"24-HOUR-A-DAY-GUARD-DUTY"

24-hour-a-day-guard-duty
by Andrew Malekoff© 2008

As winters in February go, this year’s was a mild one. Nevertheless, it was brutal month that brought the inexplicable murders of three young children in New Cassel and the execution-style killing of a teenage boy outside Don Juan’s restaurant in Westbury.

A legion of children and teens (and others) left in the wake of these deaths are the collateral damage that bloodshed brings. They include family, friends, and neighbors of the four young victims. Many of them now face the emptiness, frustration, fear and rage of incomprehensible death. They are at risk for suffering traumatic stress that impacts deeply on their lives, interfering with normal social growth and destroying their basic assumptions about the safety of the world. A single line of graffiti on a concrete wall, composed by a young trauma survivor, says it best: “I don’t like being a child, its 24-hour-a-day guard duty.”

What we know is that society expects parents to do everything—to counter the violent messages in the media, to teach children problem-solving skills, and then to keep them physically and emotionally safe. These are unrealistic expectations. Too many parents lack the information and wherewithal to accomplish this alone. Parents need our help.

At North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center we have a long history in the New Cassel community. Consequently, we were invited to meet with groups of parents, faculty and others in Park Avenue Elementary School, where one of the young victims attended. Being a community-based agency with deep roots in the neighborhood made all the difference. Meeting in groups is essential to rebuilding social connections that traumatic situations destroy.

A first step is to encourage parents and other caring adults to address their own feelings. This is necessary to free them to help their children to cope. Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk advises that, “successful coping in the aftermath of traumatic events must protect four vital functions: the ability to continue task-oriented activity, the ability to regulate emotion, the ability to sustain positive self value, and the capacity to maintain and enjoy rewarding interpersonal contacts.”

A second step is to identify and emphasize community strengths and resources that sustain hope and reduce shame and isolation. Restoring a sense of community is critical for transcending the emotional impact of deadly violence.

I feel confident that as the bright lights and unforgiving glare of the media fade, and then flicker on again with every new legal development and political promise, the good people of New Cassel will heal and will rise up as those before them have risen up.

The good people of New Cassel will heal, with a little help from their true friends, and will let the world know that although Jewell Ward, Michael Demesyeux, Innocent Demesyeux, and Edwin Yovani Mejia are gone, they will never be forgotten.

As for the rest of us, we are faced with the daunting challenge of ensuring that no child’s life will be what it is becoming for too many today - 24-hour-a-day guard duty.

This article was originally published in the Anton Community Newspapers, Long Island, NY in March 2008.