coping-with-x-blog

[coping-with-x-blog]

S House

Okay, so this kid, V. Oh boy, this kid hated me from the beginning. The first day I met him, he pulled me into his room, shut the door and said, “this is my stuff. I don’t like it when people touch my stuff. Don’t find out what happens when people touch my stuff”. Then he opened the door and we stepped out. Mind you, this kid was like 6′1″ and 250lbs. He also had a cognitive disability. Fast forward to an evening where he gathered all the staff and residents and put on a one man talent show for them. Honestly, it was nice, he had a great time and we did as well. One of the kids, B, had a fit halfway through it and I had to take him to his room and calm him down. As I was being screamed at, I hear V laughing in the living room. This kid had grabbed a metal fork and was sitting on the floor by an electrical outlet. I watched as he inserted the fork into the outlet and panicked. I was expecting the worst, you know, like in the movies where the person lights up and you can see their skeleton and they end up covered in soot and their hair standing straight up. No, he just giggled and did it again. Honestly, that in itself was terrifying. My other staff went to go and handle that. He stood up, towering over her (she was may 5′2″ and was very small). He lunged at her with the fork and she came running down the hallway yelling for all the other kids to follow her. She got the kids in the office, and I said I would take care of it, so she locked the door. I approached V cautiously and he seemed receptive. Then suddenly he’s lunging at me, too. I dodge and keep dodging, leading him to the door way. He steps out and says he’s going to run away, I tell him he can go ahead and that we can send someone out to get him if he needs us to. He stepped out of the door, calm as can be. I thought it was over, but no. He picked up a large rock and threw it at me. It caught me on the side of my neck. At this point, my adrenaline had already kicked in and it didn’t phase me. He tried to take a step in the house and I just instinctively shoved him back out and slammed the door, locking it. I went to go and lock his bedroom door, and by the time I got across the house, he was climbing through the window. It was straight out of a horror movie. I shut his bedroom door and held it shut, yelling for my coworker to get ready to unlock the office door and let me in. As soon as I heard the office door open, I let go of his bedroom door and booked it across the house. He was on my heels the entire time. I made it into the office and slammed the door, locked it, and stood against it. He was throwing his entire body against the door, I’m sweating and shaking and trying to keep my footing. You can see the door bowing inwards, it looked like it was breathing. My coworker had already called the police, this all happened within 20 minutes. We called back, saying that we needed an officer asap because this kid was actively trying to hurt us and we had other kids in the house. We had to call back several times over the course of two hours, just to get them to show up. Luckily, a manager from a house a few blocks away came by and talked him down. The police finally show up and I’m covered in bruises, cuts and am a complete mess. I open the door and the fork is lodged in it, sticking straight out. They took him to the crisis response center, and that was that. I never saw the kid again. 

[coping-with-x-blog]

S House

So I used to work in a group home for high behavioral kids (10-17) and I should have started this back then. I experienced so much but it’s been months now and I’ll have to piece it all back together for you. Keep in mind, I haven’t had a job in 6 years, so this is my first in a long time and I’m a student. I haven’t even been with this company for a full year yet. 

Story 1: There was a kid, we’ll call him B. B was the sweetest, most clean cut kid. He was severely underweight and had some major anger issues. He was placed in this home with his twin brother, but his twin was adopted out to a family the day I started working there. (side note: the first thing his brother said to me was, “I miss fucking my dog”, so there’s that). B took a liking to me early on, but that also meant that when he was upset, he relied on me to handle it. One day, he said he was running away, so I told him to stay warm and try and keep close to the house. At the time, he had an obsession with walkie talkies. He was so proud of the ones he owned. After realizing I wasn’t trying to fight him on it, he calmed down a bit. I asked him for one of his walkies and told him he could go and he walked out of the front door. Shortly after, I hear static and him saying, “hey can you still see me?” I responded to him saying that I could not see him as I stepped outside. Then I see him peeking around the corner, from behind a stop sign at the end of the street. “can you see me now?”, “yes B, I see you”. He was giddy, he was so excited to know that the walkie worked at that distance that he wasn’t even upset anymore. I called my house manager and asked if I  needed to write an incident report. Luckily, the answer was no, but I was praised for being creative and teaching him a new coping skill (going for a walk while still being in contact with the house). No one had stopped to think that “running away” was a coping mechanism for him. Why would I trap a child who is upset and expect them to be okay with it? 

One other notable event with B involved the thermostat. It was mid summer, we live in the desert, so we’re talking 110 degrees. He was angry and punched the thermostat. I immediately just wanted to give up on the day. I’m thankful that our maintenance guy got there so quickly to replace it. Fast forward a week later, B is angry again. I’m standing in the hallway, calmly talking to him. It’s funny, sometimes the more calm you are, the more frustrated they get. They want to get a reaction out of you because they want to share that experience with you, they want to make you be empathetic with them. So I try not to take it personally, and I remain calm. I see B go for the thermostat today. I lunged for it, we got to it at the same time. I said, “no way, not today B”. We both stood there with our hands on it, his overlapping mine. He punched me in the side and at the same time, grabbed my hand and tried to pull it off the thermostat. We ended up pulling it out of the wall, but with the wires still attached. At this point, he gave up and walked away. I duct taped that shit back to the wall and had my maintenance guy come and put a cage over it. When he noticed the cage, B threw a light bulb at me. It is what it is. 

B was eventually adopted by the same family that adopted his brother. I ran into them at that mall a couple months later, he had finally put on weight and he was still his clean cut self. He saw me and didn’t want to talk to me, I was incredibly sad about it. I had to remind myself that I could be associated with some bad memories and stressful times and I was able to talk myself out of taking it personally.