Avoiding Eye Contact in Center City

ONE CENT: You might want to set aside time to interact with a homeless person.  My husband has done this many times in Harvard Square, Cambridge with our children.  He’ll take the kids on a trip just to visit with homeless people -  initiate a conversation, get their name and sometimes even their life story.  If this is something you’re not comfortable doing with your children, perhaps just talking to them about how and why some people are homeless is a good start and it may just open a window into doing more for the homeless in the future.

TWO CENT:  I admit, I've had some experiences.  Actually when we lived in Philadelphia, a homeless man accosted us at a bus stop.  It was so bad a police officer had to tell me to take the kids (in their stroller) to the bus stop down the road instead.  We left the interaction a little irritated -- what's a day without being accosted for money by a homeless person, I thought.  But when we came back from the museum, there was a large crowd gathered around that original bus stop.  After we left in the safety of the bus, the guy had taken off all his clothes and lain in the middle of the road.  When a police officer came to check on him, he grabbed the cops gun and shot the policeman.  Then, to make matters worse, he jumped into the cop car and tried to mow down some pedestrians!  (This was on Market Street at rush hour, in front of the mall.)  The whole scene was stopped by a transit bus running over the police car, killing the homeless man. It was awful, and the kids were not old enough to understand the depth of the human tragedy we'd briefly encountered.  Anyway, I went through a time where I was angry at homeless people -- something about the way the guy had been so aggressive to me with such small children brought out my inner mother hen.  It took me a while to get over my fear (that's what it truly was) and to get back to normal life.  One's Cent's idea about visiting with them strikes me as too cavalier, although her husband is safer and stronger than I could be. While I don't think we should fear them, caution is warranted.  Films like The Soloist rightfully tug at our heartstrings, however, we should teach your children to love wisely. (You'll have to teach them this before dating too, so you might as well do it now!)  Volunteer with established organizations, like this faith based one that's been in existence for 113 years or this one that helps the mentally ill.

Most importantly, get the children involved.  You could contact your local homeless shelters and food banks to find out what they need most.  Perhaps they need warm coats, blankets, medical supplies, or canned goods which you and the kids could provide on a special shopping trip.  (Maybe you could provide the shelter with toilet paper, for example, every month.   This will keep the issue in the forefront of your mind instead of an item in a list of things to do.)  Some shelters help their residents make items which you could purchase to encourage self-sufficiency.  At Christmas, you could volunteer to wrap gifts donated to the shelter so the homeless could have the joy of ripping up the Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer wrapping paper.

Parenting is hard work, and this includes delving into the intricacies of complex issues of why people act the way they do, and what a loving response should look like.  Sometimes love might even look like you're walking by without regard to their plight.  However, in your honest conversations with your children about the poor, you probably will also cover the issue of "things are not always as they appear."