TRANSCRIPT

MALE VOICE #2: I know we gotta die one time. But I hope to die peaceful.

MALE VOICE #3: All I saw around me was poverty.

MALE VOICE #4: By 14 I was deep into the gangs.

FEMALE VOICE: We'd get in fights. We'd shoot people and stab people.

MALE VOICE #5: No one cared. Years of violence, years of being violent to people.

MALE VOICE #6: People don't think sometimes. They just act.

FEMALE VOICE #2: I'm scared. I'm not gonna lie.

FEMALE VOICE #3: I don't want to be another statistic.

MALE VOICE #7: I would like to be part of the solution.

FEMALE VOICE #4: I wanna be somebody.

MALE VOICE #8: I don't wanna die. I wanna live.

BILL MOYERS: I'm Bill Moyers. Violence prevention starts at home. That's where so much violence is first learned. One study of first-time juvenile defenders found that 84% had been abused as children. Another found that kids who suffered the harshest treatment at home were far more likely to treat their playmates violently and to become abusive parents when they grow up.

Dr. Victor LaCerva treats victims of domestic violence. Women and children. He has spent much of his time coaching parents on what it takes to cope fairly and effectively with their kids, especially on ways of instilling values in children. He is currently writing the book Pathways to Peace: 40 Steps to Stop the Violence based on what he has learned as the public health official in charge of state-wide programs in New Mexico. (MUSIC) What are some specific things that you would urge people watching-- to do-- within the family about violence? You know, take discipline.

VICTOR LACERVA: Okay. Discipline's a good one. I always like to phrase it as positive discipline because the first word is where the money is. Positive discipline. I used to have it wired up that it was not okay to constantly praise my children because I thought I was gonna turn 'em into approval junkies (LAUGH) or people-pleasers, you know, when they got older.

And I realized that-- I reframed it that really what we're all doing as parents is we're filling the well that they're gonna drink from the rest of their lives. And if we don't do it with lots of praise and encouragement, who's gonna do it for them? So part of the job of discipline, in terms of the positive piece, is catch 'em when they're being good. When they're doin' somethin' right, the way you want them to be behaving, then give them attention and praise for that behavior. It's-- it's-- it's not anything new that people don't know, it's just what we have to be reminded of.

BILL MOYERS: And most people think of discipline in regard to making a child aware of the consequences of misbehavior.

VICTOR LACERVA: Correct. That's correct. We're gonna get to that part. But the first, and most essential, part is catch 'em when they're being good. Give them strokes for when they're doing what you want them to do. Where did we ever get the crazy idea that for people to do better they first had to be made to feel worse? I mean, is that how you operate in your life? Yeah, make me feel really bad (LAUGH) and then I'm gonna wanna do a better job. So--

BILL MOYERS: Well, I'm a Baptist, you know? (LAUGHTER) Got a lot of Calvinism back there.

VICTOR LACERVA: Well, that's true. But they're evolving as well.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

VICTOR LACERVA: The other point to realize is we're always operating on a permissive, controlling continuum. And if one parent is kind of on the permissive end, if there are two parents in the household, you can be sure that someone's trying to balance out the system by being on the controlling end.

When we're on the permissive end, we excuse. We explain. We say it's okay. It's kind of like, "Go to your room at your earliest convenience" kind of a mentality. When we're on the controlling end, we lecture, we demand, and we wanna punish. Punishment does not instruct you in doing what it is you're supposed to do. Punishment just makes you feel bad. So where we wanna be is somewhere in the middle. The whole notion put forth by Stephen Glenn so articulately many years ago of natural consequences. If the two kids are havin' a fight over what to watch on TV and they can't work out-- work out the conflict, then the natural consequence is that the TV is turned off.

If a child is constantly forgetting to grab their lunchbox on their way to school and you've talked to them about it and you've made the consequence clear, then the natural consequence is that they go to school, they go hungry that day. Because they didn't take their lunchbox. Because they didn't take responsibility. So they experience a consequence for whatever the behavior is that was inappropriate.

That's a natural consequence that isn't related to punishing them, making them feel bad. The other issue we always get into, of course, is corporal punishment. And depending on where you fit on that continuum you may say in your mind, "What kids need today is more discipline. More punishment. They need a good spank in the pants and that'll teach them a lesson and stop them from all this misbehaving and acting out."

Usually a misbehaving child is someone who needs some kind of attention. And the attention they need is not more negative stuff. They need more positive, caring, nurturing. That's why they're misbehaving to begin with, because they have a need that's not getting met. So what I tell parents, I don't spank my children.

I spanked my first kid one time. That was enough to convince me it was still and a waste of time. It didn't-- didn't help anything, didn't make anybody feel better. So what I tell parents is if you have to spank your children, then don't spank them when you're angry. That's the first thing. Because most of the time when parents are using physical punishment to hit their children they're having a temper tantrum. Because they've lost it. Because they haven't been taught how to de-stress, how to move through their own emotional craziness that happens around anger.

