I work on Saturdays at The Children's Center at the group home. I love my job and I think I do really important work but it also frustrates me. Not because of any of the drama that inevitably happens there but because of the biological parents of the kids who live there. It makes me so ornery that people who are obviously horrible parents can bred like rabbits while people who want children desperately and will be fabulous parents can't have kids and have to go through the difficulty of adoption or other means to have children. It's just something that has always really bothered me and today was a day that I really felt the turmoil and devastation bad choices by a parent have on their children. If only their parents had been 'good' parents and had cared for them from the start, they would be happy healthy kids.
We get "volunteers" or "trainees" who come to the center and play with kids. In reality, these are potential adoptive parents who need to see what they are really getting themselves into. We are not allowed to tell the kids who these people really are because that would get their hopes up. But we have really smart kids who have seen "volunteers" take kids home with them. These kids are not idiots. They know what's going on but we still have to keep up the appearance.
We had some new "trainees" today. A little boy who has been at the center for quite a while was assigned as their "trainer." He is supposed to teach this couple how to play with kids (Gag me!). However inappropriate I think it is, that is how things are done now. Back to the play by play. He became so anxious and upset while his trainees were at the center, he could not hold it together. This is why:
When he first came to live at The Children's Center, he was a happy boy but because of the difficulties in his life, he has become an anxious, angry, volatile child. He has been abandoned, rejected and 'given back' too many times to count which has in turn caused him to put up a wall to any family who consider bringing him into their family. I don't have a Masters in Social Work, but it seems to me that he does this so that he can't be hurt again. If he never lets anyone in, he won't have to deal with the hurt and loss that comes when they decide they can't handle him and never return. Then he is told that "their car broke down" or "they are really sick." Doesn't this also set him up for failure? Isn't he going to imagine them fixing their car or going to the doctor and getting better and then finally coming back? He wants a family desperately and asks adults at the center constantly why we can't take him home. When other children begin to get visits and soon leave the center to live with their new family, he asks when it's his turn, when will he finally get to have a "forever family?" He recently said he wanted to cut of his head and come back as a baby because "babies get a lot of attention." When adults talked to him about what babies can't do, he rescinded his comment and said he wanted to come back as a mouse or something small so he could "take care of himself."
It breaks my heart to see him in so much pain and to also know that he is causing most of his pain. If he could only take down that wall and trust a family. He is a loving child, it just takes him a lot of time. He has said to a few staff members that he trusts "I love you to the moon and back." He just needs to be given a chance. He needs patience. He needs love. If I had the resources, I would take him home in a heartbeat because I have the training and patience to put up with him and I know that in time he would be a happy, healthy kid.
Gosh! This post started on such a happy note. I'm sorry it was such a downer today but it's something I've been thinking a lot about today and needed to get it off my chest.
"Just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."
~ Elie Wiesel
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