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Chapter 3: The Kids Have Lived Through Horror Stories You Can't Imagine

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I will put caution in reading further because this next part is disturbing. I realize that this seems to be an abrupt change in tone compared to the previous chapters. But I feel that after I explained how terrible the kids can be at times, and will continue explaining that in the future, it wouldn't feel right without me explaining just why these kids engage in these behaviors. Once you understand their history things become a bit more clear of why they are so untrustworthy of adults and authority in general. Let me start with one case of one of the most recent, and worse behaving, kids.

I'll call this kid Roy. Roy never met his real parents as he was adopted at three weeks old. The only thing Roy knew about his original parents is that they were white. His family was all black and lived in an all black neighborhood. It was complete with a mother and siblings. Throughout most of Roy's life his mother was very caring and his family treated him well enough, just like he was part of the family. Unfortunately for him the mother got sick and died. He was placed into care with his oldest sister. Suddenly he stopped being treated like one of the family, and instead like a leper. His family that he once knew and loved began abusing him as they ridiculed him, took food away from him, and out right physically abused him. Keep in mind despite Roy being a teenage boy he is very small and light. He tried to fight back but his much bigger female care taker overpowered him. The people who he thought was his family, for the first thirteen years or so of his life, that loved and accepted him really hated him all along and thought he was an outsider. Today you can see just how these experience effect him. Whenever he eats he eats very quickly and has his hand over his bowl so noone can take his food. He always tries to befriend his bullies, because from his experience he is more safe when he is always by the victimizer rather than being a lone victim. As a result he is constantly a goon, a partner in crime.

The younger clients certainly aren't without their own histories as well. One child, I will call Piff, is very young. He was born to a mother who smoked crack regularly. She did a lot of things to fund her addiction. During this time it was suspected that Piff was regularly physically abused. She eventually was put in jail and Piff went to her boyfriend's or brother's house, I can't remember the specifics of this exactly. It turns out that Piff's new caretaker was even worse than his mother. They regularly sat home and did drugs while Piff was left to fend for himself. Eventually the caretaker disappeared all together and for a full month Piff was a child only a couple years old roaming the streets all by himself. I'm still not sure just what he had to do to survive, but I'd imagine it involved regularly stealing and eating garbage. Eventually he was spotted by police and then put into social services. Seeing Piff today, even after two years or so of "treatment", it is obvious he has severe problems. The best way to describe him is that he is an infant in a child's body. He can't focus on anything for more than two seconds. He will invoke tantrums over the simplest things,such as him not getting the right kind of cereal. He frequently wets the bed and sees no problem walking around the house and interacting with his peers soaked in pee. He'll become hysterical when he is told "no" by the simplest things. To be fair he has improved since he got to the placement, but I can't chalk that up whether that is due to him no longer being in a place where he gets beat up and having to fend for himself, or that he is simply getting older.

Perhaps the most disturbing history I came across was one from a client I will call "Jim". Jim's parent often argued when he was younger. As a result they got a divorce. Jim lived with his mom rather than his dad. This sounds like a typical American divorce so far. However, things quickly became grim. I don't know how else to say this, so I'll just say it. Jim's mom frequently sexually abused Jim and his brothers. She would often have Jim masturbate in front of her while she was watching porn. If this didn't satisfy her "thirst" she would then have Jim and his siblings perform sexual acts on each other. At times she would have Jim have sex with her even, legitimately making him a "motherfucker". Jim's mother was also very addicted to drugs. She would often take him with to parties as she would tell him to wait in the car while she would get messed up on a night out. Eventually Jim had enough. He called his mother over from I believe his dad's house, which it is suspected that the father knew what was going on between Jim and his mother, that he wanted to make amends with her. In reality he was planning on killing her. While she was on her way, in the back of his mind he realized this may not be the correct decision to make. He called the police and told them what he planned to do. The police arrived and found him in an unstable state with a weapon. As a result he placed in intensive care and has been in the social service program since. Now Jim is a model client. He does nothing wrong what so ever is a very respectful to everyone. He has a job, goes to school, and has friends and even a girlfriend outside of the placement. However, it makes me wonder just why he is even in the placement to begin with being that he has been so well behaved for such a long time.

These are just three cases, and not even necessarily the worst ones. Most of the kids have backgrounds involving physical abuse, sexual abuse, and mental abuse. Poverty is also a very occurrence as well as living in inadequate housing. It is unfortunate as all of these things the kids deal with tend to get lost in the shuffle of just merely running the program. Who has time to address one's abuse history when you are dealing with kids running around the house like crazy? On top of that it is often not even a topic of what we are suppose to talk to the kids about. You see the agency gets paid with something called "Medicaids". In short they are documentation of face to face interactions staff have with the kids. Staff often have a few topics, typically 2 to 4, of what they can talk to the kids about. The concept is simple the more time you document talking to the kids, the more units you can fill out, which results in the agency making more money. The thing is that these topics rarely touch on their abuse history. They often seem to just touch on their symptoms. "Roy will learn to control his impulses properly by using proper coping skills" is one of the most common ones, along with "Riff will learn to manage his anger issues through coping skills", yeah "coping skills" is quite a common term you will hear. A coping skill refers to how one copes with an emotion. For example if I am feeling angry I can cope by taking deep breaths to calm myself. This seems reasonable and all, but the goals never change, so as a result people keep talking about the kids about the same topics over and over again. It's to the point where the kids give you automated robot-like responses.

Forget talking to the kids about something like, I don't know, "how will you be able to provide for yourself once you leave the facility being that you are currently 18 years old and will be leaving in a couple months?" or "how do you think that your history of being abandoned has affected your views on trust?". These things, especially the former, are rarely on their treatment goals therefore the company doesn't get paid by staff talking to the kids about these things. Instead it tends to be a constant retread of what the client will do to cope in order to distract themselves when they feel angry enough to punch someone in the face. I constantly think to myself maybe, just maybe, they should learn not to feel so angry over such stupid things to begin with.