When The Bough Breaks

The Center For Disease Control has this thing called ACEs: Adverse Childhood Experiences. It's something I hear a lot about from my wife and my mother-in-law. They write books about self-esteem and resiliency. They know their stuff. So does the CDC.
Sometimes I like to kid myself into believing that I know my stuff too. My experience is, on the whole, a lot more practical than many. I work in an urban elementary school. A majority of the kids I deal with on a daily basis would be able to check all the boxes: abuse, neglect, trauma of various sizes, shapes and colors. These are children who are often challenged by simply getting to school, let alone succeeding scholastically. And yet, this is the expectation I will be putting on them. That's what teachers do.
And all the while I am mindful that these young humans have often already experienced more in their short lifetimes than I have in my grand old one. Once upon a time, I had myself convinced that I had been dealt a tough hand by being born into a suburban household in culturally enlightened and privileged Boulder, Colorado. For several years, starting as a junior in high school, I had cataloged a number of offenses that I determined were major and had manufactured a chip on my shoulder that made me a "tough customer."
For any of you who encountered my "troubled self" back in those days, you have my most sincere apologies. I lacked, as most adolescents do, the perspective of a few more years on god's green earth. I had no idea how good I had it. I had a car when I was sixteen because that was the expectation. I had new clothes at the beginning of every school year because that was the expectation. I had parents who cared passionately about me and my friends. They were as invested in my accomplishments as they were in my brothers'. Being teased because I was overweight, or periodically ostracized for my tastes in music or comedy made me miserable at the time, but in hindsight I know that I was on a journey that led me here. I am equipped to be more responsive to the needs of kids who truly need attention. A new pair of shoes. Breakfast. My ACEs don't qualify me for empathy by any stretch of the imagination, but they grant me the humility to recognize that if what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, we are raising a generation of super humans here in East Oakland.
I will never know the suffering of the kids who scream and cry and curse and rail at the very structures that are suppose to help make their lives more tolerable. I don't really want to know. I just want to do what I can to make it easier for them. They have earned that.