Living the dream...or something...

Recently I've been realizing that I'm actually doing things that I've always wanted to do instead of just thinking about them or planning for some far-off day. I've always wanted to move outside of the mid-west and experience life from a different perspective. I've always wanted to do something that MEANT something instead of sitting inside of a classroom and working at meaningless jobs. And here I am. Living in Colorado, in a far bigger city than I've ever lived in before, working with the kids who need the most work. Strange how life works that way.

So, here's a breif update of some of the things that I've been doing lately. About a week after my first foray into the land of sushi, Marvin and I met a bunch of Paralympic athletes for sushi after this big media summit that Marvin had been working on. What a cool night that was. I didn't get much of a chance to talk to the athletes, but they have some amazing stories and some really great personalities. One of them was born in Russia and at a very early age had both of his legs amputated due to disformities caused by the Chernobyl incident. Another girl, when she was a baby, had a 100 lb. dumbbell dropped on her, severing her spinal cord. And these people have gone on to not only overcome their issues, but to become world-class atheletes. How cool.

I've met Marvin and a couple people from his office a couple times last week to go ice skating on their lunch break. There's a rink about 5 minutes from our apartment that we meet at. Marvin had never been skating before, but he's improving quite a bit from his first try. Only a couple falls and the last time we went, he was able to make it around the rink without holding on to the wall.

The job is still pretty crazy. Some days are excellent, and some days are terrible. I'm coming to realize that whether I'll have a good day or not depends completely on the staff that I'm working with. For example, all weekend I worked with Brandy, who is quickly becoming my partner in crime at Children's ARK. She and I have very similar working styles and very similar mentalities as far as life goes. So the weekend went swimmingly.

Yesterday though, I worked with the bane of Children's ARK. He doesn't know how to assert himself with the kids and he doesn't know how to get their resepct. So, yesterday was a terrible day. To put it bluntly, I got my ass kicked. I, personally, was involved in four restraints, which is almost unheard of. There were about eight in our cabin alone. And one kid that I dealt with twice yesterday is a puncher. He certainly knows how to land them. He got me a couple times in the head and arms (and maybe once in the throat, I can't remember) before we could control him. I felt so ridiculous because after that incident was over, I got a little verclempt and had to calm myself down a little bit. I'd been feeling kind of crummy all day and had been on edge because of the staff that I was working with, and that incident just sent me over the top for a little bit. Naturally, the kids, seeing one of their staff get a little emotional, freaked out, and I had to explain to them that I wasn't hurt and that I was ok, I had just had a rough day and needed some space to calm down a little bit. Needless to say I woke up this morning with a few pretty black and blue spots on my arms.

I'm so thankful that I get along with the people that I work with, because sometimes I think it's hard for people who don't work in a similar environment to understand what it's like to work with kids like this. For example, I was telling Marvin what happened yesterday with the puncher, and he had a hard time understanding how we can tolerate things like that day in and day out without losing our patience with the kids. Or, another example, I had a kid in a small child restraint out in the woods yesterday (which is basically like bear hugging the kid, holding his arms and sitting down until he calms down) and he was screaming at me to let him go and that he was going to kill me, etc etc, when a few girls riding horses came trotting by, and stared at me like I was some terrible child abuser or something. I mean, I understand how it must have looked to an outsider. A grown woman holding a little boy down while he was screaming and crying, etc.; but what that outsider wouldn't know is that if I had let him go, he was ready to grab a stick and start hitting another boy with it. What a challenge.

Sushi-rama...

