How To Change A Life

As the Xbox flew across the room en route to my coworker’s very surprised face, I remember thinking to myself “Why did I take this job?” My coworker was unharmed, the Xbox narrowly missed his head and exploded on the floor with a loud cry from the kids behind me because their only entertainment during the pandemic was now just debris spread out across the hard floor. I used to work at a group home for troubled adolescents. Many of them had problems with drugs, pornography, and aggression. I learned a lot while I was with them, some of the lessons have stayed with me more than others.

Throughout my time at the group home, I saw a lot of things that I never saw during my sheltered upbringing. Something I noticed early on was that all of the adolescents that we had, had one big thing in common. They didn’t care about how anyone else felt, as long as they had what they needed. I really believe that a big part of that comes from the fact they came from homes with little to no structure, most of them didn’t know when to eat, shower, do homework, or anything else that many people build into their daily routines.

That was part of my job, mentoring them so that they could learn what structure was and how it could help them build lives for themselves. I think we can benefit greatly from structure and routines.

Another reason that the kids behaved how they did was that many of them had almost raised themselves. Their parents were often in trouble and many of them were absent from their children's lives. The kids had grown up fending for themselves and only doing what they could to survive. They weren’t used to being in an environment where they could trust others or where they had enough to spare that they could share what they had with someone else.

I remember one night during a particularly long shift, one of the kids became very frustrated and threw his full bowl of cereal on the ground. Luckily, all of the bowls in the home were plastic, but the milk and cereal were everywhere. My coworker took the kid downstairs since it was almost lights out anyway while I stayed upstairs to clean up the mess and watch the other kids who hadn’t gone down to their rooms yet. One of the kids (who was one of the most difficult up to this point) ended up telling me to leave the mess and he cleaned the entire thing up by himself. He did a service for me and I was very grateful. That was huge progress!

The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit. Be patient and stay the course. — Fabienne Fredrickson

During my time at the group home, I often wondered if what I was doing mattered. My coworkers and I would try hard to bring positivity into the kids' lives, but sometimes it felt like a lost cause. Over time, some kids changed, others didn't. The point is that our example matters, we don’t know what others are going through or what they may need. We can't read their thoughts or make their decisions for them. We can encourage a change in the path of someone's life by treating them as they deserve to be treated. It doesn't matter where they come from or where they are going. Everyone deserves a certain level of respect, guidance, love and attention.