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What goals do you see obtainable for your community in the future? What a wonderful question. That sky's the limit if you ask me,

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my community in what I'm working towards in I hope that I can contribute to my community is that we will

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have the ability to provide immigrant children in that Dina children who are born in the United States with

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the opportunity of a higher education. So that they can, for themselves, decide what it is they're going to be in that allow glass ceilings to

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the place on over them. I wanted to same opportunity for immigrant children in other Latino children that

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my children will have and have had the opportunity. Not everybody will grab onto the opportunity. Not every person wants

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to watercolors that everybody has that goal. But I wanted to be in a choice, an option in, in that's what, what I hope for.

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More than that, I want these young children and particularly the population that I work with to

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really feel embraced by their community, to really feel loved. And I think that that is a challenge that is both a cultural piece

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but also political peace. When I came to the United States, the topic was the multi-cultural mosaic. Everybody contributes a little bit in.

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There was the melting pot that was also a piece. And so it was about, we can all blend all of us

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together and we'll come up with one great culture. And now we're talking about fences. And we're talking about

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security, securing our borders. It's definitely not the same spirit with the view of different people coming into the country.

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And so I hope that, that, that for my community that thou will disappear in some way or dissipate and go back

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to celebration of differences, not just cultural differences. I think there are differences that are religious differences.

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There are racial differences. And the Dominicans on all look like me, will look very different. My sister my brother

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looked different than I do. My sisters here as courier. Riskiness, lighter. My brother Sarah, straight and very,

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very black in his skin is way later. He looks Italian almost. So if we're going to have all that in one family and embrace it,

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why can't we have that in their community and embrace it? Why can't we agree to look at our differences and agree to

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disagree and learn from each other the things that are the best and take from each other, the things that are the best.

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Re-encounter to be the opportunity to learn something new and to make yourself a better person because the person

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you've come in contact with, that everything about other people is good. I'm not that naive. I know that there are

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plenty of things that can hurt us or we have to have the ability and develop the ability to discriminate between

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that in I just throw away the baby with the bathwater. Even in the most challenging or situations and families I have found strength in.

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There's no way I could do my job if I couldn't do that. Because when somebody comes to me and they're broken,

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if I look at them as just that that they're broken. And then why why you invest time in

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putting them back together? If there's going to be broken, that's who they are. They're broken person.

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I have to believe that there's a part in every human that wants to be better. And because of that, I can then invest energy in helping them.

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And I have to help them see that for themselves. I hope that our community can begin to see that for themselves.

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So the Latino community, women as a whole, minority women as a group that we can see our strengths and really

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play to our strengths and contribute to the rest of the world that way. And your communities, whatever you want to make it in,

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my community can be can it square where I work? Or it can be Wilmington where I volunteer in the or it

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can be New York City where I spent many weekends with my parents. Or it can be mined the community of my friends,

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which are spread across the country. Right now, they're everywhere. I have friends everywhere that I only communicate through online,

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through MySpace or email or chat rooms or when the messenger or Marcel phones texting. However it is, your communities,

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whatever you make it. I hope that again, my children, I guess, are my greatest inspiration.

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They have inspired me to become a better person. Having had my daughter, I would say was agreed

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IS the greatest event that happened to me. As far as challenging me to become a better person, Jarrad, I was so young I was 21 when I had

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Jared Jared push me to be their mom. I knew I could be I knew I could be a good mom. I knew I could be nurturing and loving and

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really teach this boy because I loved learning. So I Newark theses boy and wow, what a great little person to teach.

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He's ready to learn and I just learned he's read or show off. You spend ten minutes with Jared and you're going to have here.

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Did you know that? Did you know that? Did you know that? That's the kind of grief and he is very, very outgoing very much or has that.

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Charisma where people just kind of gravity story of him and he's the leader. He takes over things very quickly, kind of bossy like tsunami by Janine,

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such a quiet spirit, such a creative learner. In almost a kind of child that apparent were not bother with.

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The flu, did not want to be part of their lives because she doesn't ask for very much. But she's a girl.

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And I knew of all the things she would learn quietly without anybody having to tell her, because the stereotypes are out there about what a girl is or should be,

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then I had to be proactive to make sure that those stereotypes did not proceed per behavior in which she became her personality.

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So I think she challenged me to think of myself as a where am I as far as my womanhood, whereas my identity as a woman?