So, I just remembered another memorable thing I did this past weekend. Friday night Marvin and I went out with some people from the USOC for happy-hour at a sushi bar. Sushi! Strange. I had never tried sushi before, so it was certainly an experience for me. We all sat around and kind of stared blankly at the menu for a long time before ordering, which didn't help at all. I eventually ended up ordering a big roll-y thing with eel, cream cheese, some seaweedy stuff, rice and some other things that I can't remember. Surprisingly, it was pretty good! They bring you a big sushi-log that they cut up into kind of bite-sized pieces which you pick up with chopsticks, and dip into a soy sauce/wasabi mixture. I had a japanese beer first for courage, and then I dove into my sushi log with vigor. One thing about trying something completely new with a group of people that you don't know very well, it certainly helps break the ice :) We were laughing and enjoying ourselves pretty well by the time we all finished our logs-o-rawfish.

Up and down...

Boy, I tell you what; this job feels like bi-polar. One day sucks beyond all suckiness, the next, I can't believe I get paid for what I do. Case in point:

I worked all weekend this weekend, and it was terrible. On Saturday, I worked with the one staff memeber that I just CAN'T get along with. He provokes the kids and never fills out any paperwork, which drives me bonkers. The kids are always on edge when he's around and there are ALWAYS more fights and incidents and restraints when he's working with them. They don't respect him at all. One of the smallest kids on campus put him in a restraint once. Another time one kid held him down while another kid punched him. And he doesnt' do ANYTHING about it!!

So, anyways, this Saturday was a hassle. There were a few fights and incidents, but the most major thing that I can think of that happened involved the biggest kid in Cabin B. He has an extremely low IQ, and doesn't have normal reasoning and comprehension skills, so when he escalates it is VERY VERY difficult to get him to deescalate. I don't remember the exact situation, but something happened with one of the other boys that set this big kid off. He was really upset about something, so he went into the cabin and grabbed the fire extinguisher. He then began to swing it around at people's heads before finally throwing it into the wall where it proceeded to explode all over the cabin. Talk about scary. So I pulled him aside and tried calmly to inform him that if he had hit someone in the head with the extinguisher, he could have killed them. Bad idea. That freaked him out even more, so he ran off into the woods without any shoes. I followed him, because that's what we're supposed to do. After getting reamed out by a case worker, he headed back to the cabin, where he was certain the rest of the kids were going to jump him. About halfway back, he sat down on the trail and began telling me that he was going to commit suicide that night. Great. Of course he didn't, but it just meant that I had MORE paperwork to fill out that night.

So, that was Saturday. Sunday was almost as bad. The one blessing was that I didn't have to work with the guy who provokes the kids. The thing that sucked about Sunday was that I worked with someone who isn't trained to perform restraints, but he likes to initiate them anyways. So, I was invovled in my first two restraints on Sunday. The first one was with one of the two smallest kids on campus, but man was he a fighter. I came home with bite marks and scratch marks and a couple bruises from some punches and head butts he threw my way. BUT, on a positive note, he calmed down after the restraint and was positive for the rest of the day. The second restraint involved the fire extinguisher kid. I don't know why the restraint was initiated, because I wasn't there, but when I walked in, this guy that I worked with was taking the kid down to the ground, so I had no option but to get invovled. Now, this kid doesn't like to take showers. He also doesn't like to wear pants that fit. My lucky position was to hold down his legs. As I was holding down his legs, his pants kept falling further and further down his legs, so by the end of the restraint I was sitting there with his stinky unwashed ass in my face. YUCK!!!!!!

Now, Monday was a complete 180 from the weekend. Yesterday was the first snow of the season here in Colorado, and up in the mountains, where this facility is, we got almost a foot and a half of snow. So, yesterday, I got paid to go sledding with the kids, play games like Jenga, Mad Gab and Chess and drink hot chocolate all day. How awesome is that??? The kids were relative angels all day (and by that I mean, there were only a few punches thrown, and the profanity was limited to maybe once every five minutes or so). And the one that I had to restrain on Sunday was completely calm and collected all day. I tell you what, I'm sure glad that I get a few days like this every once in a while, other wise I'd go completely nuts.

Another day at the Crazy Camp...

