PACIFIC OAKS COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

Theme: The Courage to Transform the Future

I am honored to be chosen to give this commencement speech. I know that many of you share my philosophy and commitment to children and this alliance provides me support to continue my work with renewed energy. I am deeply moved by some of the comments I have received from you about my work.

I would like to share some of my ideas about the child in today's world and how I believe they deeply affects the future.

It takes a great deal of courage today to pursue the training and experience for the work you are setting out to do. This is important work since our children are the best hope for the future. It takes courage to commit to work with children and families, since the world we live in is enormously stressful, and the children in our society are deeply affected by the pressures and traumas that are prevalent in their lives. In their attempts to cope and survive and grow up, they are often thrown into confusion and unhealthy ways of being.

We are inundated in today's world-(and it looks like it will only increase in the future)-by machines. Movies and video games and television and computers are actually only a fraction of the technology that seems to be invading our lives. This invasion, I believe, is in direct contrast to promoting respect for the needs of the human living organism, particularly its vital need for relationship and contact. The child has an intense, essential requirement for satisfying and healthy relationships and interaction with others. Further, she has a fundamental necessity to have the freedom and opportunity to express her deepest self. It is this healthful contact with others, and the safety to make her innermost feelings known that give the child the support that is necessary for discovering more and more of her ever emerging self and strengthening that sense of herself.

A healthy baby comes into the world with the ability to use all of his resources for healthful growth and development. He uses his senses - looking, listening, touching, tasting, and smelling-to learn about the world. He becomes aware of his body and all the ways he can use it in the environment. He expresses his emotions congruently (you KNOW it when a two-year old is angry, or frightened, or sad or happy ). His intellect grows and expands by leaps and bounds and as he develops language he is able to express his emotions clearly, and to express his ideas and thoughts and curiosities, and to get his needs known. He joyfully struggles for mastery and selfhood.

However, there comes a time when the child unfortunately realizes that she must restrict, inhibit, pull in, maybe even cut off, these natural aspects of herself in order to cope and survive in her world. For example, she learns quickly that to express anger is unacceptable and evokes disapproval, and so she inhibits this expression. Since her survival depends on the adults in her life, she will make determinations about how to be in the world to insure that her needs are met. The child's self becomes diminished due to lack of expression, and her deep-felt feelings become buried somewhere inside of her.

Since the child's major developmental task is to grow up, a paradox takes form.
As the child strives to flourish and thrive in his confusing world by calculating how to avoid his parents' disapproval, and perhaps even wrath, his organism struggles to achieve equilibrium and health. And so the expression of anger, an expression that is fraught with danger, -- this expression of self that has been frustrated and thwarted, pushes on to become something else-something beyond the child's awareness and control. The organism, in its everlasting quest for health and homeostasis, seeks to rid itself of this anger energy and finds ways to do this that are generally unsuccessful, damaging and counter-productive. One child retroflects the anger by giving himself headaches, stomachaches, generally withdrawing, not speaking, or manifesting other self-inflicting symptoms. Another child deflects his basic, profound feelings by hitting, kicking, striking out. Some children become hyperactive as a way to avoid feeling anything. Others anesthetize themselves by cutting off contact to the point where they appear to be living in a dream world. These are only a few of the behaviors and symptoms that mask fearful authentic expressions. These worrisome behaviors and symptoms are actually the child's fierce attempts to cope and survive in this stressful world. They become his way of being in life, his process-the way he handles all stress that comes his way. As he grows these behaviors are transformed into those more identified with adolescents, and later with adults. Since the expression of anger is actually an expression of the SELF, the child's very self becomes diminished, his sense of self and esteem plummet, and contact abilities deteriorate. Since these behaviors don't provide other than perhaps momentary satisfaction, the child accelerates them in his efforts to find some peace and sense of self. The child does not stop and say, "This isn't working for me."

I'm thinking of all of the talk lately about "The new millennium" as if when December 31 draws to a close and January 1st, 2000 begins, a new, grand, futuristic world will appear for which we must all be prepared. Our future and the future of children is based on TODAY-what is happening in our lives today. All of the suffering and ills of today's world will follow us into this future unless we pay attention to them. The future depends on what we do today.

Does a tree know that we are on the eve of a "new millennium?" It continues to take its natural course totally unaware of this momentous happening.
Does a child think about this new millennium when she is hurting and needs some support to heal? Sometimes I think that all this millennium focus might be a distraction, and even a disrespect, for the natural world around us and the wonder of the organism that we are. I think that we need to learn more about how the organism, and nature, heals itself and to make every effort to support that, rather than sabotage, or at the very least, ignore it. I think we need to unplug from the "machine" and concentrate on learning about the workings of the natural world and its efforts to heal and replenish itself. It takes courage to honor the natural process of development of the child and to trust and support the organism's drive to heal itself. It takes a great deal of courage to avoid current trends such as labeling , modifying and medicating the child to a place of conformity. It takes courage to celebrate difference, and provide room for the uniqueness of each child.

When I see a troubled child, I know that at one time she was that healthy baby that made full use of all the modalities that made up her organism-all of the resources of self: her senses, body, emotions and intellect functioning in an integrated way. I know that this troubled and troubling child once had the capacity to grow into a healthy, joyful, productive adult. I know that something happened to get in the way of this process and I need to assist her to reclaim
herself.

We need to look, too, at how our society is affecting children today and getting in their way. We are all thinking about the violence prevalent among young people today-I believe strongly that children, (and adolescents are still our children), don't suddenly become violent. If we-parents, teachers, counselors, and the society pay attention to the needs of children, we have the power to eliminate the violent behaviors that we have witnessed. If we, as a society, spent half our energy-and money-- on examining the needs of children from the very beginning and finding ways to actively meet those needs, we might achieve a safe, peaceful future for them. If we as a society gave children the respect and love that they deserve, that is inherently theirs, we would create a generation of people that would respect and care about the world and each other. This requires vision-an understanding that the future is a product of what we do today..

Children are our finest teachers. They already know how to grow, how to develop, how to learn, how to expand and discover, how to feel, laugh and cry and get mad, what is right for them and what is not right for them, what they need. They already know how to love and be joyful and live life to its fullest, to work and to be strong and full of energy. If only we didn't get in their way.
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Those of us who work with children do have the privilege to gently help them onto their rightful path of health and growth, a path that leads to the future..

Thank you.

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