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And how much do I want to communicate to her? How much do I struggle with because they're not real, but I'm battling those ideas

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in my head constantly. How do I prevent her from having to write all those ideas through the rest of her life. She's going to have plenty

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of battles on her own. I am not even believing or begin to believe that protected them from or I can

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passively protect them from everything that is out there. But I do know that if she doesn't have to fight

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the same battles I had to fight. She can go further. So that's what I want for her. Injury, has a wonderful that

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that is doing the same thing for him. And so I, I think we, we, we view it that way. And so there are inspiration.

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But it's not enough to just shape the life of these two. Because these two are wonderful little people.

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And they can contribute a lot to the world. But there are a lot of children out there that need the same kind

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of support and opportunity. So my job is to try to create that. What do I do for a living? I do child and family therapy.

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Although I am trained to work with every population. And I've my my case load is very diverse. I have African-American teenagers,

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I have caucasian teenagers and young children. I have Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and all kinds of families that

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come and go through my agency. And in my case load that my passion is working with immigrant children because I

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was anyway grandchild. And immigration is as big an event as anybody can possibly go through. Everything changes, arrogant,

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everything that we knew, everything that I knew I had to throw away and no longer serve me. The only thing that I had was my FIFA.

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And so those people we're going to have to come with me regardless of where I was going to go. And so that's, that's

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kinda the one thing that I do want to continue to promote in the community, which is rely on each other participate.

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I always tell my clients I want you to join something doing something during the church. Joy. I don't care what denomination. Join a fairly young children.

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I tell the parents during a playgroup, during the YMCA joined something, become part of something. You don't have to give anything,

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just become a part of it. Because once you do, the energy of that organization or of that group will help you in some way.

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And so that's one thing that I tried to promote. But what do I do with these people primarily is

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to help them see their strengths that they have within them. And the opportunities that are available in that,

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the opportunities are there if they wanna, um, the thing is everything that we really want, we have to work towards

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and we have to put forth effort. And so that's where talk has to match action. And that's called integrity. When what you do and what you say,

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actually go planting it. And when you become responsible, not just for yourself and your actions, but for the outcome in your community.

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So when you can say, You know what, the reason I can do this is because I can't else in college, you know. Well, you know, we were not included,

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were not nobody considers us as far as becoming part of the college campus. Okay. So what am I just

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want to sit around and complain. Now. I have they're responsible for the change that I want to see.

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So okay. So silently protesting and writing letters and talking to everybody that we willing to

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listen and all of it in a respectful way. And so if we can approach a life that way, if I can teach that to my clients, I think that we can

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change society and I can change my community to become a better community, more inclusive, more, more open-minded, more loving and respectful of each other.

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And when you have that, the synergy, that is greed, the ability and the potential for creating anything,

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anything that comes into people's mind is incredible. You can create anything if we have that respect and love

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and kindness and collaboration. And those other things, are we learning kindergarten? So that's my group.

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I love kindergartners. If all of that Mike Lyons could be under the age of six, I would be a much heavier woman.

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But I don't always get under the age of six. However, I do get some in their magnificent and they cheer me up and they make my life so much better.

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Because I learn so much from them of other openness and their kindness in the fact that even if they if I

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put them in time out or even told her mom to put them in timeout the week before. They can still come in next

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week and give me a hug. When they walk in, they're happy to see me. They can let it go. Grownups can't do that.

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You do something that I sat there and they're going to be grumpy for four weeks. So my community, I think,

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can go very far and I would love to see my community more educated, more actively participating, more integrated. And now for there to be so many groups here,

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in groups there isn't about the Latinos and African Americans and Caucasians in the upper class and middle class,

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and the women and the men. That's not what I want. I want everybody to come together, but before we can come together,

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we'd have to know who we are. So that we can sort of say, okay, what is it about me that these group needs that I can

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contribute to this group? And that's, that's sort of what I hope for my community. My dissertation,

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which is the biggest project home and raising children that I've ever undertaken is on acculturation, stress, and coping in

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young immigrant children. And again, I did this because that's what I went through and I wanted to know how to help

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these children face this, which I went through. Immigration can create a great sense of loss that is very

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similar to the loss of a loved one. And so think about if somebody loses, a parent will give them the opportunity to mourn.

