Even for adults, there are such initiatives, such as the Luisterlijn [2] and MIND Korrelatie [3].
[1] https://www.kindertelefoon.nl/
Have you noticed it's only in our cities you seem to really hear about the homeless poor? It isn't the corollary of overall population distribution that it might intuitively look like.
Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline. This hotline provides 24/7 support for children and adults concerned about child abuse.
National Runaway Safeline (1-800-RUNAWAY)
Boys Town National Hotline (1-800-448-3000).
I was being a little hard on you earlier, maybe. If I'd lived a life in the environment of a northern/western-European style system of social welfare, it would also I think be easy for me to see something in America that looks vaguely similar and assume it must be much the same.
I took that as a rather arrogant sort of assumption, and might in that have earned the accusation of incharity that I earlier criticized. Specifically, I think I might have failed to account for how, to someone raised in a country that looks after its people, the situation in America might seem far too grim to easily credit. If I did make that error, I apologize.
It never occurred to me until a moment ago to wonder whether your question read to me like it did because it came from someone who maybe has never had to doubt that everyone can always know who to call to get out of a spot like that, on a number that will always be answered.
Even now I can't bring myself to call that a conclusion rather than a surmise. Oh, if you tell me it's true I won't doubt, or even be surprised. But the idea still feels far too utopian to really credit. Intellectually, sure. In my own early life, though?
I don't see that claim anywhere in this comment chain though?
Sometimes it's a matter of luck, like how he had met someone that knew about linux.
Joining someone in their hobbies is a much much smaller ask than having that same someone listen to (and maybe advise about) your problems, or having them provide career coaching / direct financial support.
One is "lets have fun together", the other is "please stranger, do me this huge favor".
> And why didn't they?
Knowing who to ask might be a bit much to ask of a kid. Even aside from asking for unreciprocated favors being generally not a thing most people do easily (or look on favorably).
You know why no-questions asked, free lunch programs for everyone are so hugely important for kids suffering from food scarcity? Often it’s because their shitty parents won’t even sign forms to get them free lunch.
Please educate yourself in what actual suffering looks like in this world.
You also failed in reading the article to notice that the author plainly did derive considerable psychological support from improving his skill. This was not explicitly stated but was trivially implicit, which I think not only for me may add to the sense you more pattern-matched on the article than read it.
For myself, I'm much more unfavorably impressed with your failure to notice the kid plainly was solving his own problems with computers and in life, and deriving from that success a stronger sense of personal agency which helped him approach the larger tasks that faced him.
It seems to me only a view of poverty which is paternalistic unto contempt could fail to attend this process which was explicitly described in the article, but then I am an American, and would not wish to risk commenting on a culture I don't understand well enough to form opinions about.
I am a bit touched that it seemed like i did not read or understand the article, in fact i read the article in its entirety, as one of the first to comment, even to my surprise for such a compelling story. I understood he was getting support and feeling strengthened by his learning on the internet. I feel my questions seem to be taken as rhetorical. I feel it is still unanswered, even no hints towards how or why, only that 'i should not ask such questions'. I guess American culture is very different from European (can it even be seen as having a culture as a whole, there is so much diversity)... and hence my question not being appreciated?
You are being told that the question you asked is "not even wrong": it is without meaning and so not meaningfully answerable, because it could only be asked at all from such a fundamental ignorance of the American situation around poverty that to attempt to even explain the misapprehension would require more the scope of an undergraduate course than an HN comment.
I would not usually be so blunt, but in this case meeting an apparent need for directness seems worth the risk of a rude impression. If you need it put still more plainly, though, I'm afraid I cannot help you.
What specifically does it say that is being ignored? That the author happened to find things he hadn't gone looking for directly?
> fundamental ignorance of the American situation around poverty
Are you claiming that terrible parents are uniquely American, in a way that is incapable of being explained to outsiders?
It isn't that I don't see the obvious and honest effort you're putting into trying to have it. I respect that. The problem still is, though, that you don't see the entire world of social support structures that have been so ever-present for you throughout your life that you're unable in any real way to imagine what a life in their total absence even looks like. And if that sounds like a description of a chicken/egg problem, that's because it is one.
For you maybe this is the first time trying to talk across that divide. For someone like me, it's usually anything but. It's hard to fairly blame us for getting to learn some idea of how that usually goes.
(That's why, for example, I know I'm probably coming off pretty harsh with this and am deliberately doing so anyway; if I tried to go easier, we'd just take longer to still end up in the same place.)
You're not coming off as "harsh" at all. You're hiding behind unfounded assertions about me personally in order to avoid providing anything concrete to back up your rather sweeping claims.
Relying on ad-hominem attacks isn't harsh, it's what you do when you don't have anything better to support your position.
It isn't going to help to say that nothing I've said is in any way critical of you as a person, but it's true. I'm not saying you're a bad person because you don't understand; I'm saying there are some things you need to have lived through or at least very near to understand what makes them matter, and the way you talk about them is the way I typically see people talk who have not done that. That's all.
I still don't understand what I said in the first place that you took so amiss. You came right in swinging from the start [1], and while I'm sure there was a reason, I don't think it has helped for me not to know what that was. Certainly being made to start from the back foot has not.
If it was about how I'd misread the other fellow, that's entirely fair; if so, that I have since apologized without reservation [2] might help get our own conversation closer to an even keel. Outside of that, though, as I said before, I can't imagine what it might have been.
There's a difference between happening to find psychological support in something, vs asking for it directly. I assumed the comment you're trashing was asking about why they didn't do the second and only the first.
> For myself, I'm much more unfavorably impressed with your failure to notice the kid plainly was solving his own problems with computers and in life, and deriving from that success a stronger sense of personal agency which helped him approach the larger tasks that faced him.
So what you're saying is that it's a great personal failing to wonder why he relied on this happenstance rather than looking for those things directly.
> It seems to me only a view of poverty which is paternalistic unto contempt could fail to attend this process which was explicitly described in the article, but then I am an American, and would not wish to risk commenting on a culture I don't understand well enough to form opinions about.
You are showing utter contempt for someone who understood a described situation differently due to what you assert must me incurable ignorance borne of living in a society not your own. This seems rather different from refusing to comment on other cultures that you claim to not understand.
My state is one a handful that provides free lunches and morning snacks to all kids, regardless of parent incomes. It’s essential for these children.
You are still conflating your experience volunteering with full knowledge of the problem.
Judging by your parent comment, you don't.
> You know why no-questions asked, free lunch programs for everyone are so hugely important for kids suffering from food scarcity? Often it’s because their shitty parents won’t even sign forms to get them free lunch.
So its no questions asked but "shitty parents" still have to sign forms? Most states with reduced/free lunch programs have income thresholds. Regardless, if you let your kid eat that crap, you're a "shitty parent", because its literally choked full of sodium and fake ingredients. If I lived in one of those states, I'd be asking for my lunch voucher in cash to go towards real food.
This is a separate question from the quality of the food. I will note that if you give out cash instead of vouchers you are giving the kid something that others can and will take away from them.