Mourning one victim of the Danzig shooting

The recent heartbreaking gun violence in North America and especially Toronto has been hard to see. I have found it harder though to listen to the pundits, people and politicians talk endlessly about the different sides of the issue.  Everyone seems to want to address gang and gun problems while they develop or after they develop. 

Are we really acting on this? Or just acting as though we are?

We need to address these issues long, long before that.
It begins in early childhood.  

If we can have accessible high quality children's services in all areas, HUB systems and classrooms in our schools that promote community and deeply involve families we can go a long way to setting up positive foundations for life. 

This outreach is important for everybody but is especially crucial in areas where children and families have multiple barriers and disadvantages. 

Parents are the most important role models

We often hear these things:

Children in these areas do not have adequate parenting.

They may not, but the only solution to this is working on supporting parents and families in their most important job as parents, who are trying to do their best, as they know how.  The child's first and most important teachers are their parents and they always will be.

We [the government and non-profits] need to put more role models on the streets.

We need to provide more role-models in the form of supported parents and families.  Children need role models who are actually part of their world and their community all the time.  We can access almost all families through their children at school.

We need to put these people in jail for a really long time.

It's too late by then and the cycle has likely already begun again.

We have come so far away from a community-based society in which a helping hand and guidance was always there with you.  We need to recognize the duty to society that everyone has to help grow our children, if we all want the best.   

The new Early Learning Kindergarten program in Ontario is hopefully the beginning of putting the new ideas about education and engaging families, forward.  Our view of our children and early childhood needs to progress.  It is hard to invest in something with benefits that may not appear clear for many years, but if we seriously want to combat some of the most negative things happening in our societies, we need to recognize that we are missing out on the greatest opportunity to affect change by ignoring the value of early years and ongoing support for children and families.