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Taking a look at JUST ONE component of the suffering of millions of our children I see this:
–More than one in five children (22.5 percent) live in families who are food insecure – meaning they struggle against hunger and report not having enough to eat
Do you personally know any of these most-hungry infants and children? Do you have them in your household? In your neighborhood? In your city or county?
YES you have them in your nation – and not a ‘handful’ of them, either?
THIS IS THE WEBSITE FOR FEEDING AMERICA
There is an interactive national MAP for FEEDING AMERICA ACROSS THE NATION here
This website is presenting undeniable FACTS about ONLY one measure of our nation’s offspring’s’ lack of well-being. PLEASE take a look – and then TAKE ACTION.
Take a look at the 2010 report about Hunger in America.
Register with Feeding America.
CARE AND CAREGIVE!!
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While we cannot argue about the United Nation’s facts about the suffering of a large percentage of America’s infants and children, or their facts regarding the appalling gap in our nation between the rich infant-children who ‘have’ and the poor ones who ‘have not’, we can PRETEND that everyone in our nation is created equal because we choose to IGNORE these facts.
Trauma, deprivation, abuse, neglect, exposure to violence to self and to others, affect the way an infant-child’s body-brain develops. This blog is packed with posts containing information about this fact. Infants and children ESPECIALLY FROM AGE 0-3 will suffer from the greatest physiological changes to their development due to the malevolence in their earliest caregiving environments.
When Trauma Altered Development happens, those who survive it will NOT BE CREATED EQUAL – in their body-brain – to those who had a more benevolent early beginning. THIS IS A FACT!
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The growing GAP in our nation between those who HAVE and those who DO NOT HAVE is becoming easier to ignore because of this GAP. Many Americans live in their RICHER neighborhoods while the POOR live in theirs. “Out of sight, out of mind?”
In this post I want to highlight something that EVERYONE in our nation can do to help. In people who were raised within a ‘good enough’ early environment if not an optimal safe and secure attachment home, our EMPATHY AND COMPASSION caregiving system was SUPPOSED to be developed within our physiology RIGHT. This means that we are able to DETECT the suffering of others of our species so that we can RESPOND WITH APPROPRIATE CAREGIVING.
It is a very real physiological fact that trauma and malevolence we are exposed to in our earliest 0-3 developmental stages alters the development of our attachment systems which causes our EMPATHY and COMPASSION and ABILITY TO RESPOND WITH APPROPRIATE CAREGIVING do NOT develop optimally. I would say ‘normally’ but it seems to be that what our species is OPTIMALLY capable of offering individuals who are raised 0-3 in the BEST conditions is NOT HAPPENING.
Looking at the end result, that we as a nation are content to allow growing and LARGE numbers of our offspring to suffer – and hence suffer in their physiological development so that their entire lifespan will lack the basics of well-being – means to me simply that THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS somehow MISSED out on optimal development as members of their species. “The proof is in the pudding!”
OPTIMAL growth and development in safe and secure attachment caregiving environments ESPECIALLY 0-3 means that these too-rare gifts of our species – empathy, compassion and abilities to respond with appropriate caregiving to others – has evidently NOT HAPPENED for the majority of Americans – no matter how MATERIALLY well-off they may have been in the beginning of their lives or how well-off they are now.
Evidently even though America still remains among the globe’s 24 richest countries, our wealth with its increasingly uneven distribution has NOTHING to do with the condition of our nation’s PEOPLE as human beings.
How are we as individuals and as members of a (once great?) nation able to ignore facts such as I presented in this recent post?
+PLEASE CHECK OUT THIS REPORT ON AMERICA’S CHILDREN IN RECESSION TIMES
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Stop the Storm 