Perspective

Posted on August 16, 2008

I worked with a kid once who saw dead people. I am NOT shitting you, she saw dead people. She told me, offhand, during lunch. “Tiffany, I don’t think the bus driver should let dead kids on the bus.” At the time, I worked at a day treatment facility, and therefore, I was used to some pretty bizarre conversations.

Me: “What do you mean J? What dead kids?”
J: “There was a kid on my bus who was dead!”
Me: “How did you know he was dead, how do you know he wasn’t just sleeping?”
J: “He was see through, and he turned around and looked at me.”

At that point, I smiled, nodded, and immediately phoned her therapist.

This same student also thought the crabs in her grandmother’s wallpaper were watching her undress, and swore to me, to the point of hysterics, that her father was watching her through the windows in our classroom, and had actually run his fingers across the window to let her know he was there. Take into consideration that our classroom was on a relatively busy street, so we kept the blinds closed. Later, we found out that one her meds, especially during her “time of the month,” tended to cause psychosis. Something that you should have total us YESTERDAY!

I had a student expose himself in my classroom. T was the most charming kid in my class. He was funny, smart, and sweet. All the girls had a crush on him. And at some point during his life, he had been sexually abused, and we were pretty sure it was by his father. The same father who was still living with him, his stepsister, and his stepmother. In addition to this, his stepmother ran an in home daycare, where T hung out when he got out of school. I was still pretty green, it was my third year of teaching and my first month at the Day Treatment facility. I was writing something up on the board, and all the girls in the class suddenly went, “Oh GROSS!” and other expletives. When I turned back around, he was smiling his Cheshire grin smile and holding his pants closed. Charges were pressed, his stepmother lost her “license” and I had to deal with a month of weeping girls who “felt so guilty” because they got T in trouble. SERIOUSLY!

One of my students (B) stabbed another one of my students (R) with a pencil. They were in our “in-house” suspension, which was basically study corrals set up in a hallway where the students were isolated from the other kids and were expected to do their classwork, make up work, or some other form of punishment for misbehavior. In B’s defense, R was REALLY ANNOYING! Probably one of the top two most annoying kids I have ever worked with. Regardless, R was pretty innocent, and probably made some comment that he thought made him look cool. Instead of being funny, it provoked our “wanna-be” gangsta, B took the pencil we sharpened to make sure he could finish his homework, and stabbed poor R in the arm. Charges were pressed, B was expelled from our school.

When I first started working at the day treatment, we isolated the kids in a therapy room when they needed some “space.” I put a very angry J in there, and let him stew for about ten minutes. When I thought he might have calmed down, I opened the door and asked him if he was ready to talk to me. He said, quite eloquently I might add, “GO SUCK A DEAD DOG’S DICK!” I said, “Okay, just let me know when you are ready,” and shut the door. Then I burst into laughter. I mean, I have been insulted by the best of them. But this kid, he covered fellatio, necrophilia, and bestiality all in one insult. I hated to admit it, but I was IMPRESSED!

My final anecdote for this evening: One of my students shot another one of my students. This is the story that keeps me up nights, that literally hurts my heart. We usually only kept students in the day treatment for a year sometimes less.  It was an intensive program that included individual therapy, family therapy, and group therapy. Plus, there were small class sizes (our largest was 16) a small staff to student ratio (3 staff members on hand, a teacher-me, a counselor, and a teacher’s assistant who was usually a counselor in training) and an INTENSE behavior management program. This all meant the school districts were paying A LOT of money for our kids to attend this program. Which, of course mean that these kids were pretty fucked up, and they didn’t stay for very long.

The worst of the worst was D. His IQ was borderline, and his anger was beyond anything I had seen before. Add to it, he was at least six feet tall. However, after working with him for awhile (he was in our program for two years) it became easy to see that the anger was all a defense mechanism because he didn’t understand what was going on. Once we broke through his defenses, he became our biggest success case. He went from a 1st grade reading level to a 5th grade, which is practically unheard of. His math skills also improved dramatically. In the end, he graduated from high school with a traditional diploma.

D’s best friend M, wasn’t as successful. M was never a problem, he was a goofy kid who only misbehaved because he didn’t know what else to do. I would say his IQ was pretty borderline also, but his issue was mostly motivation. He wanted to be a professional hockey player, even though he was 15 and had NEVER taken a single hockey lesson. He decided that hockey players didn’t need to learn to read and write.

M graduated from our program first, and went back to the general ed high school, but dropped out after his junior year. D, like I said, went back to High school, and graduated. They stayed friends. One night, D and M were at M’s grandfather’s house and they were playing with Papa’s gun. D didn’t realize that there was a live round in the chamber, and shot M in the face. D was 18, M was 17.

The truly sad thing is, I was more concerned about D’s mental health than M’s death. I hate to say it, and a teacher should NEVER admit these things, but M wasn’t going to amount to much in life. He was a sweet but strange kid, and he was a serious slacker. I honestly didn’t see him doing much more than panhandling on the street. D, on the other had, he had potential. Once he was able to control his anger issues, he turned out to be a wiz with cars. I had no doubt he was going to be a mechanic.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to him. I wasn’t working at the day treatment when all of this happened, and I have since moved to another state. I really hope that D was able to forgive himself for what he did to his best friend. But, I definitely have my doubts.

Why am I telling you this?

Today, we were over at Ellen’s house making ice cream with other members of our mom’s club. Chloe threw a fit the ENTIRE time because Seth was holding the jar of sprinkles, and she was worried she would get any. Finally, the ice cream was done, I put sprinkles on it, and gave it to her. She ate three bites and was finished and wanted to play on the jungle gym. I grabbed her ice cream and followed her. She asked me to swing with her, and I said, “no,” because I was eating the ice cream.   She threw a major fit and intentionally knocked the bowl of ice cream out of my hands on onto the ground.

I was INCENSED. Not just angry, or pissed off.  I had to go inside for a minute to collect myself (with the excuse of grabbing our diaper bag) then strapped a sobbing Chloe into the stroller, and power walked us home. Even after we got home, I had a hard time calming down. I literally did the dishes and vacuumed before I could even talk to her.

It took me awhile to figure out why I was so angry with her. It was because I felt like MY child should NEVER ACT LIKE THIS. To tell you the honest truth, I think this is the first time I was angry enough with Chloe where I felt it through my entire body. My heart was racing and my head hurt. I had to breath in short shallow spurts. I knew that yelling at her wouldn’t help anybody, but I didn’t know what else to do. So, I reminded myself of all of the intense experiences I had when I was working at the day treatment. These are the reasons why I left that school and went to the public school. The reasons why I was now opting to put aside any professional gain to stay home with my toddler. When all is said and done, Chloe can piss me off, but she is SO mild in comparison.