CHARACTERISTICS AND MEASURES OF LONELINESS

Even bringing into curriculum and school songs and textbooks the affirmation of self worth, the construction of identity is difficult when books talk about Puerto Ricans being "a minority" ...in an    island where we are close to 4 million Puerto Ricans and the minorities are the few immigrants who   live here (we are absolute majority). 

There is also "stereotypation" of ourselves in the books as "natives." Some illustrators paints an exaggerated an exotic picture of our people, all dressed as salsa dancers, drum players or peasants.   There is no way of fighting against psychological colonialism which is rampant. I keep reading this   kind of exotic stories about me and my people, and I know that's why we reach a stage when we   begin to hate ourselves, our people and our heritage. 

   I believe that the concern here was that a disrupted home led to loneliness. Speaking as a child of a
   divorced couple, I can say that it is not divorce qua divorce that leads to loneliness. On the contrary;
   if the homelife is disrupted because of parental incompatibility, a divorce might calm things down. In
   my experience, the divorce led to my actually seeing my father more than I ever would have
   otherwise and this did in no way contribute to loneliness. 
   Of course, I was fortunate in my parents.

   No, what causes loneliness is the issue of self-esteem, as I've mentioned before. If the divorce makes
   the child feel as if she has failed in the family relationship...this will lead to a poor self-image. This
   image can be remedied with proper counseling and unfailing support of friends and family.

   There is no way to prevent this feeling unless it is to bolster the self-concept at school and counsel
   with parents about their relationship to the child in question. 

   Such positive feedback could hardly fail to spill over into the academic world. (Well, it could fail to
   affect it, but that would be an exception, I think.)

   A side note. Loneliness has driven many children to succeed in the academic arena. And loneliness is
   not always a negative. It is the way loneliness is handled that can be destructive. I myself was a
   desperately lonely child at school for most of my time in the public system. This did not serve to
   make me a poor student or public menace. I have and will maintain that each individual is responsible
   for his or her actions and blaming tragic events on anything but the individual is an excuse. 
 

Child abandonment and destitution is one problem. Another is that of children who are being severely neglected and thus deprived of adequate care and protection. Among these are children   who are affected by one or more disabilities, and children of families facing neglectand deprivation on   account of poverty and family disintegration.  The traditional answer to the problem of meeting the developmental and learning needs of children in  especially difficult circumstances has been institutional care and services.

Institutional services are costly, and they reach only a small proportion of those who most need attention. Non-institutional forms of care, at present, are limited in coverage. As a result,a majority of   these children currently have no access to education and other social services.

The problems of child abandonment and destitution, while needing rehabilitative and institutionalized attention, also require prevention, early detection, and early intervention within the primary unit of   family and community. However, in the absence of appropriate community-based and   family-centered interventions, most of the "at-risk" families and children continue to be unreached   with appropriate preventive and rehabilitative services.
The deterioration of the economy in some countries has led to the emergence of a growing urban population of displaced children without shelter or supervision.

There most be a way to give preventive and rehabilitation services to urban street and disabled children, mainly through community-based activities. As Mahatma Ghandi said:"Consciously or   unconsciously, everyone of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing   this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and it will make not only   for our own happiness, but that of the world at large."

In 1996, an Organization called "Amizade" in Brazil, created a program in Santarém, whose purpose was to build a vocational training center for street children of Pastoral do Menor. Pastoral dom   Menor is nonprofit organization that was established in 1987 to combat the problems of   violence, abandonment, and abuse of street children.   The overburdened educational system is inefficient in its ability to educate the children of Santarém. Teachers receive the   minimum salary (US$110 per month), and most of them only have a primary school education. Children are in school for only four hours a day, and there are extremely few extracurricular activities
for kids. This leaves a lot of munstructured time for children which madds to the temptation of joining a gang. Unfortunately, many children are opting for them latter as opposed to staying in school. Child   abandonment and the increasing number ofm street children is becoming one of the biggest growing   problems in Brazil with an estimated 45 million in a state of semi-abandonment. This is a real world   crisis. 

Before going to draw any conclusion about loneliness of our child, it is important to study the pattern
of loneliness. Rating the lonely behavior of child is one method.For example, you want to assess loneliness in terms of the extent of child's participation in his / her   group. Here, you have to operationally define the group participation at first. Second step is to  determine the behavior domain that shows group participation. This behavior domain could be derived from the operational definition. For more in-depth understanding, it is important to define  operationally each main domain and to determine specific behavior for corresponding behavior  domain.Next you have to select some responses and to assign some numerical value to each  response.The average value corresponding to each domain would reflect pattern of loneliness in your  child. Here is one example in the context of group participation:

   1.My child has asked questions 
   a)Never
   b)1 question
   c)2 questions
   d)More than 2 questions

   2.Gives opinion
   a)Never
   b)Only once
   c)Twice
   d)More than twice

   3.Raises status of friends
   a)Never
   b)Once
   c)Twice
   d)More than twice

   4.Expresses humor
   a)Never
   b)Once
   c)Twice
   d)More than twice

   Here a=1, b=2 c=3, d=4
  Lastly, average all the numerical values corresponding to the responses. If your average is less than 2,
   you can consider your child as lonely in that situation. You can rate the said behavior of other child
   also. And lastly the comparative status in terms of average value gives you insight about extent of
   loneliness in your child in comparison with others. 

Checklist is another tool to assess loneliness of your child. Like rating, you have to operationally define loneliness interms of specific behaviour.  Secondly you design some questions for checking the lonely behaviour.
   Here is a brief checklist to study loneliness of your child:
   1.Does the child appear timid ?
   2.Does the child appear anxious ?
   3.Is the child unsure of himself or herself?
   4.Does the child show a lack of interest in his/her social surroundings? 
   5.Does the child seem to be rejected by playmates? 6.Does the child avoid other children by choice?
   7.Does the child appear to lack social skills that might prevent him or her from initiating or 
       maintaining interactions? 
   8.Does the child have the necessary social skills but is reluctant to use them? 
   9.Is the child victimized by peers? 
   10.Does the child's apparent loneliness seem to be a consistent pattern over time
   11.Is your child's loneliness a more recent phenomenon? 
   You can continue more for checking lonely behaviour of your child.
   Have you studied loneliness of your child by rating or checklist method? Have you noted any
   problem by using those two methods ? 
 

   Developing close relationships with children and communicating with their primary caregivers
   can give teachers valuable insights and guidance. When teachers become aware of children who
   are experiencing loneliness caused by a family situation, they can lend their support in a variety of
   ways. Spending extra time listening can be reassuring and helpful to some children. Suggesting to
   a parent the possibility of inviting a peer over to the child's home may be a good idea and may
   help the child to form a friendship. In addition, teachers can ask parents for their
   recommendations about what might make the child feel more comfortable at school, and they can
   share relevant resources with parents, such as literature or information on parent discussion
   groups". 

   The whole article is at: http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed419624.html