Younger Children

They call themselves the Dream Team.A loose coalition of government workers and children's advocates, they are united by their dream of making a difference for families living in the public housing projects.Representatives from the Anne Arundel Housing Authority, the Department of Recreation and Parks and county government met last week tomap strategies for new services."I think there's a lot of good this group can do," said Karen Michalec, the county's coordinator of social services, who dubbed the informal committee the "Dream Team."

In the row house-lined streets of the East Baltimore community of Oliver, seven children between the ages of 10 and 14 have been arrested by police in the past month on charges ranging from armed robbery to selling cocaine.The arrests have provoked soul-searching among residents looking for reasons why so many young children are getting ensnared in the drug trade and street crime."It's sad to see young children involved," said Officer Ed Bochniak, a narcotics investigator assigned to the Eastern District's "Zone 4" -- the Oliver community and parts of three adjoining neighborhoods.

Latin ConcernsEditor: Three cheers to Michael Olesker and Roger Simon. Finally I am hearing someone state the facts as they are.We as Hispanics will be the largest minority in this nation by the year 2000, yet little is being done about the lack of communication, cultural difference, unemployment, housing, etc. The issue in Washington and in other major cities is not people with knives but years of disregard of the community, which has been pushed aside...

The arrest this past week of a 10-year-old on drug charges in East Baltimore is a sign of what the police fear may be a dangerous new twist in the city's drug trade: As more and more young children become involved, more and more could fall victim to violence.Vulnerable to intimidation by older dealers or lured by the prospect of easy money, younger children are likely to become increasingly at risk in the city's escalating drug violence.Time-worn anti-drug slogans, like former first lady Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No," simply have little or no meaning in the reality of many pre-teens, who are continuously exposed to drugs in some of the city's poorest and toughest neighborhoods, according to narcotics officers.

What started several months ago as a Columbia child's interest in preserving equatorial rain forests ended Saturday in the planting of about 350 seedlings along a stream bed behind an Ellicott City neighborhood.Sixteen carloads of children from Stevens Forest Elementary School in Columbia braved raw temperatures and about a half-mile of wet, prickly terrain to get to the banks of the Little Patuxent River near Pebble Beach Drive and David W. Force Park.In the distance, bulldozers were clearing land for a new development.

Effective programs for young peopleYour editorial of Feb. 11 raised several issues about the consolidation of the Department of Juvenile Services with the Office for Children, Youth and Families. The editorial was concerned about whether Dr. Grasmick would be able to shift from running programs largely geared toward younger children to a department that deals mostly with troubled teen-agers.This is a misconception. The present Office for Children, Youth and Families does not run programs for young children, but develops policy on how services should be provided for all children, youth and families.

"WITH YOUNGER CHILDREN, FIND out what they know and what they want to know. Ask about their questions and vTC concerns, and answer those questions," advises Ernest Fleishman, Ph.D., director of education at Scholastics Inc., publisher of classroom magazines.Young children don't have a good grasp of geography, he says. If they're worried about an attack on America, it's better to tell them that the Gulf is "a very far-off place" and that it takes a long time to get here from there, rather than to try to show them on a map."

MOUNT AIRY - A bail hearing is expected to be conducted this week for Edwin F. Downs Jr., a 30-year-old Wind Ridge Road resident charged with shooting and killing his wife as she lay sleeping early Wednesday morning.Downs, a deliveryman for the Washington Post in Montgomery County, is charged with first-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, using a handgun in the commission of a felony and battery. He is being held without bail at the Carroll County Detention Center pending the hearing.

When asked what teen-agers are reading these days, the manager of the recently opened Gordon's Children's Bookstore at the Rotunda comes back with a quick -- and glum -- response."