I was their normal adult

We were a young married couple living in Houston, both working – me full-time and my wife part-time as she finished her degree. On alternating Saturdays, I was doing volunteer work at a home for emotionally disturbed children. The home was called Cambio House, and it was operated by Harris County in what at one time had been a large residence right near downtown.

My volunteer work was supposed to be simple and fun – taking the kids who had earned enough points for good behavior on a two- or three-hour field trip. It might be a movie, a visit to the park or zoo, just something fun that allowed them to remember that they were kids.

The problem was that the field trips turned out to be few and far between. The kids rarely had enough points. Behavior problems were always an issue. And these were children who were classified as mildly disturbed. All of them had been separated from their parents and were legally wards of the county. All were under the age of 13; teens went to a different residence program.

One little boy liked to kill small animals, like cats and dogs.

One 8-year-old girl had been found by police digging food out of garbage cans. She had been taking care of her bipolar, drug-addicted mother since she was five.

A ten-year-old boy named Henry had been separated from his brother and parents. The family had been found living in a small, ramshackle garage. The parents were both deaf and mute, and had themselves been abandoned as children; they had no idea how to raise children. Henry and his brother had been adopted, but the family had returned Henry to the court because they said they couldn’t handle more than one child.

Henry looked and usually acted like a normal 10-year-old. But Henry was not normal. Like many of the other children at Cambio, he couldn’t control his anger, and when he became angry, he would physically explode.

Field trips were rare. My usual volunteer work involved playing games there at the home, and sometimes having to help the staff hold down children who had gone on a rampage. And you never knew when something would trigger an explosion.

It’s no surprise that the staff had a high burnout rate. I outlasted almost all of them, but then I only was there a few hours at a time.

All of these children had suffered trauma of some kind or another. In Heart Made Whole: Turning Your Unhealed Pain into Your Greatest Strength, Christa Black Gifford describes two kinds of trauma – Trauma A and Trauma B. Trauma A is suffering the absence of something you should have received. Trauma B is suffering the things that never should have happened, like abuse, or rape, or divorce.

These children at Cambio House, these children classified as mildly disturbed, had suffered both Trauma A and Trauma B. Some had never been loved. Some had been abused. Some had been sexually abused. Some had a visceral hatred for any adult. Some believed they could never be loved, so they did things that made sure they would never be loved.

How do you manage that pain in a child’s life? Trauma, Gifford says, is “any place in your heart where your pain stays greater than your joy.” How do help a suffering child find joy, when all they may show you is hate?

The staff director told me that the most important thing I could do – that I was doing – was being a normal adult. These children didn’t have much if any experience with normal adults. The only normal adults they knew were therapists, doctors, psychologists, and social workers – professionals who had to care for them and deal with them. They didn’t know normal adults.

I was their normal adult.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’re reading Heart Made Whole. Consider reading along and join in the discussion. To see what others are saying about this chapter, “Managing Trauma,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Photograph by Kai Stachowiak via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Story of Joe

Led by Sarah Salter and Jason Stasyszen, we’ve been discussing Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark. In chapter seven, Katie describes returning to the United States to do some fund-raising for herself and her growing ministry. She’s discovering that she’s changing, and doesn’t belong in the comfortable lifestyle in which she grew up in suburban Nashville. (I still have an issue with her attitude at times; perhaps the very reason for the wealth of her upbringing has something to do with the resources that will be provided for her work in Uganda.)

As I wrote last week, these two chapters put in mind of an experience I had in Houston in the mid- to late 1970s. I was doing volunteer work at Cambio House, a residence home for emotionally disturbed children. My primary job was the fun job – taking the kids on a field trip on Saturday, providing they had earned enough points during the week to go.

Sophie (not her real name) was one of those children. She was eventually moved to a residence home in the East Texas woods. Her experience at Cambio did not end well.

Joe (not his real name) was another child. He was 11. He and his younger brother had been removed from the family home, the “home” being an unlit, unheated garage. Today we would say that his parents had speech and hearing impediments, and were developmentally disabled. Thirty-five years ago, what was written in Joe’s file was “parents are deaf mutes, unable to care for themselves or their children.”

Joe’s brother had been successfully adopted. Joe was, too, until his new parents decided he was too much work and turned him back over to the court. After a succession of foster homes, Joe ended up at Cambio House, hating authority and hating adults.

I had been at Cambio almost two years when Joe arrived. I knew the ropes. In fact, I knew the ropes better than some of the staff did, because turnover was high. These were low-paying, easy-to-burn-out jobs (jobs like these probably still are).

Like most of the kids when they first arrived at Cambio, Joe went through a honeymoon period. Then the testing of the system started, and the rebellion. One of the things that struck me about him was that he was a good kid; his parents may have been “developmentally disabled” but they or someone had done a decent job raising him. But he was filled with anger; he had been buffeted and rejected so many times that he began to “live down to expectations.” He also didn’t like to be touched, as if he didn’t trust affection.

I saw him at most once a week, but we did build a relationship. He would become unbelievably upset if I happened to be in the vicinity when he was being disciplined, so if I saw things moving in that direction it was either calm Joe down or leave the room.

He was making progress. It was often easy to define the child by the behavior, but he was a little boy who wanted to be accepted and loved.

