The job of parenting

I had a conversation with one of the people I call my bosses (she technically isn't, but the structure at work isn't important, and also very confusing). We got into a discussion about how I need a better job, but no one has called me for an interview since before my husband got a job, he got hired in March, and started in April. This is frustrating because I literally live from one paycheck to another paycheck with NO wiggle room at all. By literally I mean I hadn't deposited my paycheck from this past week yet and had about $2.00 in my bank account and was having issues trying to order my new glasses. She mentioned my resume and how I perhaps need to change it up a bit. I told her there are only so many ways to spread out and professionally say that I'm a glorified baby sitter. I monitor youth, make sure they are behaving and eat. Then try to get them to do things like clean the house and clean themselves. That's basically what happens on a typical shift, it really is. She said there's more to it than that, and said something about am I just baby sitting my own kids. First off, I don't have my own kids, and sometimes I really want them, and sometimes I feel that it would be a terrible idea. Before this job I was always sure that I wanted at least one someday.

I was at Walmart trying to do my grocery shopping for the week so I had a bit of time to think about it. I did decide to look at what I had down for my resume and see if I could alter anything, or add other points. I went and added quite a bit of things that I hadn't put in before. Then, as I was starting this paragraph I remembered one that I meant to put down and forgot about. However, it still sounds to me like I'm just adding more levels to being a glorified baby sitter, maybe I've moved up to nanny instead of baby sitter. As I mentioned in a previous post I do sometimes try to provide life lessons, and am terrible at it. I'm trying to get a bit better about at least stopping the word flow once I get going. I sort of put that on my resume as "life skills". I also put how we are trying to teach them appropriate interactions with others. None of these kids play well with others, a big part of why most of them are there. When I ran out of things to put, I still wanted to put more. The problem was I don't know what else to put. I was trying to think of writing it as describing the job duties of a parent (as she said, there's more to it than watching the kids).

What does a parent do beyond monitoring, transporting, and teaching life skills? Life skills is also being used to mean basic tasks like cleaning, cooking, and laundry. A parent is supposed to offer their child things to do that the child likes to do. Since many of the things that the youth in the group home like to do are not accepted by society as a whole we have issues doing that, or because part of the job is created a structured environment for behavioral modification (another thing to add to the resume, better sounding than med administration). I did include that we try to teach responsibility for individual actions and ensuring that the consequences are appropriate to the actions. I made sure to put in there that consequences are positive or negative. These consequences are were we try our hardest to change behaviors.  A parent is responsible for teaching appropriate behaviors in the first place so I don't have to try latter and do it.

These kids don't view me as a parent, nor do they view any of the staff that way as far as I can tell. They view us more as jailers, at best we are nothing more than baby sitters to them. So my argument, while not professional, and far from how we are supposed to view ourselves, so in the end we were both right, but from different sides of the coin. We are trying so hard to change these kids into something that society will accept that most of the time it fails.

The truth of the matter is I'm burned out from this job, have been for most of a year now, but I'm stuck. Mainly because I don't want to be unemployed. This boss has never seen me at my best, when I actually believed in the system that I was trying to work with, when I thought that the kids in the group home were there because they wanted to change. Most of them are there because there's no where for them to go and they want to be anywhere but where they are. Everything we do to try to get them to do the things they need to do to leave (because that's also our goal, we don't want them there forever) they just get angry and upset with us. It's saddening, and frustrating because they don't seem to understand that just because their behavior isn't necessarily illegal that it's still not right.

This reminds me of a lesson I learned really pretty awkwardly in about the 1st grade. It's not acceptable to lick people in public (even if your pretending to be a dog because your 6 and it's recess). It's not illegal to lick people in public, it's just weird and makes people uncomfortable. This means that society rejects it in the norms, not in the law. Norms are also important and one of the things that the group home kids don't get very well. Norms dictate our interactions with others, so that is also covered in a neat concise package on my resume. It's also part of a parent's job to teach norms as they are teaching what society accepts and doesn't accept.

This is the job of a parent, and in my more ungracious moments I can tell myself that I'm a fool and an idiot for thinking I can do it. However, these are kids who aren't quite right in their judgments, and I'm viewed as nothing more than a baby sitter. At least part of that is because I'm really too young to be given the respect I should be having from them. Maybe they view me as the big sister, but I don't know. The best I can do is model the behavior that we are trying to get these kids to use, but I'm not very good at it. However, no one else is very good at it either, so at least I'm in good company.

Gay marriage and Christianity

I have something I would like to say about gay marriage and religion. I'd put it on Facebook, but there are some pretty polarized people I'm friends with on Facebook and that could lead to some serious fighting that I don't want to have overshadow the original idea. This means that I'll put it here where no one will see it, even though anyone could see this if they wanted to.

