Support from Caring Adults Crucial to Healthy Development

When Mary Renck Jalongo thinks back to her years as a novice teacher, one student often comes to mind:
Not only was she big for her age, she was older than anyone else in my first-grade class because she had been retained in kindergarten. Her name was Tonya and she put my patience, my professionalism, and my decision making on trial throughout my second year of teaching. Tonya would boss and bully the other children, pilfer items from their desks, or talk them into uneven “trades.”
Matters worsened when I received a hostile note from a parent. It read, “This is the fourth time that Tommy’s snack cake has been taken from his lunch. What are you going to do about it?”
What I did was to launch an investigation. First, I asked if anyone else was missing items from lunchboxes and discovered that many other children had been affected. Next, I tried to get someone to confess—not in the way that my teachers had done it, by sitting in the room until the guilty party or an informant cracked, but simply by asking the perpetrator to leave a note in my classroom mailbox. My classroom was antiquated, but it included an enclosed hallway, now equipped with coat racks and shelves that led to a restroom. Apparently, while I was preoccupied teaching my lessons, a child was stealing food. Three days later, several other children reported that they had seen Tonya “messing around people’s lunchboxes.” I asked her, but she denied it. At recess, I looked in her desk and found it littered with empty food wrappers. Then Tonya and I discussed it again in private and examined the evidence.
I consulted my principal about what to do. He suggested that I punish her severely; a month without recess seemed warranted, he said. I thought it might be better to call her mother, but they had no telephone and the principal assured me that, based on her failure to attend previous school functions, Tonya’s mother would not come to school. Then I said I would write a note and set up a home visit. He strongly advised against that, telling me that Tonya’s mother had a disease, that the house was a mess, and that she had a live-in boyfriend.
All these things were true, but I understand them differently now. Tonya’s mother had lupus and was at a debilitating stage of the disease that prevented her from working, much less maintaining a spotless home. Tonya’s family now consisted of mother, unofficial stepfather (also permanently disabled), and a three-year-old brother. They lived on a fixed income, and Tonya qualified for free lunches.
As a first-year teacher [at this school], I was reluctant to go against the principal’s wishes, but I did draw the line at harsh punishment. When I asked Tonya why she took things from the other children’s lunches, she simply said, “’Cause I was hungry.” I asked her if she ate breakfast in the morning, and she said, “No. I have to take care of my little brother before I go to school.” I asked her if having breakfast might solve the problem and she said, “Yes. My aunt would help.” And so, my first big teaching problem was solved by an eight-year-old when instead of foraging for food each morning, Tonya and her brother walked down the block to her unmarried aunt’s house before school and ate breakfast.
There was still the matter of repairing Tonya’s damaged reputation with the other children, who had accumulated a variety of negative experiences with her and had labeled her as a thief. I stood with my arms around Tonya’s shoulder in front of the class and announced that Tonya had agreed not to take things anymore, that she could be trusted, and that all was well.
Two weeks later, a child’s candy bar was reported missing, and the class was quick to accuse Tonya. I took her aside and inquired about the missing candy bar. “No,” she said firmly, “I didn’t eat it.” As I defended Tonya’s innocence to her peers, I noticed how Tonya, the child who had learned to slouch to conceal her size, sat up tall and proud in her seat.
I must confess that I was wondering if Tonya might be lying when Kendra, the child who reported the stolen candy bar, said she was ill and wanted to go home. Then, with a candor only possible in a young child, Kendra said, “I have a stomachache, and you want to know why? Because I just remembered that I ate my candy bar on the bus this morning.”
Tonya’s confidence and competence flourished during the remainder of her first-grade year and throughout second grade. Then, in third grade, she had a teacher who was sarcastic and unfair. When I passed by the third-grade room, I often saw Tonya seated off by herself or washing the walls, desks, or floors as punishment for her misbehavior. She would stop at my first-grade classroom after school, and when I asked her about it, she said she just didn’t like third grade and wished she could come back to first grade. Ms. M., Tonya’s third-grade teacher, had the habit of choosing certain children—always the ones whose parents were influential and wealthy—for all of the classroom privileges. One day as I was passing by her classroom, the third-grade teacher said, “Alyssa, you have on such a pretty dress today, why don’t you be our messenger? Be sure to show Mr. B [the principal] how nice you look!” I caught a glimpse of Tonya’s face as she sat there in her secondhand clothes and felt bitter tears in my eyes. . . .
How easy it might have been for a teacher to write Tonya off as a bully and a thief and, as the principal suggested, to punish her severely for her transgressions. Fortunately, Ms. Jalongo instead looked beneath the surface to find a child who was hungry and eager to please. She was then able to identify a simple strategy—arranging for Tonya and her brother to eat breakfast with their aunt—that not only eliminated the lunchpilfering episodes but also started Tonya on the road to establishing positive relationships with her classmates.
Infants, children, and adolescents need caring adults in their lives to support all aspects of their development. Professionals who work daily with youngsters play an important— in fact, a critical—role in the directions children’s lives take. These adults can help young people to develop social skills, self-confidence, a love of learning, and health-promoting habits. In some cases, and perhaps in Tonya’s, a single person may provide the caring, stable environment that truly makes a difference.