One Saturday, none of the kids had enough points for a field day, and it was raining, so we stayed in, playing board games, goofing off and watching TV. Joe was sitting next to me on the sofa, and several other kids were in various parts of the sofa, floor, nearby chairs, whatever was handy. A staff person had wandered in to see how we were doing, but was standing quietly to the side.

Without a word, Joe suddenly slipped his hand inside mine. I had the presence of mind not to react; I squeezed his hand and kept watching TV. I did glance at the staff member, who had seen Joe’s action. His eyes were huge. A breakthrough had happened.

A few months later, Joe was adopted by an older couple whose children were grown. They were warned he might act up at some point, to test them. And he did. He trashed their house. This time, though, they didn’t give him back to the court. They disciplined him, and they kept him. He had found a home.

I’ve looked but haven’t found a web link for Cambio House, but ChildBuilders has a page which mentions it – describing it as Houston’s first residential facility for emotionally disturbed children and saying that it had opened in 1974.

I didn’t see Joe again, but his story had a better ending that Sophie’s. Joe would be 48 today. It’s my hope that he and his new family were a success.

He and Sophie bought taught me that children matter, and that if we have the resources or the time or the heart, we should share what we have.

Katie learned that lesson in Uganda. I learned it in my backyard. It’s the same lesson.

To see more posts on this chapter of Kisses from Katie, please visit Sarah Salter at Living Between the Lines.

The Story of Sophie

In chapter six of Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption by Katie Davis and Beth Clark, Katie describes how her experiences with two children, Sumini and Brenda, profoundly changed her understanding of what she was to be doing in Uganda. Sumini would become part of Katie’s family; Katie ministered to and prayed for Brenda while the child was dying in the hospital. Brenda “miraculously” recovered and was sent home; Katie never saw her again.

Wham! Suddenly I’m 37 years back in time, in a completely different culture that what Katie is describing, and yet…

In 1974, my wife and I moved to Houston from Beaumont, Texas. I had gotten a job at the headquarters of a big Fortune 500 oil company while she finished her journalism degree and worked at the Houston Chronicle. Over the next year or two, I became interested in doing volunteer work, and through a voluntarism program at my company, I eventually connected with Cambio House, a residential facility for emotionally disturbed children.

The children ranged in age from 6 to 12. There were never more than 10 or so at a time. Each child had his or her own room. The children lived there, went to school there, ate there and played there. Their emotional disturbance was officially classified as mild. The more severe cases were assigned to another facility.

My job as a volunteer was the provider of field trips. For good behavior during the week, the children got to go on Saturday field trips. The staff maintained a chart of points, and if enough good behavior points were accumulated, the child got to go on a field trip. It was a big deal – it was often the children’s only experience outside the home each week.

We took trips to the zoo, to Hermann Park, to the movie theater – whatever might be on the staff’s approved list. Some weeks I might have five or six kids; some weeks two or three; and some weeks, none at all. On those Saturdays, I worked with the staff inside the house. They were not fun days. The kids would be angry and sullen, and sometimes destructive. Temper tantrums were common. So was screaming. It could be ugly.

I was allowed to read the children’s admitting files, and the reading was grim. I read stories of child abuse, child prostitution, and abandonment. It seemed impossible for these stories to be happening with the shadow of downtown Houston, then often referred to as the “golden buckle of the Sunbelt.” The place was awash in money, oil money, and yet here were the stories of children abandoned, abused and forgotten.

One little girl, whom I will call Sophie, was 10. She had been brought to the home after police found her and her mother living on the streets. She took care of her mother, and provided for their food. She often secured leftovers from garbage cans. When they needed money, well, let’s say Sophie knew how to earn it. Her mother was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, and her parental rights given to the state by the courts. Sophie bounced around the foster care system, and ended up at Cambio House.

She was small for her age, blond-haired and knew more profanity than most adults. Adults were people you didn’t trust, who took advantage of you and hurt you.

Keep in mind that Sophie was considered a mild case of emotional disturbance. When she lost control, which was often, she was a terror. She might have been small, but she could do serious damage.

Sophie rarely accumulated enough points to go on field trips. But for whatever reason, I came to represent something for her. Perhaps it was because I was associated with fun things, or because I wasn’t there all the time. I did see her in one of her tantrums from time to time, but it was rare. Even the staff noticed she tended to be on best behavior around me.

We’d read together, talk, play games. She drew a picture of me and my wife that I still have, filed away in a cabinet in our basement. The day she gave it to me, I understood what I represented to her. I was hope.

And then one Saturday, I showed up as usual, and discovered that Sophie wasn’t waiting like she always was. I went to her room and found it stripped bare. Sophie was gone. Her behavior had gone from mild to severe in one fell swoop that week, a tirade had turned to serious physical destruction, and she had attacked one of the staff members. She had been sent to a residence home in the woods of East Texas.

I never saw her again. If she is still alive today, she would be 47. Did I make a difference in her life? I don’t know. I hope so. I hope she made it.

But I know what motivates Katie Davis in Uganda.

Next week, I’ll continue the discussion of Kisses from Katie with the story of Joe, another of the children at Cambio House.

To see more posts on this chapter of Kisses from Katie, please visit Jason Stasyszen at Connecting to Impact. Jason and Sarah Salter are hosting our discussion of the book.