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's official. I'm completely nuts. What a week it's been. I started my new job last Tuesday, and today was the seventh day in a row that I've been at work, so I'm starting to go a little nuts. Luckily today, tomorrow, and Wednesday is training, so at least I get a break from the kids, but for goodness sakes! Let me tell you, that place is a nut house. Literally. In fact, let me tell you all about it :)

Ok, so if you've been reading my blog at all recently (like, the last post I think), you know that I'm working at a place called Children's ARK, which is a residential treatment center for highly at risk boys. They certainly weren't kidding when they said at risk. At Children's ARK there are four cabins that the boys live in, with about 10- 15 boys in each cabin. Most of the cabins are roughly divided by age, except for cabin A, which is reserved for the sex offenders. Cabin B holds the youngest boys, Cabin C, the middling age boys, and Cabin D the oldest. Most people agree that Cabin B is the hardest cabin to deal with. The boys are old enough to know how to get under people's skin, and not old enough yet to know how to respect adults and deal with their emotions. So, of course, I've been in Cabin B all week.

Here's a breif taste of the kind of kids that I work with in Cabin B. We currently have a 12 year old kleptomaniac, a boy with possible multiple personality disorder, a 16 year old with an IQ of 56 or so, who doesn't understand personal boundaries, a couple of kids from rival gangs, several kids who have a history of drug and alcohol abuse. In general, it's literally a mad house. Not to mention that these kids are going through or about to go through puberty right now, and don't have the best hygeine skills. The boy with MPD doesn't like to wash his feet. Ever. There's another boy who's afraid to go into the bathroom, so a staff member needs to sit outside the bathroom for him to take a shower. I haven't seen him shower once in the six days that I worked with him. The boy with low IQ doesn't ever clear his throat or wipe his nose without prompting from an adult.

Each boy at Children's ARK has a program that he works with in order to work through his issues and become a functioning member of society. He has a therapist that he sees. He goes to school on campus, lives on campus, and all the staff are trained to deal with whatever issues might crop up. So, my job is to, along with other staff members, take care of these boys when they're not in school, and help them work through their issues. Most of these boys have very severe anger issues, and have gone through several other placements before landing at Children's ARK. Needless to say, incidents happen quite often.

For example, this week alone, we had more fights than I can count between the boys. We had boys go out of staff sight (OOSS, which is like running away, but they don't go off campus. It's one of the way boys deal with stressful situations, or act out) more often than I can remember. Several boys had to get put in physical restraints because they were being unsafe towards themselves or other people. One boy decided that a good way to act out would be to swallow a thumbtack, so that became a sort of medical incident. One boy got mad and ran outside of the cafeteria and threw rocks until two panes of glass broke. Another boy broke one pane of glass. One of our boys got taken away by the cops for a day, because he threw a rock at another boy's chest and the second boy decided to press charges. This is on top of constant posturing, milder acting out incidents, cursing, gang talk, and stealing. *Whew!*

But, I don't want you to think that everything that happens is bad. When certain boys are in a good head space, they can be great. It's neat to watch them help each other through rough times and talk each other out of acting out. And, every once in a while, no matter how tough they talk and act, they remind me that they are just kids that need someone to protect them. For example, the kleptomaniac, I found out the other day, is afraid of the dark. After a particularily long kitchen clean-up we were walking back to the cabin and it was dark outside, so he had to hold my hand all the way up to the cabin. And he needs a story read to him at night to go to sleep.

After today's training session, I'm actually pretty hopeful that things will get better as far as the way I deal with a crisis. I've been feeling a little out of control this past week because it's been hard for me to know what battles to fight and which ones to just walk away from. Training is teaching me out to deescalate situations before they become crises. And, if a serious situation does happen, I'll be able to intervene now, whereas this past week I've had to just sit by while other staff does the dirty work.

So that's my story for now, and I'm sticking to it. I'm sure I'll have more interesting fodder for stories than I know what to do with, so hopefully my blog can be come an interesting piece of entertainment again!

Later Gators :P