Working with behaviorally challenged kids is a day full of reminders. Reminding yourself that it will not calm down. You can not just fix this kid or simply get them to think the way you think they should be thinking. Everything must be dimmed down. Expectations must be much lower and you must celebrate the smallest of victories.
I hear many things as I walk a daily loop with a group of middle schoolers. Each day is different and completely hectic in its own unique way. I hear depressing stories of sexual abuse. A girl looks solemnly down at the ground through her foggy glasses as she verbally walks through the different times in her life that she had been taken advantage of. The boys her age walk a little too closely and attempt to comfort her by sharing their own stories of abuse and the age in which they happened. They jump from extreme language and memories to playing made up games where they are powerful characters in their own modern day mafia, swapping invisible money amongst each other and pointing their invisible guns at cars driving by.
The older students seem trapped. They are stuck in a wondering maze where there is no way out, they walk around searching for something but constantly fall into dead ends that trigger their emotions and behavior into a childish rampage. Many of them walk around with their chest held high. They’ve created a facade in the game of life where they are the hero rescuing the princess, completely flawless and perfect in their own minds. It’s easy for the older kids to pick and identify the faults of anyone else around them. They are surrounded by monsters attempting to ruin the life of the flawless prince charming.
What the older kids don’t see is what everyone else around them does. Each kid looks at the other and see’s the broken child that they are. They speak up and yell at how messed up their neighbor is and each insult builds their confidence like adding on new props to a homemade halloween costume. There are lots of things deep down to admit and to face but the weight of those things are too much. There is too much hurt and pain to surface and each kid knows exactly how their fellow neighbor feels way deep down. They do not dare to search the depths of those things. If they went to the depths of the unknown inside of themselves then what would surface? What would the other kids see? How would they protect themselves once they are no longer calloused but instead fragile like a window pane waiting around to be shattered by an angry flying limb.
The times that the kids are able to express themselves is simply when they freak out. Each kid does it their own way and they all have different techniques of expressing it as well as calming down:
One chunkier middle schooler with a trench coat and an action figure by his side will express himself by screaming his head off and then playing with putty for the rest of the day.
A skinny high school boy wearing a backwards hat and cut off shirt will pound on the walls and glass of the surrounding classes. He attempts to raise the anxiety of everyone else around him. His face turns form his constant slight grin to a face of pure anger. He eventually gets space and does ninja moves and paces around while listening to hard core music through his phone.
The largest high school boy simply and calmly lets his anger out in one single blow. It may be a hole through a wall or beating his water bottle. He calms by coiling into space alone and away from others.
A small middle schooler goes away to small spaces, he will stuff himself in a locker or underneath a table and will not resurface for long periods of time.
Or the handsome looking freckled face rich kid that expresses his hurt by sending as many of his fellow students over the edge as possible. As if he is able to express his frustrations by watching others around him fuming and flailing.
Each individual has their own ways of expressing these frustrations. For some it may be very often and others it is much more rare. For these kids it’s just a little more extreme. They do a good job showing that their trauma goes much more deep than the average dude walking down the street. It’s during these freak-outs that they acknowledge that although they do not discuss it, they know that they are broken and out of control. They are showing that they are very fearful and frightened of who they are and that sometime they may have to face all the stuff built within. But for now, it will stay inside and they will not have to face the fear of failure by trying to move forward.
