Q & A with Dr. Robert L. Johnson and Dr. Pauletta Stanford, authors of STRENGTH FOR THEIR JOURNEY

What are the unique challenges that African American parents face in steering their children onto the right path?

PS: I think that there are a number of challenges that probably all parents have in raising their children no matter what their cultural background or what race they are--exposure to drugs, high-risk behavior, sexually explicit materials etc, etc. There's now a new challenge for parents in that the original African American-type community, which was defined by community parenting, no longer exists in a limited basis. If you were a single mother or you were a mother who had to work or had a lot of things to do, you had someone else in the community who sort of looked over your child and was able to challenge your child that he or she did something wrong or maybe help the child out.

The other thing I think that's unique for African American parents is that very frequently their young people are viewed differently by society. As an example, the males are viewed by the greater society as being more of a threat so that when the adolescent gets into a specific situation, such as a traffic stop or maybe being picked up and arrested for a small offense, very often the resultant problems that come from these things are much worse for the adolescent because they are African American and so this makes it kind of a unique situation. In addition, there are a lot of different expectations for adolescent teenagers than there are, let's say, for teenagers from other cultures so that you have a lot of trouble with teenagers who are prejudged because of the way they look. We're all familiar with profiling, the type of thing that goes on in stores, and you know I can go on and on about society's expectations. Bobby, do you have anything to add?

RJ: I think the thing that it all boils down to is racism and the effect of racism in American society. African American children in this country are growing up under the weight of the pressures that are created by racism and it has an effect in schools and commercial settings everywhere and parents need to strengthen their children with the abilities and skills to overcome that. And that's the reason why African American parents so often look for African American specialists like ourselves to give them advice and assistance with their children. That's why they need a book like this in order to give them some advice about how to withstand some of the pressures.

What are the five essential principals you discuss in Strength for Their Journey?

PS: The first one is what we consider traditional discipline: the strength to accept and embrace parental limits. The second one we call racial discipline: to give your kids the strength to negotiate the realities of being a racial minority, being an African American person. The third one is emotional discipline: the strength to resist negative peer pressure and temptation. The fourth one is functional discipline: to excel in school and to apply those skills that you learn to careers and financial pursuits. The fifth discipline is mind-body discipline: the effort to give your kid the strength to maintain positive physical, mental, and spiritual health. Those are our five essential disciplines.

If a reader can take away only one message from your book, what would it be?

RJ: The most important thing you have to do is to love your children, and loving and having very strong connections with your children is usually going to get you through most of the problems. I mean, it's not going to make things easy, it's not going to be a bed of roses, but that's going to be the guide. But more than that, you do need to talk to someone else about the problems, share information or share your concerns with other people who've had the same experiences, as well as take the time to get some professional information like going to books like the one we've written.

How does Strength for Their Journey compare with other parenting books on the market today?

RJ: I think the biggest thing is that, as far as we can tell, there's no other book for parents that's written by African American pediatricians and that's quite a difference. Now both Dr. Stanford and I are professors of Pediatrics at the New Jersey Medical School. Pediatricians spend a lot of time seeing normal children and talking to parents about their normal children...that gives us a great purview of what it's like to be a normal child and grow up normally African American in this culture. That's different than the psychiatrist writing a book who's looked at the world from the standpoint of problems rather than looked at it from the standpoint of normality, and that's why it's so different.