by Claire Louge
Executive Director
Prevent Child Abuse Arizona
I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking lately. The way we think shapes how we act, and our actions shape our possibilities. Change your thinking, change your future.
That’s why shifting the way people think – shifting mindsets – is key to shifting the world for the better. But as a recent experience showed me, we have a lot of work to do on this.
Last month, I wrote a letter to the Arizona Republic in response to coverage of three devastating child deaths that happened this year in our state. Much of the conversation I was hearing was focused on improving reporting and investigations of child abuse. In my letter, I shared that though improving our investigation system is always important, we must look beyond DCS and create a system that supports all families, before crises arise – so we can change the circumstances that give rise to interpersonal violence.
The Republic published the letter, but added their own subhead: Arizona needs a better system of support for dysfunctional families that abuse or neglect children.
My heart sank when I read that. Because that sentence misses the whole point.
We don’t need a system for “dysfunctional families.” We need a system for families. For my family, your family, and all families. When we use terms like dysfunctional, we’re pretending that human beings fall neatly into categories. We don’t. To use terms like that is an attempt to create a category of people that we’re allowed to judge and control.
That subhead reflects a mindset of surveillance and stigma. Stigma discourages help-seeking, and when people don’t ask for help when they need it, we miss opportunities to prevent avoidable harm. A surveillance mindset does not prevent harm; it just tries to catch it. And it can catch the wrong things.
In August, Prevent Child Abuse America unveiled our new tagline: Centering families through every turn.
This tagline articulates the mindset necessary to create the world we want: When we center the needs of families, through every turn in their path, we prevent child abuse and neglect before it ever happens. We create a nation in which all families and children live happy, purposeful lives with hope for the future.
Language matters because it reflects our thinking and creates what’s possible. We can create a better Arizona for children and families. In a time in which it’s so common to see things presented in extremes – black or white, good or bad, wrong or right – it’s a powerful practice to think about our thinking, think about how we speak, and what world we’re creating through our mindsets.