfare, she believes in the sheer power of “community” as it reinforces unimaginable resilience when it provides the basic support to those in its midst who have need. Dr. Chapman envisions a healthy, happy childhood for each and every child, regardless of the circumstances of their birth or the socio-economic status of their family.

ABOUT US

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Founded in 1915 as an orphanage in the District of Columbia, NCCF is a private, nonprofit child and family welfare agency with a commitment to serving poor, disadvantaged, abused, neglected and/or abandoned children, youth, and their families.

Current program services include emergency shelters and transitional housing for homeless families, a high-intensity therapeutic group home, therapeutic and traditional foster care and adoption, independent living for youth transitioning to adulthood, teen parent services, and community-based prevention services that promote academic achievement, parental involvement, economic and vocational stability, and healthy families. Our programs have become social service models, redefining both NCCF’s reputation and the agency’s position in the human service continuum in the Washington Metropolitan Region.

blog-sidebar-aboutUs-logo

Founded in 1915 as an orphanage in the District of Columbia, NCCF is a private, nonprofit child and family welfare agency with a commitment to serving poor, disadvantaged, abused, neglected and/or abandoned children, youth, and their families.

Current program services include emergency shelters and transitional housing for homeless families, a high-intensity therapeutic group home, therapeutic and traditional foster care and adoption, independent living for youth transitioning to adulthood, teen parent services, and community-based prevention services that promote academic achievement, parental involvement, economic and vocational stability, and healthy families. Our programs have become social service models, redefining both NCCF’s reputation and the agency’s position in the human service continuum in the Washington Metropolitan Region.

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