A Few Bumps in the Road

The past few weeks have been a bit rocky for Ryan, since returning from Winter Break. Ryan’s behavior was excellent through the end of December but he suddenly started acting out again when he returned this month. We always expect a slight change in student behavior after a long break, but Ryan’s behavior seemed a bit extreme. After speaking with his family, we learned that his mother returned, out of the blue, after abandoning the family four years earlier. Ryan currently lives with his father and grandmother, and after not seeing his mother in a number of years, the event was very upsetting.

It’s extremely frustrating to watch a student make so much progress in our program and then experience a major setback because of something out of our hands. Yet this is what we do—prepare students by giving them skills to cope with what’s going on outside of school so they can focus and learn in school. Ryan’s been working with us for several years now, but at the end of last year we really began to notice progress. In the first half of this school year, he grew in leaps and bounds, but to have such a traumatic incident occur right in the middle his difficult.

In addition to Ryan’s group participation, we’ve focused more on individual counseling to help understand how he feels about the situation and how we can help. Of course, it would be easier to cope with such a challenge if Ryan was more evolved in his emotional skills, but we continue to do the best we can.

Gaining Trust

Sometimes one of the hardest things is to get through to a student. Often if they are living in a tough home situation, they try to close themselves off from other people, even those trying to help. Heather’s been working with us for 2 years now. After we started working with Heather, we learned that while she lived with both her parents and her four siblings, the house was a little unruly. Her parents lacked parenting skills and the home was unstructured. On top of that her father was abusive to Heather and her siblings.

In the beginning she behaved very strangely. She would walk around the classroom with her hoodie over her head, be disruptive in class and make strange noises for no reason. She is an extremely shy girl and we worked with her individually last year to build her self-esteem and confidence. This year we moved her to the Girls’ Group because we thought interaction with her peers might be helpful. It is a constant struggle with Heather. Sometimes she’s great but other times she will act out in class just so I or one of the other social workers will pull her out of class.

It’s clear that we’ve gained a level of trust from Heather, because she will seek Partnership with Children social workers out to comfort her. However, it’s important that she learns to trust other people. I’ve noticed some improvement this year. She’s speaking up more in her group and making the effort to interact. Hopefully this is the first step of many to building her confidence and social abilities.

A New Year

It’s always difficult coming back from a break. The holiday season is especially difficult because it can be a very emotional time for the student and family. So many of our children live in extreme poverty and sometimes a warm bed or hot meal are a challenge for these families, let alone providing Christmas presents. We try to help as many families as possible through our Gift Drive, but even with presents under the tree, we can’t always fix the challenges in their home lives.

At Partnership with Children we try to give students the skills they need to cope with the challenges they face in their lives outside of school, but for some students it takes a few steps backwards to move forward. Sometimes, when starting out in the program they falter a bit when left to their own devices at home. And if a child felt ignored over the holiday, he may start acting out again in class or bullying other students, just to gain attention.

I’m not really sure what the rest of this week will bring. The students have been home for over a week now, without Partnership’s help. Some students might be just as I left them but others might have regressed a bit.

I always hope for the best, but know after a break like this it can get challenging. In this line of work, every day is a new day and I just need to keep pushing ahead.