So don't hit your kids when you're angry. Just wire it up that way and try that for a while. Now, if you still feel that you need to hit your children in order to teach them a lesson, then just don't let that be the only tool in your toolbox. And then parents get interested and say, "Well, what else is in the toolbox?" And then we can talk about some of the other things in terms of natural consequences and so on.

BILL MOYERS: What else is in there?

VICTOR LACERVA: What else is in the toolbox? Well, part of what's in the toolbox is this whole notion of emotional fluency where part of what we experience conflict around with young children that leads to the need to punish and discipline is because they're confused about how to deal with these emotions that they're having in their body. So-- an older brother feels anger at a younger brother, starts to hit him and hurt him. And then the older brother gets punished for that kind of behavior, which is not acceptable.

But part of it-- again, the punishment doesn't teach him what he needs to know about the mechanics of how to deal with his anger towards his younger sibling. So the basic bottom line prevention message there is all feelings are okay, all behaviors are not. So it's okay to be angry at your brother. Find another way to (NOISE) show it.

Now, that's not normally the message that parents put out. Parents would wanna move toward denying that angry feeling that they have. We use tone in my house a lot. We say tone. Someone says something to me in a nasty way, or I say something to the kids in a nasty way, in a-- in a tone of voice that's not reflective of what we say we're about, which is to be a loving, peaceful family, then everyone in the family has full permission to say-- just say the word, "Tone."

It's like feedback is the breakfast of champions. You know, you're just, "Tone. Tone. Jeeze, dad, tone." And that's an instant feedback to me that I'm not acting the way that we've all agreed we wanna act. Time out is another piece. People use time out as punishment. You sit in that chair for one minute for however old you are. Time out is not about punishment. Time out is about, "Go do something to make yourself feel better so that when you come back we can all re-experience the conflict with more resources available to us to move through the conflict. So time out-- everybody takes a time out when we know that tempers are rising and we're not getting anywhere.

BILL MOYERS: What about-- conflict resolution? 'Bout trying to solve these fights that are begging?

VICTOR LACERVA: Right.

BILL MOYERS: Work out our disagreement.

VICTOR LACERVA: That's-- that become another essential agree-- ingredient. And one of the things that I like that-- that's easily taught to parents that they can relate to is just the notion of, like, a family meeting. Where you sit down as a family and you talk about what the-- what the issues are. What the major issues are.

This teaches children many things. It teaches them that their voice is important. It teaches them how everybody gets to listen to everybody else without interrupting. It teaches them that together is how we solve problems, not that the parents just decide. Sometimes, of course, the parents have to just decide. But these are some of the tools that are in the toolbox.

BILL MOYERS: You're describing homes where there is a willingness to-- try to work these problems out. You're also describing a home where the parents are there. And as we all know, in many homes today only one parent. And in many other homes where there are two parents, both are working. What-- what do we do about the vacuum in these homes?

VICTOR LACERVA: Well, I think that's an essential point. It becomes very important for us when we talk about the circle of the family in terms of violence prevention to not forget that there are three other circles. There's the circle of the self, there's the circle of the community (the business community, the school community, the faith community, the service providers community, and the community commons) and then there's the circle of the larger culture.

We can't doubly victimize, for example, poor, single-parent families. Which is what I see happening. "Your kids are a mess and it's your fault." It's not that family's fault. You know, I hate the term dysfunctional family. I define dysfunctional family like this, competent, caring people stuck in difficult situations.

'Cause then I can relate to that. At any given moment all of us are either being the parent we wanna be, or we're not being the parent we wanna be. So what happens? What do we do? How do we provide support for those families that are having more difficulties because of conditions of poverty, because of unemployment, because there are no positive male role models around, perhaps?

That's the task of communities. That's one of the reasons we're starting to see conflict resolution programs in the schools. Because we know that these skills are not getting taught at home. And they're essential skills that everybody needs if we're gonna get along with each other. Every one of us, if you reflect back on it, can remember someone who at some point asked us the essential questions.

"What are you up to in life? What's your gift? How are you gonna make the world a better place?" I can still close my eyes and-- and see my-- junior year in high school-- English teacher sitting me down after class. And he did this with every kid in the school-- in the-- in the class. And asking me those questions.

He was the first person that ever asked me those questions. It becomes especially important when we talk about all the stuff we were talkin' about, in terms of discipline and what the family can do. When kids get to adolescence they need a network of other caring, supportive people. No matter what degree of difficulties were experienced early on. Because their job is to break away from the parental control. And so even if I have the best advice in my w-- in the world for my daughters, when they're adolescents, they don't wanna hear it from me. So I have to build the community that they are gonna be able to hear it from before they get to that point. Does that make sense?

