I recommended to three families that their daughters seek therapy.
I spent an hour on the phone with the therapist tonight (I sent them all to the same EXCELLENT adolescent psychotherapist). We talked about each kid.
She said, "Wow, this is a whopper of a class!" Not sure she said "whopper" but that's what I heard.
I said, "Yes, and you haven't seen the other 19 yet!"
We went through each case sharing what we knew and how I, as the teacher (and my teaching partner as well) could help support the kids in class.
First kid...
She said, "She has never learned boundaries. Her parents have no boundaries. They give her adult emotional information and she takes it in, but hasn't a clue what to do with all of it."
I said, "Yes, I see that in class...this is why I referred her to you."
Second kid...
She said, "This kid is flippant and angry. The parents are clueless and run ragged. They don't know how to set limits for this kid."
I said, "They say they are trying to set limits, but what I see is that they are in a stare down with their child and the child is waiting for them to blink first because they've ALWAYS blinked first. Meanwhile, the kid is flunking and will soon be on academic probation and I'm certain the parents are going to blink any day now."
Third kid...
She said, "I am the most worried about this kid. In 35 years of being a therapist, I've never seen such a difficult case."
I said...I said...I said...
nothing...
She had just given me too much adult emotional information and I vacillate between being flippant and angry.
I'm holding my boundaries, but barely.
I see compassion fatigue on the horizon. I've been there. I don't want to go there again. Teachers without borders. Only I don't travel to foreign places. I may not see starvation, but I see emotional starvation and it hurts just as much.
Why can't I just teach them about verbs? Why can't I just teach them about the structure of intertidal invertebrates? Why can't I just take them on a field trip to the Zoo and we can all point at the magnificent animals and go "oooohhhhh, ahhhhhh, wow!"?
When did teaching become therapy?
I think I'm going to take my wavering boundaries outside and use them to cover me up in this dreary rain while I walk the dog...
Wet wimpy boundaries...that'll help.
3 comments:
I think you must be very much under that old Chinese curse ... too many interesting times!
I was thinking that we had already had our 'lost generation' (the one that's ten years younger than you), but I think an even 'loster' one is brewing.
It's an epidemic. I work in the ER, and I met a girl last night who is 17, in high school, doesn't know where her mom and dad are, lives with her friend and her friends mom, but her friends mom is current an inpatient at Kitsap Mental Health, so no adults in the house. I asked her how she is doing at school. Is she OK? She said, oh yes, she was Ok, because she was on the Becca bill now, and if she misses a day of school she looses her food stamps.
What are we to do? Really, do you have any ideas, because I see face after face of lost and neglected children and the problems are so much bigger than anything I can think of to do. Except go home and swap stories with my husband who sees the same thing with the students he teaches.
I don't know what to tell you..."loster" is about it. But then somedays I think we should turn the world over to kids so they can run it...well, before they get too messed up by outside forces (like parents, video games, reality TV, advertising, etc...though some have pretty amazing parents and they're still messed up...)
What's RJ's quote from the movie? If you can't change it you gotta stand it?
I guess people like us (teachers, nurses, therapists, etc.) are just helping kids stand it long enough until they can change it...I hope anyway.
And as my favorite quote says, "Hope is the hardest love we carry."
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