AFTER DEADLINE
Kids' view reminds us what it's all about

By Kevin Dayton

Like most reporters I know, I collect an occasional memento from stories I cover, such as a press pass from a presidential visit, or some wooden bullets I saved from a day of rioting in southern Arizona when a strike at the copper mines got ugly.

This week I hung my newest, favorite keepsakes on the wall of my Hilo office, and I plan to keep them on display for years to come. They are pencil sketches drawn by the children of ice addicts I interviewed. They were given to me as gifts. They are beautiful, like the artists who drew them.

Any parent knows that when you embark on an activity with kids that involves boring stuff like sitting and talking, you had better give the young ones paper and a pencil.

This is especially true of interviews, because youngsters who are hunched over a drawing will often tell you things they could not say if they were staring you in the eye.

The artwork also gives us something to talk about if the conversation drags and the answers come in monosyllables. That usually signals my questions have strayed into an area where I am not allowed to go, and chit-chat about the pictures helps me to regain my bearings.

It was not until later that I realized how revealing each of the pictures was if you knew what to look for. Kids are more honest than adults, so many of the small things they do have meaning.

The most guarded, adultlike kid painstakingly copied the cover of a notebook that happened to be lying on the table, "120 sheets, 3 subject college ruled Notebook, 279 X 21.6 cm," and so on.

Her brother, more open, drew himself and his younger brother looking quite kolohe on their skateboards, under a smiling sun that was wearing dark glasses. The boy also drew pictures of the fish he planned to catch with his uncle and his daddy, who is in recovery.

These works of art are now posted alongside the flowers, self-portraits and Pokemon dragons created by my own, more sheltered children.

My kids compete among themselves for space on my office wall, and this incursion of artwork by strangers will probably annoy them. But it makes perfect sense to me, and I will try to explain it to them.

I think becoming a parent opens a connection not only between you and your kids, but also between you and everybody else's kids. You ache when you hear stories of hardship and abuse of children, because secretly you imagine the faces of your own children on the bodies of the victims.

It works the other way around, too: One 4-year-old boy spontaneously hugged me as I tied my shoes on his front stoop after my first interview with his parents, both recovering methamphetamine addicts.

It was something my own kids would have done — ambushing me for a hug as I bent down to do something else — and it warmed me after all of the grim stories I had just heard.

We are about to test the strength of that parental connection between you and my kids, and between me and your kids.

One of the primary challenges in the campaign against crystal meth is to get a lot of "ordinary" people who do not have a drug problem to care — really care — about other people who do have a drug problem. This is a requirement for actually solving the problem, because this problem will not solve itself.

Some smart people in the political arena have adopted a strategy of focusing on the children affected by methamphetamine, because the children are one area we can all agree on. Some of you hate the addicts (yes, I did read your e-mail messages), but none of you hate their kids.

This is not a new approach.

It amounts to common sense, because the needs of these children and the damage done to them will echo in our community in the years to come.

Over the years, I have heard impassioned floor speeches at the state Legislature for homeless programs to help children, better dental care for children, better health coverage for children, even a new prison for children, and the results have been mixed.

The artwork on my office wall will remind me occasionally to take stock of what we have done, and to reflect on whether those kids really got what they needed.

Let me know if you would like a copy for your refrigerator door.

Kevin Dayton covers the Big Island for The Advertiser and recently wrote a series of stories about the affects of drug addiction on Hawai'i's children. Reach him at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.