BILL MOYERS: (LAUGH) Yeah.

VICTOR LACERVA: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Sure. Sure. You've gotta be able to step out of your front door when you say goodbye to your parents and not fall into a deep hole.

VICTOR LACERVA: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: Somebody's gotta make sure there's not a hole there.

VICTOR LACERVA: That's right.

BILL MOYERS: So it's important to know why good kids come out of bad situations.

VICTOR LACERVA: Right. Very important. And it becomes important f-- when we design programs to help that we always foster this notion of resiliency. Stephen Glenn years ago, The Significant Seven. I am capable. I contribute and am needed. I can influence what happens to me in my life. I have strong intrapersonal skills, which means I have some clue to what my emotional life is about.

I have strong interpersonal skills, meaning once I know what's goin' on for me emotionally, I know how to communicate it to you in a way that you can hear. I have strong judgment skills, which means I can anticipate the consequences of my action. And I have a strong sense of responsibility. The ability to respond to what's happening in life. I wanna see that on every refrigerator in America. Because that's what we're after with our young people. That's what we want to give them.

BILL MOYERS: What have you learned about these kids who either commit violence or are victims of violence?

VICTOR LACERVA: Well, if I had to sum it up I think that the basic bottom line issue in terms of our young people today is a lack of connectedness. It's a lack of connectedness to themselves, to their own sense of purpose and meaning in life. It's a lack of connectedness to a body of older, caring adults who can help them find what their gifts are so that they can express them in the world.

It's a lack of connectedness to a greater sense of mystery or values. I hesitate to use the term religion, but some sense, some rock that-- that we hold on to when we run into times of difficulty. It's a lack of connectedness to the planet in terms of we all know the healing power of a walk at sunset or some time in the woods. And many of these young people have not yet experienced that. If you look at the support systems that used to exist for our young people, basically the family, the schools, the community, and the peers, and you imagine that those are the-- the guideposts on a safety net, what has happened without anybody planning it--

BILL MOYERS: Yeah.

VICTOR LACERVA: -over the last generation is that progressively three of those major supports holding up the safety net for our young people have altered tremendously. So if you look at families we have the breakdown of the extended families. People have become more mobile. An increasing number of children born to single-parent families.

As women entered the workforce there was not a corresponding shift back by men to pick up more of the slack on the home front. If you look at the schools, the schools have had to deal with all the psychosocial problems that we experience as a culture showing up at their doorstep when their major business is education. Dealing with budget cuts, dealing with larger classroom size, so that it becomes harder to pay that individual attention to that child who might need it.

If you look at our communities you get into what I call the Wal-Mart phenomena. The loss of the neighborhood store. The loss of the sense of everybody watching out for each other's kids. And again, part of that is the mobility. So three major influences on our young people have eroded. And what has become the more predominant influence in terms of teaching them values and how to be in the world is peers and media.

BILL MOYERS: Hmm.

VICTOR LACERVA: The new force that has come in. So I think many young people-- my experience in working with kids in support groups in the schools is very much that they're disconnected.

BILL MOYERS: They're learning from the streets and from the screen.

VICTOR LACERVA: Right.

BILL MOYERS: You-- do you think there are essential values that kids have to learn in a home?

VICTOR LACERVA: Yes. Absolutely.

BILL MOYERS: What are they?

VICTOR LACERVA: Courage. Loyalty. Honesty. Justice. Peaceability. We have to help children create a peaceable imagination as they--

BILL MOYERS: Peaceable imagination?

VICTOR LACERVA: Peaceable imagination.

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

VICTOR LACERVA: Well, I always use this when I talk about media and media's influence. Well, media, as everybody knows, is sometimes positive and often destructive. It's not only destructive for the content of the violent images that we feed our children on a regular basis.

I kinda think of it like Twinkies and Coke. Most parents wouldn't feed their kids nothing but Twinkies and Cokes. (LAUGH) And yet we have a lot of parents who have a real need to use the TV and the VCR as a babysitter. And I do it as well. But we don't wanna keep feeding 'em Twinkies and Cokes in terms of we want a little more nutrition in there. So the same thing is true in terms of the diet of violent mental images that we feed our children. We have to pay much more attention to that.

BILL MOYERS: Do you think they undermine-- these essential values of--

VICTOR LACERVA: Yes, I do.

BILL MOYERS: --courage--

VICTOR LACERVA: To a certain extent they're still getting them from what goes on in the household. But because there's less contact and connectedness, part of where they're getting them from is the media. And part of the toys that goes along with what they watch on TV that they want is a whole set of values.

