Child Abuse Training

I’m sorry today’s training was problematic on SOOO many levels! I guess I could start with the manner in which the presenter pathologized the parents of her entire audience. Apparently not only were their parenting skills sub-par, they were in addition, ignorant and less refined then today’s generation. Wow, really? Imagine that. I don’t know, guess I always believed that the elders that raised my generation, my parents and my parent's parents...that “Grand Mamma an ‘nem” were the backbone, the sentinels the strength of our community. That they were so bad, so strong, that they could raise us into self-assured, self-confident individuals in the face of a society that hated us and do so while raising/nanny-ing someone ELSE’S children to boot! Well I tell you what, YOU go tell Grand Mama an ‘nem that they were bad parents. I dare ya.

That being said, let’s move on. The speaker also had this painful tendency, to classify students into categories of “winners” and “losers” even more agonizing was the fact that even the casual observer could identify the fact that these classifications were drawn along lines of socioeconomic status. Without fail, each and every example she provided of “bad parenting” were individuals from low-income communities in New York. When it was pointed out to her that her examples smacked of classism, she became indignant and utilized the “mistaken opinions” of the dissenter as fodder for the rest of her presentation. Shall I continue? Shall I speak on the plethora of illogical assumptions and irrational suppositions that were made? (i.e. teenaged baby-sitters inevitably molest their charges, that black men who are spanked as a child end up in jail) Shall I discuss the frequent use of the phrase “those people”? Or perhaps the blanket generalizations that peppered her presentation? No I don’t think so. Instead, I shall just thank the presenter for my Child Abuse Training Certification and pamphlet on the associated New York State Laws which I shall kindly review on my own.