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31 OCTOBER 2008

NO 1367

First impressions

"Structure. Emphasize structure. Only don't use that word. They might catch on that I've been talking to you. Tell them you think it's important that the kids have a 'full' day. You know? Highly regimented. No free time. Structured," said a former houseparent advising me on what to say during my first job interview for child care work. I am tired of structure. After three months I've seen enough of structure which doesn't teach. I've had enough of programs and policies which don't influence. I'm sick of relationships which don't initiate change. And this company acts as if it doesn't want such structure. It doesn't experiment with programs. It relies upon the overworked houseparent to establish with the residents the type of relationships which are necessary if the children are to be helped. It is a company without a heart. It is a company managed by the avaricious, employing only the softheaded. "I'm a child care worker – and I'm a social worker – because we want to make the world a better place in which to live." Our time would be better spent recording the mating habits of the bluemouth-yellowtailed warbler. Or organizing the native slaves in the mines of Bolivia. But that would require too much of a commitment. My gosh, my golly, that might even be dangerous. But that is the kind of commitment that is required by this job. You either throw your body and soul into it or you forget it. There can be no compromise.

These kids have been jilted by their mommies and dadas. The soulsource of their identity has kicked them in the head, told them they fail and that there aren't anymore chances. And we offer them structure. If we're lucky and the kid hasn't passed the stage of no return, the kid might pick up a few social skills. As for their main problem, their lack of a central, unifying identity, their ignorance and need of love, we do nothing. Our structure doesn't recognize such needs and so does nothing to satisfy them. First, the company hires untrained and, in some cases, unskilled people; it gives them just enough orientation so that they know what keys fit what doors; it pays them just enough salary to keep them in ample supply of birdfood; then it throws them into the deep end. Any deviation from its standard policy is answered with a midnight kidnapping and a silent death in a vat of greasy, sanctimonious, self-serving regulations.

The central problem is never answered. Yet, who is prepared to make that kind of commitment? Who would even want to? Who would be willing to pay for it? Certainly, not me. I don't want to get down in the muck and help some screwy teenager grow after having been trampled by an army of trauma and frustration. It's true that love completes a person's life cycle, but the person I love I want to love me, not take, hand over greedy little fist, until I'm drained, left as empty as a shell with only an echo for a name. So I am as guilty as my fellow workers of falling back and sometimes hiding behind structure, of assuming the "professional attitude," of using the point system as the chief means of motivation (a token of the "criticizing parent" slung around my neck like an albatross). Just screw on the nuts and bolts and send it on down the assemblyline. Hell if I know what's going on inside the kid, but I sure hope it ain't dangerous, and, if it is, then I pray that the skills we are supposedly bestowing on him will help him channel all that crazy energy into something creative like a janitor's job done with a sense of pride and personal satisfaction, and not anything anti-social, like something you might read about in the headlines of a local newspaper.

Why treat a symptom instead of a disease? Why all the fervor over bandaid procedures? Why keep Moloch alive? The answer: no one can think of anything better. In the meantime, I give the kids some skills and a little friendship, maybe even a smidgen of love, if I think they can handle it (if I can handle it). If I were to judge myself by the standards I judge others, I would have to rule myself a hypocrite. But I cop the fifth and start searching through the want ads.

S. CRAIG WAGGONER

Waggoner, S.C. (1983). First impressions. Child Care Quarterly, 12, 4. pp. 253-255.

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