Connections at Work: The Group Home Boys

There is a Group Home in the boundaries of Midas Creek Elementary, the school where I work. It is a holding home for boys who have been removed from their homes because their parents have lost their parental rights. You have to be a pretty bad parent to lose your rights. Many of them are hopeless victims of drugs and all of the ones I know of, are single parents. Sometimes the boys are placed in the group home because they, themselves, are ungovernable. Like Fad, a fifth grader. Fad lived in a refugee camp in Africa for years before he came to the U.S. to live with his grandparents. He doesn't know if his parents are alive or dead. He didn't know a word of English when he came over as a second grader. The Grandparents couldn't handle him, and he kept running away and staying with older gangish boys. So the State stepped in. One morning Fad came to school as usual and waited on the playground for the morning bell to ring to go in. A few students saw him. But he never made it in. We called the group home, but he didn't walk home. They didn't find him until the next morning when the mother of the friend he stayed with recognized his picture on TV. He had hitchhiked 30 miles to a town north of the school, where he had previously lived. Red flag.

The structure and rules in the group home are strict. The boys carry home point sheets and get rewards if they do well in school. Points at school equals points at home. All privileges are earned and they work up the level system.

All of those boys come to our school and it is a given that they have sad stories. Really sad stories and when they come to me they have repeated their sad stories a hundred times to various case workers, therapists, etc. They have had therapy up the yin yang and they could probably do therapy on me. Each one of them has a deep yearning to go home to their parent, no matter how terrible the conditions. All except Fad, who is at loose ends.

Don is a cute little guy. Dark hair and great big blue eyes. He is quite bright and highly medicated. He's still very impulsive and hyper. The district supplies an aide for Don because he's a runner and has sexual issues and cannot be left unsupervised. He witnessed his parents having sex then tried it on his sister. When I gave him and the other boys a soda, he was the only one who shook it up good before he let the geyser loose in my small office. Don has stories. Incredible unbelievable stories that he makes up to earn the approval of the other kids. The supervisor in the home says that his pretend play involves a graphic 'killing cats" commentary.

These latent boys have had very unstable lives. I never know them for a whole school year because, if they are really good and get enough points for a long enough time, they are rewarded by moving to a higher level home, where they will have all new people, new school, new everything. None of them seem to care much. I guess people with attachment disorders are numb.