A day at the “office”

Some of my friends and I go to work and do something you can’t even imagine. I could explain it to you, but I don’t think it is even comprehensible unless you live it. Some days, it is beautiful and inspiring and then some days, many days it is as if we are climbing up the escalator backward chasing a wild turkey to get it dressed. Yes, dressed!

One wise teacher explained our job as “Jumping from roller coaster to roller coaster while juggling a laptop, calmly de-escalting kid passengers, and teaching them hour to read, oh and collecting data and inputting it in 3 different ways.”

Something like this:

It is honestly much different from this. but it gives you an idea. Those kiddos on the floor paying attention, don’t exist in our land.

The following video maybe shocking to you and you may wonder why the adult isn’t doing anything. But they are, maybe not the way I would, but I will talk more about it after you take a gander. These videos are on YouTube and not of any child I have ever worked with, but a good example of the extremity of behaviors in which we work with.

Now I know what some of your reactions maybe, but that isn’t really what I am getting at. This is one kiddo, he is mentally ill. It says he has been diagnosed with Aspergers, ADHD and Oppositional Defiant Disorder.We have up to  or 9 kids with these same diagnoses. My favorite part of this video is the title at the top “not for children”. Well news flash people this is happening in front of other children all the time. Gave me a little giggle. Jayden has a wide range of videos on YouTube. I encourage you to watch. This isn’t a spoiled child or one that hasn’t been disciplined properly. This is true mental illness in a child.

My friends and I have been threatened to be killed in every single way possible, have witnessed attempted suicides, extreme self harming behaviors(cutting, biting self, banging heads against walls and floors, stabbing themselves), fight or flight behaviors (the runners and the fighters). In my 17 years, I have seen staff have their bones broken, hair pulled out, black eyes, head butted, bitten in very unpleasant places, etc. Most importantly though I have seen staff come back day after day, week after week and year after year. This is after we have cried in the bathroom, stayed up many nights worrying about someone else’s child or children, many therapist visits, psychiatrist visits, hospital stays and so on. But we come back.

We come back because there is some amazingly good stuff that pops up and over shadows it all. You see, our kiddos have been through some traumatic stuff that many adults can’t imagine. They have been asked to leave their “regular” school  and sent to us. Most kiddos are on the automatic defense, because they assume they will get in trouble or yelled at or worse. We also have the kiddos are just different from others.

We go back because we don’t care about all that baggage per say. We just want them to get through the day successfully. Let their parents work a full day without 15 phone calls from school about how bad their kid is or having to go pick them up.

We get to be the place they like to come to school or at least not be rejected.

It doesn’t take patience, or any special wisdom. It just takes accepting this group of kiddos for who they are and allowing them to be themselves and working towards their strengths. Don’t get me wrong some days just suck. A lot of days seem like they won’t end. I have had several teachers come to me and ask me how they do this job with kids. Can you imagine not being able to do your job and care for your own children? I can say I have probably taken about a total of one month off of work in my last 17 years for mental health reasons. It isn’t because I can’t handle it. I can handle it, but your brain isn’t made to handle this much extreme emotion. If you can walk away day after day without feeling anything about it, you are in the wrong place.

I am not sure where else I am going with this blog. I will never be able to fully explain the roller coaster ride. But one thing that keeps coming through my head is children with mental illness can come from any type of family. I have had students in my class from every socio-economic background, race, and religion. Please don’t judge parents or families. This is hard. I really do have the easy job, the parents live this everyday and night. Behavioral health services are hard to get, psychiatrist for children or not easy to find. The amount of work it takes to get your child help is daunting.

 

Be empathic

Be kind

B

 

Just be

I am at a place that I have a lot I want to say and discuss, but I find it almost impossible to organize it in a way that is more “professional” in writing. Then I thought why would I do that, I write the way I write and I am just going to do my thing.

Over the couple of years I have tried really hard to find some way to find peace from within myself. Especially, not judging others regardless of their beliefs, behaviors, hair, shoes, etc. etc. Please keep in mind I am a work in progress, just like yourself.

So lets take a look at something. The land of social media. I love social media! Its entertaining and interesting and scary and NEW! Lets think about this. The first mainstream home computers came out lets say mid 80’s to be fair. That was not that long ago when you think of how long the world has existed. We are all still learning. So there is that whole thing of learning how to communicate with others in this format, similar to learning to write a letter. Now everyone gets to share their opinion and ideas with everyone else, which is great and interesting but is kind of messy.

What I find interesting and often get caught up in is who are the people being so judgmental, disrespectful and cruel to people they don’t know. Now I don’t know about you, but I can not add that type of drama to my life without having to go to therapy, mediate twice daily and see the psychiatrist for a med change. As much as I want to punch George Smith from upstate New York in the throat for having sexist ideals, I can’t. No one has exclaimed, “Susie from West Virgina changed my mind about global warming by posting on twitter.” Don’t get me wrong I love some good banter. I mean if everyone believed the same thing we would all be writing the silly blog about this same thing.

If not social media changing the world, what can we do? I realized after having these two little ladies that I better not act like a total psychopath. Because if you know anything about apples and trees, it doesn’t turn out well.

How to make change is simple and overwhelming at the same time. Mike and I went to Austin for a weekend a couple of years ago. He was in Las Vegas for the week and was meeting me there. I had time to walk around the city before his flight came in. It was a lovely place with music and sugar skulls, but one thing I kept noticing was the young homeless population. It killed me. I may have spent a few dollars on them. I know I can’t save them, but I can put a few bucks in their hand. What they do with it doesn’t matter much to me, but maybe I gave them a feeling for a second that someone gave a shit. I mean that is really want in this life, to feel like someone cares about us and is there if we need them.

Mike and I take the girls almost everywhere we go, 60% of the time we will see someone on the corner asking for help. This is everywhere. All summer in Chesterfield I saw the same family. Zip code means nothing. Your income, car, house, shoes, purse means nothing. We all want the same things, Love, happiness, peace and compassion-if you don’t want these things I have a number for you to call.

It kills me to do nothing when I see someone on the streets struggling. I mean I am sitting in a decent care, with a nice cell phone, clothes, food (too damn much food) and a bunch of other stuff that is not a need.

The girls and I decided to make care bags/blessing bags for the people we see during the days we are out doing things that are a pure luxury to many. Many people have donated to our little project and for that we are so grateful. I am positive in the sense that doing things like this with others builds a stronger community, builds self-esteem amongst everyone involved and doesn’t let us forget how lucky we are.

If you would like to donate to our Blessing bag project feel free to sign up via the link below.

Sign Up!

That is all I have for today. I hope you all didn’t fall asleep. 🙂

Brenda

“I do not want followers who are righteous, rather I want followers who are too busy doing good that they won’t have time to do bad.” – Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotak