Learning to Live Independently

Last week, the blog explained the difference between real community-based care and children who are simply raised in a building that is located within the community. This week, I want to explain why the difference is so important. It has everything to do with how children normally gradually are prepared for living as independent adults.

Children who grow up in a family get to observe the roles that men and women have in the world, in the community and in a family, from the day they are born. They see how men and women interact amongst themselves and between the sexes. They see how elders are treated. They see how people with a different status to theirs are treated, relative to their own position in society. Children get to see all these things day in, day out. They take in this information, and slowly they will start to act like the adults around them as much as they can.

Similarly, children in families are brought along when their parents do the shopping, go to the bank, or post office and take care of a million and one other things. Throughout their childhood and adolescence, they see these things from different angles, with increasing understanding, while very slowly picking up the skills involved in taking care of all of it. Children get to help around the house with various chores, according to their ability, taking on more and more work and responsibility as they grow older and more skilled. Their integration into the community, finding their place there, happens very gradually. When the day comes and it is time to leave the family home – which usually will not be the very moment when they turn 18 – this is a relatively small step, along a long road of gradual progress.

Not only do children growing up in their families, within the community, learn the practical aspects and the social rules of living independently in the community very gradually over about two decades, over that time they also build up a support network. As children grow up in the community, they get to know many other people in the community and form relationships of various kinds with them. When they are young, this mostly means that there are more people than just their immediate family looking out for them, and other children to play with. As children grow older, they gradually become able to make contributions to other people and the community themselves, by helping people in various ways.

When a young adult leaves the parental home to start an independent life, she is not on her own. She is surrounded by the community that she grew up in and the support system that she has built around her over the years. There are many people whom she can ask for advice or help, and who look out for her, whether she asks for it or not.

Children who grow up in an institution, or cut off from the community in another way, do not have this opportunity, they live cut off from society. They are not able to learn how life in the community works because they do not have the opportunity to observe it and to practise. They also do not have the opportunity to build up a support network around them, for the day when they have to leave the institution. Meaning that when they do leave the institution, they are really on their own.

It is this fact of growing up isolated from the community, as much as not having had the opportunity for proper brain development, that leads to an enormous shock when the young adult finds herself in the outside world, suddenly having to rely entirely on herself. She very quickly discovers that she is not equipped to handle the situations she finds herself in. She finds herself feeling like she has to constantly tread water hard to try to keep from drowning, without anyone ever having taught her how to swim.

Many young adults discover that they are unable to cope, however hard they try. Feeling unable to handle their life in the outside world, these young adults become very vulnerable to a wide range of dangers, including being exploited and trafficked. When they are in a panic about how they are going to survive and are approached by someone who says they are a friend who can help them, they will most likely gratefully follow them and do whatever is asked of them.

So, growing up in the community, as a part of the community is essential for children to learn to become capable independent adults with a social network to support them as they step out into the world.

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