So it's a like a big wave. You don't wanna just try and stop it because you can't. So you have to kind of blend with it. And that's-- that's when I talk about a peaceable imagination. So how does that translate? So a kid watches some violent stuff on TV. He's running around the house. Maybe he's actually bought a single-purpose gun toy where the parents have allowed that. They still allow that in their home, single-purpose gun toys, which is real different than a banana or something he constructs out of Lego. There's some distinctions there.

But anyway, they're playing that. So after they play bang, bang, shoot 'em up for a while (and I talk to daycare providers about this all the time) then use that energy. Say, "Oh, gee, now we got all these wounded bad guys around. Let's build a hospital. Because we need to take care of the wounded bad guys, right?" That's what I mean by helping to-- them to develop a peaceable imagination.

So they still get that-- every one of us has fantastic memories of playing good guys and bad guys, whatever variation, when we were kids. There's nothing wrong with that. It's how children learn to process the reality around them. So I think there are many, many common values that we have. And what we've done in this country because we've been so focused on separating church and state, appropriately, we've said, in the schools, for example, we can't teach any values in the schools because there's no way we could possibly agree on them.

And I think that's a big mistake. There are lots of values that each one of us, despite our different perspectives, share. And the way that we're gonna teach those values is by talking about them. There's-- there's a book out called Teaching Your Children Values. And they suggest you pick a value a month and you focus on a value a month and you talk about it and find examples about it. And you-- use it in the context of your daily life. "Who saw somebody dealing with honesty today?" You know? "What did that look like? How was that?" That's a way to help. And it's also a way for us, as adults, to clarify values with our children.

BILL MOYERS: You're talking about where this-- the circle of self, the circle of family, the circle of community, business and schools are the circle of this large society which we're all part. You're talking about building a moral community.

VICTOR LACERVA: Yes. I think the essence of our dilemma around violence prevention has to do with essential, spiritual, and moral issues. That we-- one lady at a workshop said to me, "When did we stop hearing our babies cry in this culture?" With rising amounts of children living in poverty.

With not building the social supports that families need to do a good job. It is a moral issue and a social issue. We've experienced these enormous social, cultural changes that continue to happen so fast, and in such overwhelming numbers, that we're not smart enough or bright enough to catch up with it. To be able to anticipate what's happening. We also spend 97% of our health dollar on health care that occurs after the fact. It's been said for years, but we've got to put more money at the front end in terms of prevention. In terms of home visiting programs. In terms of what happens in daycare.

In terms of early intervention for kids who are in trouble in school. So what can you do? S-- strengthen your own ability within the circle of the self to deal with conflict, to deal with anger, to get rid of your stress, to heal your own wounds, to embrace, as much as you can, non-violence as a way of proceeding in life. Within the circle of the family, to relook at what it is you're really after in terms of what you're trying to teach your children.

In the circle of your community, to get involved in the schools in your local school system. To be a mentor for some young person. And the level of the culture, if you wanna get involved there, to write letters. To get on legislative committees. To help expand our ability as a culture to deal with these important issues by having dialogues in your hometown, by talking to your friends. By getting involved--

BILL MOYERS: If I run a corporation, if I run a business, what's my obligation? What's my opportunity?

VICTOR LACERVA: Okay, your opportunity with business is-- is very simple in terms of policies and in terms of promotion. So in terms of policies, how do you make your business-- understanding that you have to pay attention to the bottom line, how do you make your business family-friendly?

Is it possible for you to allow your-- the members of your business community to spend time, even if it's an hour a month, in the local school system? Is it possible for you to create that? Is it possible for you, first of all, to just have a dialogue with the people in your business about w-- how they would like to see things run a little bit differently so that things could be a more family-friendly? If I'm at business-- if I am in a large business, do I have onsite daycare and aftercare programs? If I'm in a big enough corporation where that's possible.

Because my workers, if they're worried about a sick kid who's off in daycare somewhere, are they really gonna be there and available to me to give the best possible work for that day? Maybe if the kids were onsite it'd be a little easier for them to check in with how they're doing. You understand where I'm--

BILL MOYERS: I do. Sure.

VICTOR LACERVA: --going? Okay. So that's policy end. The promotion end is school/business partnerships. Kids are hungry to learn about real life. "See that vacant lot down the street? Let's get the local businesses and the local school to do a community service project." School/business partnership. Let's provide training for people within that business community to be mentors or to run support groups for the young people in the schools. An hour a week. That's all we want. An hour a week.

And you can make a difference. We've all got to become part of the solution if we're gonna make a difference in this. It's kind of like the ecological movement. I always draw parallels to the ecology movement. We were concerned about the ozone and the rainforest and everything else. But until we learn the simple things, shut the lights off when you leave the room, don't leave the water running when you brush your teeth, keep your car tuned up, recycle. We need the equivalent of that in terms of violence prevention so that people understand that every day the small fabric of our lives, the details of our experience, is where the solutions lie.

This transcript was entered on April 21, 2015.