Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 22, 1995 TAG: 9509220046
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Dr. Robert Coles takes a different tack: A psychiatrist whose skill borders on wizardry, he has spent three decades listening to find out what youngsters need to flourish.
With the beguiling air of an eccentric-but-caring uncle, Coles approaches children respectfully. In return, they open up their hearts and heartaches to him - and now, with a skillful hand from filmmaker Buddy Squires, to us.
For the first time, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Coles agreed to let a camera record him at work. The result is PBS' ``Listening to Children: A Moral Journey with Robert Coles'' debuting tonight on PBS (WBRA, Channel 15).
It's a ponderous title for a delicate and captivating film.
Coles is seen delving into the lives of eight children, youngsters who represent this nation as surely as the Stars and Stripes. From wealthy suburbanites to migrant farmworkers to inner-city dwellers, the kids' stories create an often-surprising - but never sensational - mosaic of how the next generation is being reared.
Make no mistake, Coles warns us in his gentle way, much is at risk.
``A child is an opportunity and a moral challenge. How are we going to do justice to this new life with all its possibilities?'' he says. ``If we fail as parents, we are failing also as citizens.''
And, then, failing as a society.
It happens child by child.
``I don't think my parents taught me the difference between right and wrong,'' says Dave, 13, an angelic-looking blond whose brutal temper has landed him in a Massachusetts group home. ``If they did, I never noticed.''
``If I had a son, I'd talk to him,'' he says. ``I'd listen to him. I wouldn't do anything to hurt him.''
Dave, whose last name is withheld, contends with physical abuse and alcoholism at home. Other children profiled have faced demons including poverty, racism, death and illness.
Some fare better than others, and it's clear why.
``They know that we don't have a lot of things, but they know it's not going to stay that way,'' Toney Johnson, a determined single mother in South Central Los Angeles, says of her two daughters.
``That's the way I've conditioned them: `You can do it. You're the best. You're wonderfully and fearfully made.' I always tell them that. I always tell them that they're royal. And all of that is in the Bible.''
The young subjects in ``Listening to Children'' (picked for the film by its producers) sometimes exceed their parents in self-awareness, articulated in interviews and in crayon drawings analyzed by Coles.
``That's a huge step for parents to understand this is right there waiting for them, that this kind of moral awareness and moral eloquence, even, is available'' in their offspring, Coles said in an interview.
The next step? ``A hard look in the mirror,'' he said. ``Take stock of what your values really are. Because if you haven't really thought about your values, what are you going to teach your children?''
And that instruction comes by example, he said. He cites a Newton, Mass., family in the film whose loving nature is made clear in gestures big and small.
``Even the way the mother is with [an ailing dog], when she's putting drops in the dog's ears. Gentle and tender; this is a lesson in values.''
A reluctant Coles had to be persuaded to take part in the project after 30-plus years of winning honors as a groundbreaker in social psychiatry but shunning the spotlight.
Producers Barak Goodman and Stephen E. Smith Jr., who had worked with the psychiatrist at Harvard, gained his trust; Squires' sensitivity cemented it, Coles said.
The filmmaker, whose resume includes cinematography for Ken Burns' ``Civil War'' and ``Baseball'' films, makes his directorial debut with ``Listening to Children.'' It's his kind of project, Squires said.
``This is what interests me most, first and foremost - the lives that people are living today, the struggles that they're engaged in,'' he said.
He is a great admirer of Burns and continues to work with him; they're paired again on several films, including one on Thomas Jefferson.
``But I don't really lay awake at night thinking about Jefferson and Sally Hemings,'' Squires said. ``I do lay awake at night thinking about Dave ... and what his struggles means to me.''
by CNB