Never Stop Trying

Sitting in the theater, waiting for the show to start, I watched as a woman led a trio of young boys to a row of seats in front of us.  Two of the boys looked so familiar.  One locked eyes with me, gave a little wave, and turned back to his family.   Several more times he and I looked at each other, smiling with recognition.   For the first half of the show, I tried to figure out who he was. And then his name came to me, as did the name of his brother.   

My brain bubbled with curiosity, and my heart swelled with gratitude.  These boys made it out.  How, I do not know.   I figure the countless teachers, Healthy Start coordinators, and other school staff members who had confronted the family, filed Child Protective Services complaints, surrounded these boys with love, and tried to provide some of their basic needs all played a roll.    They never stopped trying, even when it seemed nothing was ever going to change for these kids.

As I watched them interact with such love and connection with the woman they sat with, I thought about where I knew them from...  I remembered their sunken cheeks, sallow complexion, dry stiff hair.  I remember them wearing shoes too big and shirts too small, freezing in the cold rainy weather.  Shaved heads from lice, and rotten teeth from lack of dental care. How they would ask for food and look hungrily at anything you were eating.  How they struggled with learning, and were battling twin barriers of environmental deficits and learning difficulties. 

But mostly I remember the effects of their emotional neglect.  They were starved for attention of any kind, and were traveling down the path of accepting negative attention as the easiest and quickest attention to get. They were often confused about expectations.  They were distractable, could not sit still, and seemed to move like whirling dervishes through their day.  Some adults mentioned ADHD.  They both had behavior support plans. Both repeated Kindergarten.

These boys, and their two siblings, lived in deep poverty. Lives fraught with homelessness,  mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, lack of food, fractured families, frequent moving, inconsistent or non-existent adults, and extreme lack of resources.   They lived with step uncles, ex-grandmas, fathers, mothers, grandmothers, sisters of step-fathers, etc.  They lived in a shack with no running water or kitchen or bathroom or even beds. They slept in heaps of clothes and bedding with dogs. They lived in a broken down trailer out behind another house. They lived behind the wall of a compound, with angry dogs and angrier men.  Occasionally an adult would get it together (threatened by CPS or the school), and these boys would come to school with clean clothes and scrubbed faces. For a week or so. But when the adult fell back into the chaos of addictions, the boys were dropped back into the desolation of neglect and abuse.

Their teachers and the staff members of their school cared and fought for them. They held student study meetings and IEP meetings. They filed CPS reports, had special conferences with whatever family members they could contact.  They fed them, clothed them, gave them books, kept them in at lunch and recess so they could be warm and get extra attention.   

I remember packing extra food for lunch, so I could give them a snack.   I remember they would come to my office at recess and hang out, wandering around looking for things I might give them (food, notebooks, pencils, toys). For Christmas, I bought them hats and gloves because they were so very cold waiting for the bus.  The hat and gloves disappeared into the rubbish of their house, never to be seen again. But oh they were so proud of those warm things for the day or so they had them at school.  I would go into their classrooms to give them extra help in class, and pull them to my room for extra help with homework and reading. The Americorp worker I supervised did the same. 

If a school could have adopted a group of kids, our school would have.  Often, the belonging, optimism, pride, purpose, and place provided by a school is enough to make the difference in a kid's life.  But sometimes it isn't enough. Sometimes the only way a kid is going to survive is to get out.  If they don't get out, their chance of carving out any bit of a good life is about zero.

Oh wonderful day!  These two boys, they made it out.  They made it out into a home filled with love and light.  They have a chance. They have hope.  To see them interacting so happily, with round cheeks, glowing eyes, shiny hair, and clean well fitting clothes just took my breath away.   I spoke with them and their new mom. She explained how much progress they had made in a short time. It was so obvious they were in a good place.  The one boy talked about remembering me, and about our interaction at school.  He remembered I was "Dr. Gibson" and seemed really happy to see me.  The other boy would not recognize me, or could not.   It doesn't surprise me. He had suffered so terribly, more than his brother had, because he was more sensitive to it all.  I don't doubt he's blocked the whole thing out, though I had actually spent the most time with him, and invested the most interventions with him, not his brother who remembered me.

Sometimes, all the things we do which don't seem to get anywhere... sometimes the effort pays off and life does get better for a kid.  It's that starfish parable.  For all the kids that don't make it, we feel sad. But we keep trying because for that one kid who makes it, it matters more than anything.

Never Stop Trying.