the first truly crazy week of my job

This was a couple of weeks ago. It is pretty indicative of how things go these days.


We have had what I thought was escalating fighting, but may in fact be merely escalating awareness of fighting. Either way, we have two related issues which create difficulty. The first is that we have to talk daily with kids in the After School Program who have-truly, genuinely- never been taught a single other tool for dealing with any type of life trouble other than violence. The second, greater, difficulty is that in circumstances where we have dealt with it the kids who fought, and then the parents come. Often the kids calm down quickly, listen, talk openly and honestly (not a problem) but the parents continue to rant, attack each other, lie, and insist on feeling victimized even when they or their child used a weapon to jump another parent or child. Then the parents bring up things that happened months ago or keep bringing up the fight long after the kids have made up.

Somehow-and I have no idea how because, as I often mention, I never ever know what I’m talking about when I talk at work and just sort of hope that what I’m saying turns out to be the right thing- but somehow it has been decided at the rental office that I am the best person for dealing with fights. I think this might be because I am the person who never yells and just calmly repeats the same thing over and over, like how we wanted to make this a safe place and what that means and the importance of positive reinforcement and consequences for negative action and that Traci (my boss/the case worker at my job) would talk with them and how if we don’t do these things and take it seriously the kids will end up in jail. Definitively.

So when mom’s and grandma’s come in screaming about wanting to murder someone else common practice has become to walk into the office and grab me (and keep in mind that since we have a few fatalities per year, not to mention non fatal stabbings, shootings and assaults, these are not necessarily empty threats- murder probably is an exaggeration, but assault is definitely on the agenda). Yes they come get me. Me. The twenty four year old with no counseling, social work, or mediation training outside her one week of RA training for Miami University- where the running joke was that there were more girls named Lauren than minorities, and the fact I was an annoying know-it-all punk of a middle child who couldn’t mind my own business when other people were fighting. This means most of my using conflict resolution skills resulted my siblings turning around and saying “Butt out, Kirsten”.

And yet, this has become a core facet of my job; a daily reminder that people have the capacity to believe and expect more of me than I am necessarily prepared for or capable of; and while at the beginning of the week I may have laughed to myself thinking “I have no idea what I’m doing, what to say, if any of this works.” By Thursday morning I was crying in the shower before work, thinking to myself
I have no idea what I’m doing
What to say
If any of this works

Additionally we had about two emails containing about 7 regulations that we are legally supposed to be following. Nobody told either of us. This meant that there were numerous people being held up by and noting our inability to proficiently perform the tasks to which we are assigned. It resulted in a lot of feeling incompetent, no matter how many times our bosses assure us they don’t consider it a reflection of us, we didn’t know, how could we be responsible. It’s just a lot of feeling overwhelmed.

What happened Wednesday was a tipping point.
What we tell young people, every day (I mean every. single. day.), when they ask why, why can’t they fight, why can’t they cuss at each other, why can’t they say hurtful things, why can’t they bring each other down, is always the same answer: We are trying to make this a safe place. It can’t be safe for you if you are always being torn down or afraid of being hit, and it can’t be safe for others if you are tearing them down or afraid of being hit. That’s why if there is a problem you should come to Ashley (my coworker) and I first. Tell us.
It’s ok, we tell them
You can come to us
We will protect you.
We will keep you safe.

A woman gave a presentation for black history month. She gave away beanie babies (and tee shirts and buttons).

There was a boy and a girl. They are nine years old. The girl had a beanie baby. The boy did not, but he wanted one. While they were chasing each other around outside, he trying to grab at her toy, she trying to keep it away, disaster struck. From what we can piece together from those who were watching, and what we know of the kids, and from physics and charts and tracing the trajectories of flying objects, is this: she put the animal behind her back and turned towards him. He reached around to grab it, in the process accidentally touching her butt. Like she had always, always been instructed to do by her mother she promptly punched him in the face. And just like he had been taught all his life by all the influences available to him of instinct and culture and peers, defended himself from attack and struck back by throwing a beanie baby full force at her face and raised his fist to hit again.

At this point Ashley saw and rushed over to stop deal with the situation, just like when similar situations happen multiple times a day. The difference being that the girl ran to the office and called her mom crying

Mom a boy threw a beanie baby at me
Why did he do that?
I punched him
Why did you punch him?
He hit my butt
OH NO HE DIDN’T

And then, before her daughter had even hung up the phone, before I knew what was going on or Ashley had managed to ask the boy why he was raising his fist to hit a girl, the mom had come over like an elephant, screaming that she was going to tear the boy into pieces. JENNY BABY WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS HE? I’M GONNA KILL HIM. I AM GOING TO RIP OFF HIS PENIS. HE GONNA BE DEAD. NO BOY TOUCHES MY DAUGHTER. NO BOY MOLESTS MY GIRL. Hearing the yelling, I ran over- partially aided by kids grabbing my hands pulling me begging
Please, Miss Kirsten, Please
Stop her, make her stop
Do something
Partially impaired by the littlest ones, like six year old Philip, who hid behind me crying telling me he was scared, grabbing my legs, asking me to protect him, asking only that I would do what I had promised.

