Today was a very busy day. Let’s call it Community Outreach work. There was dropping off of stuff, and money, to Miss A this morning. And then phonecalls from Refuge to further discuss Miss A, and their needs. And then a brand new microwave arrived, courtesy of a lovely woman, which needed to be taken to Refuge. I had avoided knowing where it was. There had been offers previously just to drop stuff off there but it was easier not to know, and to act as a drop off point. But the microwave needed taking to them, there was no way around it, so go I did. Glad I am that I made the effort. It’s a small place, hidden away down a long drive way but the only security they seem to have is gates, which they have a chain around, I imagine for locking at night. I parked the car, and stepped out, and who was the person who greeted me, but the one woman that you have all been helping in various ways, with things for her baby that’s arriving in August.

If I expected sadness, I saw none. Only happy women going about the business of cooking a communal lunch, and small children toddling around under the watchful eye of the happy women. Beautiful children who have, I know, witnessed things that no child should ever have to. There are 12 children under 5 there, I have no idea where they fit them all in, but they seem to. So I took the microwave out of the box, installed it for them, and chatted for a while to one of the workers, there. “Thanks for being our friend” she said. I thanked her for letting us all help them out. It’s no small thing you are all doing – whether it be RTing and getting the word out, or donating clothes, or money, all of it is so very much appreciated. Because they have no other means – there is government funding, but the women pay their own way. They stay there for a short while, or a long while. However long it takes them to get on their feet. Many of them arrive with just the clothes on their back.

The woman I have asked you to help, in particular, is one of those women. She and I chatted about her needs – she has enough baby clothes, she says. And she and one of the co-ordinators are making a list of her needs now. For she has nothing, and no-one. Just these women, and her children. A beautiful curly haired, doe eyed child of almost three; her son who is 17 months, and this baby on the way. She had no-one to turn to, but Refuge saved her. They pay her way, because she’s not a NZ resident, and they look after her, and her kids. These are the people you’re helping. The women who have nothing else, and often, no-one else to turn to. Whose families can’t, or won’t help them. They may have no family here, but the partner who made their lives so impossible that to save themselves and their children they had to leave. So know, that you are good people, helping other good people. That they need your help more than ever, so that they can find their own way out of a scary and demoralising situation; that your help enables the refuge to carry on it’s good and great work of looking after people who have forgotten how to do just that.

This morning in the Herald was an article which was, the way I read it, basically Bill English saying: Hey, these parents are irresponsible jerks, so we’re quite prepared to take care of their kids, since they won’t. Oh no, hang on, that is what he is actually saying here. 

“There’s no doubt that there are kids in homes where there is not a strong sense of responsibility. It’s the obligation of the rest of us to do something about that.”

Perhaps someone needs to give Mr English some brain physiology lessons and explain to him what really happens when children are not eating properly. Poor nutrition means that there are certain things a child’s brain needs – to be able to absorb information, ask questions, focus for any decent period of time for example ie learning  – that they aren’t getting. Dr Alan Greene explains it.

You see where we’re going with this, don’t you? It’s pretty simple. Brains need feeding, and they need feeding with particular sorts of food for our bodies to function optimally. And if our brains and bodies are functioning optimally, we grow up to become adults who are still walking wounded (external factors, they are a bitch), but at least we have good decision making processes, because we are able to take in information, process it effectively, and come to conclusions. If your brain is starved as a child, that really isn’t going to happen. And if that doesn’t happen, what you tend to get is, yes you guessed it, people having children and repeating the cycle. That’s what we in the biz call cyclical poverty.

And what of children who were not left hungry, and grow up and find themselves in a situation which means that their kids aren’t being fed adequately? Well, that assumes, you see, that everyone understands the physiology of the brain. Because, quite frankly, most people don’t. They’re just trying to do the best by their kids. I would say, as a nonparent myself, that most people find themselves having babies and going “Holy hell! What is this squirming little thing? And how do I stop it crying?” But you see, the difference between people who are raised with love, and care, and proper nutrition, and have done okay at school, and most importantly of all, are raised in an environment where they see these things done – care taken, school/learning is important, love makes the world go round, and even if one of these things is missing, the kid has a chance – so they at least have examples of what parenting looks like, and people who haven’t had any or most of that? Is vast. An absolute ocean of knowledge separates those who have had at least some of those things, and those that haven’t. So there are people who have been raised with love in their hearts and homes, and good food in their belly, and they still find themselves behind the eight ball, unable, for whatever reason, to feed their kids adequately. It could be that they have mental health issues. It just might be that they were happily ensconced in a loving relationship, and then one parent left, and everything came tumbling down, and now they find themselves on a single parent benefit, with four kids to feed, and the most expedient thing is to give the kids what they want, and if that’s a pie and a cookie, hey at least it’s food. Because if Bill English and his cohorts don’t understand why a child needs to have a good breakfast in the morning, then how the hell are the rest of us oiks supposed to know any of that shit, either? And therein lies the problem. When you come from a happyish home, and you’ve been fed, and society is set up in a way which favours you from birth by dint of your skin colour, or your gender, or your family’s educative philosophy, or what job your Dad/Mum had to make all of that possible, and you’ve never met anyone who’s hungry or poor, and you’ve read newspapers all your life and listened to people, who tell you that being poor is a choice, then it is very easy not to know certain things. And to make judgements on other peoples’ lives, to be and remain ignorant of other peoples’ pain.

I would say to Bill English, and all the other politicians who show ignorance about what kids need to be successful, happy, productive members of society: Brains need food. It starts with that. If your brain has at least the building blocks in place, the other stuff can get sorted out eventually. Your place in society is one of privilege and power. Don’t use it to make kids suffer, because in the end, if they do, we all suffer. Crime rates, domestic abuse, any societal ill you can think of – a goodly proportion of the adults at the sharp end of those statistics you are fond of quoting were kids who didn’t get a decent feed in them at some point early in their lives.