First, let me put some history here, just in case this blog works out for me like Emily Dickinson's poems did for her. I am a Christian by most accepted definitions. I'm a member of the United Methodist Church which is popularly accepted as being more liberal than the Catholics or the Baptists, or other denominations. What most people don't know is that the official stance of the United Methodist Church is against gay marriage.

Now, I think that the strict Christian people need to relax on this decision. It does not affect our decisions as Christians whether gays can have a legally binding marriage or not. The Christian churches aren't being told that they have to cater to gays seeking to get married in religious settings. There is a separation of Church and State in this country and this is one of the reasons that it is the way it is.

I know that it makes you people uncomfortable, but it's not your life to live. If you want to know what happens to people who try to live their lives through other people, or control as much of their lives as possible, watch Toddlers and Tiaras, or any of those reality TV shows that follow people around who just try to control each other and throw tantrums like toddlers when they don't get their way. Let me give you a hint, it doesn't usually end well. Some of these children raised that way are unable to function in normal society. That's what's hurting our society, not gays getting the right to have legally binding marriages.

This is still America, it's not so different as when women got the right to vote, or inter-racial couples got the rights just now given to the gay community. We look back on those moments now, and see how obdurate the people were, but we do not get the full reflection showing us that we are just as obdurate about this change. We have come very far, but have not gone a long way.

I work in a therapeutic group home for teenagers. This leads to a lot of life lessons that are not always taught the way they should be taught. Several weeks ago I had a conversation with a youth, who I call Full Circle. She was annoyed that I had not intervened in a disagreement between her and another resident referred to under the name Butterfinger Bites. NOTE: The name Butterfinger Bites is not intended in anyway to be racist. It's based on initials and is not the only candy themed name I have assigned to a kid. The dispute was about who got to use the television. Now, both of these persons are legal adults. I pointed this out and stated that they should be able to work out something as adults. This displeased Full Circle who went to a different part of the house. 


After dinner is when Full Circle asked me about the event from earlier in the day. She asked why I didn't become involved or stick up for her. I, am a devout conflict avoider, pretty much to a fault. It was also essentially a lesson: you can't always run to another person, sometimes you are going to have to sort out things on your own. We got into a bit of a heated discussion in which I told her that life sucks and there is always going to be a lot of pain for every bit of happiness.


Really, that was more pessimistic than I normally am. I am a jaded person, just like everyone else in the world who can drive a car legally. Some people live solely for the happy few minutes in life, and choose to essentially ignore the rest of life. I like the happy moments just like anyone else. However, I know that they are fleeting, which just makes them more precious.


I realized about a week ago that Full Circle was still miffed at me about this conversation that we had had. I was trying to find someway of explaining that it isn't always the pits, though life is a rollercoaster. I thought about it, and wasn't really able to come up with a way that would work to say out-loud. I'm not the best at imparting life lessons in verbal form. I almost never know how to go about them, or how to stop talking once the point is made. This is the solution I came up with, even though no one reads this blog.


Life is sort of like this blog. I know no one reads it, yet I post when I feel the urge, and am not stuck in some book or another. That is why there was a week delay in getting this. I don't really give up on it, though sometimes I forget it exists, but I keep plucking away at it when I do remember it.


Life is about the search for humanity, and it isn't found where most people think it'll be found. Humanity is found in people, in the way we interact with each other. it makes the difference in the world. Have you ever eaten a meal alone? Most of us have at some point, typically at home. However, have you ever done it in a restaurant? One where every table but yours has at least two people talking to each other? No matter how nice the food is, it isn't quite the same when there is no one to share it with. You are missing the component of humanity that makes a meal truly worth the eating, truly sustaining for someone.


We often believe that humanity is an internal trait, but it can't exist in the vacuum of a single person. How could you prove you were humane? Kindness to animals? That could just mean that you prefer animals to people, not humanity. Humanity is being able to deal with your fellow man and being able to interact with them. We hear about people who do heinous acts against others, and call them inhuman. It's true, we shouldn't treat each other with disrespect. However, respect is an internal trait.  Respect is something that can be taught. Humanity is not. Humanity is bred from our interactions with others.


I feel that this would almost sound like a speech that some great orator would read in that it riles the crowd, but it does not necessarily impart much in the way of learning, even though that is the intention here. I feel that this is a lot of words, and hardly any substance. However, it isn't often that the person writing, or doing anything else gets the full impact of the thing they are doing. We have the perfection of our minds to mar what actually comes out to the rest of the world. Maybe, if someone reads this, they can learn something.