When I came to the entry way I saw that Ashley had shoved the boy into the corner and was using her body as a shield- knees bent, arms outstretched so that you could barely see his tiny body behind her while Dia, the mother, was trying get past, screaming that we should not be protecting him but join her in beating him into a pulp- as long as she was allowed to be the one to mutilate his genitals. This image is burned into my eyes. It’s such a tiny space, the entry way, and every corner of it was filled with the presence of Dia and her shouting, like her words and her anger were gargoyles flying around her head attacking at Ashley and the boy. He’s such a tiny boy, in that corner- not cowering, because they are taught not to cower- but tiny because he is just so little. He is nine but when we met him, Ashley and I thought he was six or seven. And Ashley, like a knight shielding against a dragon, no telling if she would be hit, effectively stopping the physical violence, but helpless against the gargoyles that everyone could hear.

She called the cops. Dia. Dia called the cops.
On a nine year old boy who accidentally touched her daughter’s butt,
she wanted to press charges and have him permanently listed as a sex
offender.
And while she called the cops we pushed the boy out the door and told him to
run home.

She came at me with her fists raised because I asked her to please, Miss Dia calm down. “Don’t you touch me Miss Kirsten.” Yeah… Here’s the thing. I was standing at least 6 feet away from her when she said this. I’m not sure what part of that made her think I was going to touch her. Later one of our older boys told us this is where he was most scared he said, and I quote “I thought she was going to hit you. I hoped you were going to hit her back.”

Then she started calling her friends.

And while her daughter stood sobbing, she stood screaming and yelling, and if people ever started getting bored and moving away, she ran around and moved with them so that she would again be the center of attention. This made me so angry, you know? It was all for the spectacle. All about her. Grrrrrrrrr.

At one point, after the police officer explained that you cannot press sexual assault charges on a nine year old who touched another nine year old’s rear end because it does not fall under the legal definition of sexual assault (he would have had to touch her breasts or genitals), she started acting out scenarios “So my daughter should just bend over and ‘hey baby slap me. Oh that’s nice yes! Yes!’” then it escalated until, by the end she had convinced herself (and was calling friends on her cellphone to inform them and waving at people passing by to say hey and stop and talk to tell them) that we- Ashley and I- were encouraging pedophiles to come in and rape her daughter. Yes. Pedophiles raping her daughter. I warned you my job was psychotic this week.

Where were her children through all of this? Excellent question. They were ignored, often lost her, left in the cold (including her two year old child who was left alone and unsupervised for the first hour until a neighbor got him from the house). They kept coming back to us. And in the most heartbreaking part of all, we had to keep whispering to them, no honey, go stand with your mom. When Ashley and I were debriefing on Wednesday, by which I mean trying to become calm enough to be able to drive home safely, I was saying that I was so angry because if Dia had any respect in the community she could have single handedly ruined everything we had been working for- We said our building was a safe place, she said it was not. We said we would protect them, she said we were trying to hurt them, and she tried to hurt them. We say you should respect authority and be kind to each other, she mocked and yelled at us and the police officer and her children and everyone who did not 100% agree with her and some of those who did.

This is what I hate. I hate how her neighbors know she abuses her children and won’t report her. I hate that now her daughter, if she ever is sexually abused, will have the association that if she tells anyone, the entire community will come out and laugh at her and her family while they scream about what happened. I hate that it was all a show, all for attention, and that it was done in the name of protecting her children. I hate that she was the victim of the same thing as a kid, and I hate, I mean I really really hate, that her sweet, wonderful daughter will grow up to be like her and her sweet, wonderful sons will grow up to fully develop the horrific anger issues they are already beginning to display. But what I hate the most, I think, is what happened next.

Friday.

