The Boy No One Loved and Crying for Help 2-in-1 Collection. Casey Watson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ almost every school has, sadly. The ones that just don’t fit in well, for a whole host of reasons. The ones that disrupt classes, taunt teachers, cause problems for themselves and everyone else. The sort of children, in consequence, that everybody wants to pass on to someone else. And I’d loved it, loved pretty much every minute of it, actually. I loved that I could do something positive for the sort of kids whose home lives were so tough that school was often their only safe haven, which made it doubly important that they could be helped to stay there. Because the bottom line was that if it weren’t for units such as the one I’d worked in, these were the children who were most likely to end up excluded altogether – which would be the worst outcome of all for them.

      But it was doing that – connecting with these sorts of children – that had, by chance, led me to this whole new career choice. When I’d started at the school, my job had been reasonably straightforward: I’d be responsible for two or three children at a time, whom I’d supervise from my own office. With only a small number of children, I could really get through to them. And more often than not, I found, it was this close relationship – this one-on-one attention – that really made the difference in their behaviour. Away from their peers and the demands and anxieties of the classroom, they would often open up with me about their problems. My favourite thing of all was to take them to McDonald’s. There was something about sitting in a fast-food restaurant, over a burger, that seemed to help make them slow down, take stock and, most of all, trust me – enough to let me really try to help them.

      But life being what it is, and budgets being budgets, my job had started growing at an incredible rate. By the time of my leaving, I had fifty children on my list, and had had to take over a classroom in which to house them – one that was swiftly re-christened ‘The Unit’. Here, the children would be divided into three distinct groups: the ones who were generally disruptive and uncooperative; the ones who tended to be bullied and friendless; and then the third group – the ones I classed as being the ‘unknown quantities’. These were the really sad, quiet kids. The ones who wouldn’t or couldn’t participate or interact. These were the obvious victims of poverty or neglect, and it really impacted on their learning.

      It was a big job, and I had the use of teaching assistants when they were available, but, as is the case in most schools, they very seldom were, being in chronically short supply. Instead, I would often have to ask volunteer sixth-form students if they’d come along and give me a hand. Then, together with whatever willing helpers I could get, I’d work with each group separately throughout the day.

      The day itself could throw up all sorts of challenges. I might start by seeing a group of kids that were targets for bullies, sitting with them and discussing ways in which they could build up their self-esteem; we’d also look at what action they should take if they found themselves in a vulnerable situation. These kids seemed to thrive best when we did team-building activities or they were given responsibilities around the school.

      Next, I might have a group of kids that were known to be bullies; these, in contrast, I would talk to about the results of their actions and the impact they had on the kids they bullied. I did a lot of empathy work with these kinds of students, and tried to get them to really understand the emotional damage they caused. Usually, I found that the bullies had unresolved problems of their own, and when this was the case we were very proactive, with both extra support and interventions being put in place.

      As time went on, I’d also begun spending more and more time working with some of the parents, as well, in a kind of unofficial ‘super-nanny’ capacity. This increasingly meant doing home visits, sometimes well into the evening, which was well outside my contracted professional responsibilities – not to mention time-consuming – and so was becoming a bit draining in itself.

      All in all, my ‘unit’ had fast become the victim of its own success. The school community is like any other – if something’s happening, good or bad, word quickly spreads. And, in this case, it was a regular topic of conversation in the staff room, with all the teachers agreeing how much more pleasant life had become since this disruptive child or that disruptive child was regularly removed from their lessons. As a consequence, new teachers were regularly accosting me and, me being a softie, I could never say no.

      It became increasingly difficult, therefore, to help any of the kids in the way I really wanted to help them, and little by little it began to become obvious to me that helping lots of children, just a little, here and there, wasn’t the best use of my time or experience. Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on making a real difference by helping one child at a time, but in a big way?

      And it wasn’t just this that had led Mike and I to fostering. We had already had hands-on experience of the realities of challenging parenting because Kieron had a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome, which meant he was just a little different from other kids.

      Kieron was gorgeous on the outside (a slim six-foot blond Adonis – and he knew it!) but, more importantly, he was gorgeous on the inside as well. He really didn’t seem to have a bad bone in his body, and had never had an enemy in his life. It may have been a part of his condition – we both felt so – but Kieron really didn’t understand unpleasantness or malice, and could only see the good in every single person he ever met. He also had a great love for animals.

      But his condition also meant he had to live life a certain way. He had to have a plan worked out for everything – still does – and really hated it if anything was changed at the eleventh hour. If we were going to do something, or had planned some sort of outing, woe betide us if we tried to change things at the last minute because sudden change really upset him and made him anxious. As a young child, this distress was very obvious to witness. He’d grow jumpy and panicky and be obviously unhappy. He’d also chew away all the skin around his fingers, leaving his hands really painful and raw. As a teenager, and still now, as a young adult, if he was upset he would simply stop speaking and begin to withdraw. Even now, though, if things got really on top of him, he’d still exhibit obvious signs of discomfort and distress, which, being his mum, I was always tuned into.

      He was also, like many kids with Asperger’s syndrome, a passionate cataloguer and collector. His bedroom was always a sight to behold as he had collections of anything and everything. Football figurines and programmes, photographs of celebrities, classic cars, autographs, personal memorabilia … All the birthday cards he’d ever been given in his life, for instance, were all catalogued in a neat and perfect order. His DVDs were all ordered by favourite actors, and so on, his cars by colour, his music CDs by artist. And, naturally, you messed with any of it at your peril.

      It was Kieron, more than anything, that gave us pause for thought when we seriously started thinking about training for fostering. At 19 he was an adult, but still a vulnerable adult, and as he lived at home we both had to think really hard about the impact our plans might have on him because our plans were not just to foster children. While researching ‘working with difficult children’ on the internet, as I’d started doing when I’d become restless about the growing problems of my job, I followed a link through to this new and quite specific kind of fostering, which had been successful in trials in America, where it had first been developed. It used a behaviour-modification model, based on accruing points for good behaviour, in which we’d both be fully trained, and which was specifically geared to help the most difficult children, the ones unsuited to mainstream foster placements. These were the sort of children for whom life was pretty bleak – the sort of children I was well used to dealing with in school, and whom I knew I was in a position to best help. This was the type of fostering that really excited me, and once I’d found out all about it, I was hooked.

      I lay in bed that night, my ears straining for signs of activity in Justin’s bedroom, feeling sleepless and weighed down by worry. For all the training we’d received – six intense months of it, and so much preparation and expectation – I don’t think either Mike or I had really been prepared for the massive impact of having this child enter our lives. He wasn’t only СКАЧАТЬ