the truth about tragedy

If you're anything like me, your heart was shredded to pieces as you learned of another school shooting yesterday, piling another tragedy on top of the many other recent traumas of targeted death and suffering.

Following a tragedy, people try to work their way backward to make sense out of what happened. How did we get here?

In the face of pain, we experience deep compassion and we crave a sense of justice.

We witness consequences of violence every day and look for where to place blame. We place it on the family, on a school system, or on the people who didn't prevent it, who didn't do enough once a threat was perceived.

But how do we prevent those adolescents, young adults, older adults, from getting to that point of being a danger to self or others?

Violence, poverty, poor health, mental illness, prejudice...

Wouldn't it be so much more powerful to prevent it from the beginning? To focus on how we create an experience of safety, security, health, and belonging for every person? To create the conditions for wellness?

How do we create that?

The latest brain science and child development research shows that we're not starting soon enough.

Guidance is there. And it's clear.

• Nearly 85% of brain development occurs between birth and three years old.

• The two things that are most crucial for healthy brain development during those 3 years are 1) nurturing relationships with caregivers and 2) the prevention of toxic stress.

• The effects of childhood poverty on adult employment, crime rates, and health cost in the U.S. is between $800 billion to 1.1 trillion a year.

How are we doing as a society - as a community - to ensure that children under the age of 3 have these needs met?

How are we doing to ensure that the adults trying to meet these needs have the time, health, and resources to do so?

Children, and certainly infants and toddlers, are some of the most vulnerable members of a population. Within that, some children and families are more exposed to the presence of toxic stress or inadequate resources as a result of the color of their skin, their ability, their gender, or their socioeconomic status.

We have the data. We have the science. We have the information we need to make an impactful change.

While it will cost us - yes - billions of dollars to change the system, it is also costing us billions of dollars again and again every year, not to make the change.

That estimate includes the calculable costs of the status quo... The cost of missed work, lost earnings, or decreased productivity.

How do you really value the loss of life? The loss of quality of life? The loss of opportunity for individuals, and for society, to thrive?

We can do better.

For example, paid time off after childbirth - something every developed nation offers with the exception of the U.S. - is associated with decreased mortality and hospitalizations for children, decreased rates of postpartum depression, and improved mental health for the parents.

This is not something that will be solved systemically by rugged individualism. This is something that takes a community. It takes a willingness to join together and say,

"What benefits the child in that neighborhood or that neighborhood... of that skin color, or that skin color... of that ability or that ability... of that gender, or that gender... benefits all of us and every child is worth it!"

Wouldn't it be magnificent to experience a question of, "How did we get here?" as a reflection of how well we're doing?

• How much violent crime has dropped?

• How much poverty has decreased?

• How much the employment, productivity, and mental health of our population has improved?

• How much respect, compassion, and connection has increased?

That's where I want to be. That's my hope for all of us. That we can learn from this, not by stopping at "How did we miss that this particular person was a danger" at the point where they were already so mentally or emotionally unhealthy to be a danger...

If we want...

...better health, less violence, increased productivity, decreased mental illness, improved relationships, diminished conflict...

...then doesn't it make sense to do our absolute, collective, best to support the healthiest possible conditions for development of 85% of a person's brain for the crucial first 3 years of their life?

My hope is that we take the wealth of information we have and think, talk, and act on it decisively it so that we don't keep ending up here again and again.

What is your hope?

Most people (and organizations) want what's on the other side of wellness...and you can engage the conversations and accountability that can truly make a difference for both the present, and the future.

We need to raise generations that can do better than we have - and in order to do so, we need to be supporting the key figures - parents, caregivers, child care providers, and the children themselves.

This article by Dana Suskind and Lydia Denworth highlights many key lessons from brain science and child development that, if heeded, would have tremendous benefit for both the present and the future.  Would you consider taking one or two of these statistics, examples, or a related anecdote into your conversations?  

You matter.  You can make a difference.  I'm so thankful you're here.