The next day I went into work, exhausted and still angry. It was like we had gone back a month. Since we’ve been there, Ashley and I have seen incredible improvement, especially in the after school program. The kids come in, say hi and talk to us for a while. Then, without arguing and maybe only a little bit of well meaning cheek from the older ones, they sit down to do homework and read. We have a group activity- like a game, or poetry slam, or talent show or presentation. We eat and they all help clean up. While we still have arguments, they aren’t as vicious or hurtful, they rarely dissolve into physical fights, and they can be worked out shortly afterwards. It’s not perfect. It’s still pretty crazy. But it’s a lot better than it was. There’s structure now and everyone knows it and we can work with it. But MAN, when we came in on Thursday it was like something inside everyone’s brain had snapped. I think what happened was that, even though everyone stared at it like the spectacle it was, subconsciously it reaffirmed that the best way to get attention was to act that way. So her actions were imitated in the other people’s actions. I don’t know, or maybe it’s just that tension and danger spread like wildfire. Maybe it was just that, exhausted and sick and angry and overwhelmed, our lack of confidence made us unable to preemptively create an atmosphere of calm. I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was madness.

Because we didn’t want to sweep it under the rug, we decided to separate the kids by age and talk about what happened. This became a sticky situation because we thought that Dia would keep her kids out of the program for at least a few days to make a point until her selfishness at wanting to not deal with them overwhelmed her, but the next day she dropped them off saying loudly “Don’t let any of the boys touch you and don’t let the adults be mean to you.” Ashley took the younger ones, including her kids, and talked more generally about nonviolence.

I took the older kids, asked them how they felt about it. Told them this wasn’t a time to gossip, just a time to decompress. So I asked them questions.
What kinds of emotions did you feel? Fear. Embarrassment. I don’t know, Miss Kirsten, what’s that feeling you feel when you know somebody is doing something wrong but it’s because they think somebody did something they didn’t do?
And what kinds of violence where there? Well, it wasn’t just hitting, it was emotional violence. Words- That’s right, words are a form of violence. Let’s call that verbal violence. Sexual violence-He didn’t really touch her on purpose- Yeah but if he had it would have been. Physical violence.
Did any of these types of violence help the situation, did they make it better at all? No.
Does violence solve problems? Yes.
So I tried again, what about when one of the little kids reacts and shouts or hits because something makes them mad in the after school program. Does this make the situation better or worse? Worse.
So does violence help situations? Yes.
I tried in four or five different ways and somehow they could not make the connection between what they saw and what they believed in their lives to be true. While they were able to analyze brilliantly real situations and see no redemption in violence, every time when asked the answer was the same. We have to use violence in our lives. It’s like they have no other tools. No other option. They saw no other future.

We talked about safe places, and the result was amazing. They told me how they felt safe when they were there, here, at the community center, at the after school program.
We talked about what it means to be safe. I asked them questions.
What is safety? Peace of mind. Not worrying about what will happen. Not having to watch your back.
Where are you safe? Here. Only, when you and Ashley are here. I feel safe at home. I don’t. Me either.
How can you create safety? Silence.
How do you help make this a safe place? We don’t fight. We don’t yell. We don’t put each other down.
That’s exactly right, so doing those same things when you leave, and encouraging others to do those same things, that creates safety wherever you go. You guys are leaders. People, especially the younger kids, look up to you. They imitate how you act. When you start creating safe places others will follow.

Then this is what they told me. They told me that they can’t do it when we’re gone. They don’t know how. It’s like they perceive us as glowing orbs of light that carry the safety with us, and that when we leave, all the light is gone from Marsh Run and they can’t control their own actions anymore. No fighting happens while we’re there- except for the Dia thing(s)- but once we leave it’s like a switch flips and the world changes and everything is different and they can’t be held responsible for their actions. One of the girls asked if she could chase my car if she was scared as I was leaving, if I would stop and come back, protect her, bring back the safety. Another asked if they could call me, have my phone number, so I could come at night when things were happening. No, I can’t come out here at 3am when 10 kids jump one (this happened, happens, is indicative of what it’s like when I leave). You have to create your own safety. I can’t always be here, and I won’t always be here. We are going to find ways and work together to make it so all of Marsh Run can become a safe place, not just the hours I’m here, not just the places I am. They looked at me doubtfully.

And I think about it, because they have a point. It’s like, when we leave, they have no influences- not a single one- telling them to choose safety. Not their family. Not their peers. Not their community. Not their media. And so they become these different people. How do they choose anything different? How could they? How do you choose something new-even if it’s something that will create a place you know you prefer- when you are young and everyone is telling you that you have to be a certain way, and it’s the only way you have ever seen or know, it’s your instinct and your taught behavior, and on top of that it very much feels like life or death that you choose what they tell you to choose? How?

I’ve said this before, about Paisley, but the amazing thing to me isn’t that kids in these situations start drinking and sleeping around and doing drugs and fighting at an age where I was still running around in the woods pretending that I was a Native American, or watching war movies with my brother in a fort we made of cushions we had pulled off the couch. It’s not surprising that kids get sucked into unhealthy behaviors. It’s amazing that anyone, ever, gets out.


tl;dr version: A woman attacked a nine year old at my work.