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We understand when they're not doing well, when they can meet their responsibilities, but chil immigrates. In the next week, they're in school and

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we expect everyone to do their homework and they're going to behave and then I'm going to throw tantrums and you're going to be fine in the family aspects

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that they're going to do all their chores and don't want to be respectful and do everything as they're expected to do.

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And I say that's not fair because their morning and need their morning we have to support them in their morning.

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That doesn't mean we give them a break and on lower our expectations of their behaviors and their achievement. It just means that we do with differently

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in a more supportive way. He said about setting limits. It's about setting limits and enforcing them lovingly,

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respectfully of the child everywhere they go in about setting expectations that are realistic. And again, that we're supporting them to meet

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these expectations and I just abandon them in that. And so my goal with this dissertation is to be able to

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communicate to the community that is receiving these children. Both the social, the neighborhoods, law enforcement agencies that

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are working with these children. And and also the schools, primarily the schools that are receiving them enter.

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This immigrant parents are entrusting their children unto to set up a supportive environment where these children can really thrive.

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Because they can, because many of these children came to this country and there were thriving, what did they were?

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And I tell parents are like your child has now become ADHD crossing the border. That's not something catch.

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The child is no longer doing what they were capable of doing before. Something else is getting in the way in understanding that the parent

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is going to struggle with this process on the other end because they're terrified of something that they don't know. You don't know these culture.

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My parents, you know, this culture. They struggled. They had fantastic people with them. That it, my teachers,

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I was very blessed to have the teachers that I did. And I think God for that, I know that God was with me all along.

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He put me in the right places with the right people. And then also my advisors in my pastor, that they were there

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were there to support my mom and my dad through these changes and to educate them about non she's now being weird. This is actually quite typical for her age.

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I get to play that role now. I get to say, you know, it's quite typical that she would want this because she's growing up

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in this culture where she's told that she, that she should want these things. Let's teach you how to talk to this child about this.

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And here comes the other piece, communication. How do we talk when we were talking to three different languages?

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In, at any given point, you can walk into this house and you're going to hear me say something in

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Spanish and my son respond in English. Or my husband say something in English, and I respond in Spanglish. And so how do you communicate that way?

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Well, it's even worse when a child doesn't have a common language with the parent. And the child is

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growing up speaking primarily English and apparent only speak Spanish. So how do these two people communicate the words to mean the same thing?

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Even if the child understands the parent and Spanish, when they try to communicate back, that doesn't convey the same message.

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So I loop, I do a lot of what is called cultural brokering. My work, which is I interpret for the parent even

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though the child has begun in Spanish. I tell him. Okay. Let me interpret for your mom what it means when you say boyfriend,

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which is one word in English. But we have the word boyfriend for male friend, boyfriend, like romantic boyfriend.

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And then we have the word fiance. Hey. And then lastly we have the word room and husband. Okay?

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And Spanish, one word, novella. And that is, they got you're going to marry. So 14-year-old comes home and says, I want a boyfriend.

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Panic sets in through the mother's even though she hears boyfriend, she her boyfriend, she understands word. Boyfriend.

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Boyfriend means Novella. Uh, yeah, not the same thing. Now, the same thing, mommy thinking fiance or group.

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Charlie's docking, male friend that I really kinda like maybe I want a date to a different, completely different things even

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though they think they're using the same word. So I do this kind of thing all the time. And again, if we come into

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every situation with an open mind and saying, let me understand you and let me get to know you. So one of the greatest thing that

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I can teach somebody, because then you don't have to jump to conclusions and you really come into knowing

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a person with an open mind. Even if you live with this person, they change. So you have to get to know them all the time.

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And I look forward to many years we're getting to know my children because they're very fascinating little VBA. I hope that this project

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will contribute to that as well. I think that women come in many different shapes and forms and we all have

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very different interests and we have different strengths. I hope that every person that looks at This can see

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that every woman can contribute something great. You're given the opportunity. And every woman that looks at this to know

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that there's something inside of her that can change somebody from about whether you think the world will know about it or they never will hear uni.

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Because there are many moms who have done fantastic jobs, are raising their children, who grow up to be Barack Obama.

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Never thought I'd be known for the rest of the famous someday that what she did it because he was a good mom and she knew that that was her job.

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And her Grant and his grandmother, fantastic moment here. And countless other moms who do fantastic jobs and contribute

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wonderful little people to society who grew up to be wonderful big people. That's what I hope that this will contribute.

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Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you.