Childhood Cancer

I personally struggled with this assignment in that I am fortunate enough not to have any first hand experiences with these stressors. My family lived paycheck to paycheck, but not what I would consider poverty.

After some reflection, I decided to write about childhood cancer. When my son went to Kindergarten this past year, he often talked of a classmate that was sick and how she couldn't come to school very much. I thought it was something along the lines of pnemonia, but realized it was something more when the teacher asked everyone to make individual birthday cards for her and mentioned she would deliver them. I knew then, this was something more. Colin often talked about the special things they did for her and phone calls that were made to check in, but I never knew the real story until later in the year. The class was planning a trip to the zoo at the end of the year and selling t-shirts that Lillia had made. Each classmate had one and chaperones could purchase them as well. They were sponsored by Million Shirt Mom and the procedes from her shirt sales would cover medical costs. It was such a touching moment to see classmates from all the kindergartens wear these shirts and surprise her with this tribute. She was able to come to the zoo trip and many of us were able to hide our tears behind our sunglasses as she looked so frail. Her story is found at http://www.millionshirtmom.com under the topic of "Journey of Helping". This year, Lillia is in remission and attending school. It makes me truly thankful for a healthy child. I believe it was prayer and a support system of the school and family that helped this family. I know they missed a lot of work for doctor's appointments and such. I would hope employers would be empathetic and work with families in these situations so that the stressor of disease is not compounded by the stressor of poverty.

I continue to research more about Germany as my long time family roots are grounded there. I found that Germany shares many of the same stressors that the United States endures and has many of the same support systems that we offer. For children effected by war, social groups come together to create play experiences for children who are missing parents and may not have these experiences. The belief is that humanitarian laws will protect children in that children are the most vulnerable and must be protected, yet this is not always the case. In looking into poverty, I found that that many families who are considered to be in poverty are single mothers who have more than one child to different men and cannot work. They have a welfare system and charities who help to provid the same necessities, but many families life paycheck to paycheck and still cannot put food on the table. Lastly, I looked at noise issues and was surprised that noise levels in classrooms were researched and found that children may not learn speech rules as easily in noisier classrooms and that children suffer from language delays if they live in larger cities where outside noise levels interfere with speech patterns. I did not find any support systems that work for noise, but relaxation techniques were an option that was tested, but showed no true improvement in speech.