Papaheroes

Alliance to Protect Our Children

Updated: Giving the Benefit of the Doubt

by Lucy
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Converse Shoes Designed by Brian Keith Miller

Shoe Design by Brian Keith Miller

This past saturday I went, alongside my fellow UNDOers (Artists from UNDOdigital: Puerto Rican Collective of Digital Artists) to an event called Converse Open Gym. There, we helped Brian Keith Miller with his Sole Plus efforts.

Brian gives blank sneaker templates to kids so they can design their hearts out and create a unique Converse Shoe. At the end, the winning child, would be given a new pair of Converse shoes. Brian will contact the winning child so he/she can go ahead an do it for real, painting over a new pair of Converse for a later event he’s planning where he’ll take the child and have him give the pair of shoes he/she designed to a poor / homeless or otherwise person with lots of needs. He works to make sure kids view other sides of reality and less fortunate people get shoes and help from his organization and Converse. Amazing, I know.

Heart Felt Gratitude

At the end of the event, a kid who was designing shoes earlier, came back with something in his hands. Brian was speechless when the kid told him he had found his iPad in a far away table. Someone had left it there.

He remembered the iPad belonged to my friend Brian and brought it back! Getting his vocal chords in order again, Brian told me to ask the kid his shoe size. In gratitude, Brian gave him a brand new pair of Converse shoes. The kid left dancing.

Giving the Benefit of the Doubt

Later, the boy’s Father came dragging hi son right in front of us. He was steaming. They boy managed to get away from his dad and came back to us. He said: “Tell him, it was you who gave me the shoes!” Before we could put all the pieces back together, the Father ran in, grabbed the boy by his arm and pushed him towards the crowd and the exit. I tried following, but it was to late.

A Huge Misunderstanding

Brian went to another Converse table, where his gift to the boy was being held. They told him, the angry father gave it back, believing his son had stolen the shoes.

Our fears were confirmed. The Boy’s Dad, couldn’t believe his son’s story. He jumped to conclusions and acted upon them. Then he took his family and ran out of the coliseum. We felt helpless.

Something to Think About

This whole experience with the boy and the shoes gave me lots to think about.

It made me realize how we jump to conclusions and bark orders to our children more often than not.

Also, how we should first listen to all the sides of a story before imparting any judgement. Even when the history of our child, tell us he can do mischievous things, we should try and listen. Maybe this time, they acted different. Lastly, it made me think that we should never loose hope on our children, if they are accustomed to doing bad things, we have to believe they can change.

How about it, any thoughts on this from you? I’d love to hear it!

 

Update:

Just found a picture of the boy in SolePlus’ Facebook page. So if anyone knows him, please let his parents know about this situation. Here’s the photo (he’s the one on the right, sitting down):

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Comments

  1. We all jump to conclusions many times without having enough information and then end up making the wrong mistakes.

    I wrote a post regarding how my mom would have handled that very differently. Even if she overreacted she would have taken me to the person to apologize. Their the story would have been clarified.

    • I agree completely with this approach. If the father would’ve taken the rime to make his son ask for forgiveness everything would have been set straight. Thanks to everyone who’se read and identified with this story. I still feel guilty about not being able to stop the father. I’m convinced that some sort of corporal punishment had to been given to the child. The father had fire in his eyes and the body language was right on with that assumption.

  2. Rick, I loved this post. It was the first I read today and it awakened me to so many of my own observations of dysfunctional parenting.

    The art of being a good parent is in its essence the art of building trust. A good parent sees every opportunity such as this one as yet another way to build trust and to help their child build their decision making muscle. Since we don’t know the background or the history of this particular boy and his father, we can only surmise that several past experiences may have led the father to this conclusion. And,even if this was the case, the father’s approach is all too typical: rush to judgment and exact punishment usually corporal ones.

    Too often parents rely on authority and control throughout a child’s life. They then wonder why they experience problems with their adolescent children when they go off the college or when the parents are not around. Once the parents can no long rule the roost, their children will make bad choices for themselves.

  3. Wow, Rick, sometimes, reality is truly not fiction. Poor little boy. Can we send him something?

  4. the problem with this attitude in parents is that it takes away the motivation the child may have to do good deeds, and in the future it is possible that the child will think twice before doing a good deed again.
    i should know, it still is hard for me to volunteer help to people i don’t know, even when i want to.

  5. Unfortunately this us our reality. As a teacher I see this almost every say. The sad thing is that the patent will most likely not come forward because he will be thinking of himself first and that he looks bad. He erl not endure what he would consider a humiliation before everyone. The important thing is that if someone knows who this kid us to let the kid know most of all that he did great by doing the right thing even if other people didnt see it. He know he did the right thing and that he should feel proud.

Trackbacks

  1. […] After a while, I remembered that boy. I could still hear his mother cursing at him and wondered how is it, that she could treat her child like garbage. Was it because that’s how she was used to getting treated? Was it because she really didn’t love her son? Was it because he was supposed to be a “tough man”, and “real men” get treated like that? I don’t know. It saddened me deeply. I thought of all those bad people we hear from in the news every day and wondered if they got treated like that when they were children. Was that the reason behind most of the violence that goes on every day? Could a loving parent, be the solution to some of our criminals? Maybe I’m taking a giant leap and jumping to conclusions. Maybe not. Made me remember the boy and the free sneakers. […]

  2. […] backgrounds, by designing shoes. Yep, you read right. If you’re a regular reader, here on PapáHeroes, you know this. I’ve had the honor to work alongside him several times already, and I have […]