"Working the System"

A couple of months ago I was at a conference where a speaker was discussing children and trauma. He told a story to illustrate the resourcefulness and resiliency of a 15 year old girl whose mother was a prostitute and a drug addict. This young girl also had four brothers and sisters and they were all left to their own devises, basically raising themselves. The gentleman had asked the young girl what she was doing for food. She responded that she was having a hot meal every night of the week. He was surprised. “How do you do that?” he asked. “Well, I know if I go to my friend’s house on Tuesday nights and am hanging around there between 5 and 5:30 that her mom will ask me to stay for dinner. I like that because Tuesday is spaghetti night at her house. On Friday night the Congregational Church as a free dinner and there are other places that serve meal on other nights. I’ve got it covered most nights” she told him. The speaker went on to talk about how resourceful this young girl was. I raised my hand and asked him, “What happens between the age of 15 and 25? Why is it that we can call her resourceful at 15 and at 25 we accuse her of working the system?”

That is the question I want to ask of people. If someone grows up in poverty and is living under the rules of a welfare system, this is the system in which their skill base is built. In fact, there may have been few if any opportunities to learn other skills with which to build a life. Many of us judge people in poverty from our middle class viewpoint, expecting people to have had the same level of support and education that we have had. Unfortunately, this is not true. People who grew up in poverty and trauma have many skills that have served to help them survive. These include knowing where to get a hot meal, how to manage on food stamps, how to keep the landlord at bay, where to sleep in order to stay warm, and what to say or do in order to get needs met. This may mean “lying,”, “manipulating,” and “working the system” in order to have these needs met, because they have learned in the past that telling the truth did not always get needs met and the system is set up in a way that it requires someone to “work it.”

As advocates, we can provide opportunities to learn new survival skills once the person feels safe and stable. Safety and stability means being treated with non-judgment and with recognition of the resiliency and resourcefulness that has gotten her to your door. If she continues to use old skills even after learning new skills, then remember how long it has taken you to learn something new and apply it, or to break an old habit, or just remember that she may not feel safe enough to change yet.

Building relationships based on trust is a key to recovering from trauma. Knowing that you are emotionally safe from judgment is a key component in building that trust.

Book Review – The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., PhD., and Maia Szalavitz

I have had a number of survivors ask me questions about what trauma has done to their children and how they can help them recover from the impact of witnessing domestic violence or suffering from sexual abuse. Amidst the stories of children who experienced extreme abuse and neglect, Dr. Perry and Ms. Szalavitz, in their book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, provide hope and encouragement for parents and those who work with traumatized children.

First of all, let me warn you, this book is not for bedtime reading or for reading in large doses. It is hard to put down, but the reader should take breaks, practice self-care, and not focus solely on the horrific stories, but also on the successes that have occurred by providing nurturing, healing environments for children.

Included are the stories of the children of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, the effects of living in extreme neglect (a child from a eastern European orphanage, a baby left alone for 8 hours a day by a babysitter who only returned to the house to change his diaper), and children who had suffered from sexual abuse. There is also the story of the children in Gilmer, TX who were the focus in an investigation which led to hysteria and accusations of ritual Satanic abuse.

In addition to describing how trauma affects the brain of a developing child, Dr. Perry also describes how treating the child as if they were still at the age during which the abuse occurred results in the brain being able to get back on track developmentally. The writer’s tell the story of Mama P. who taught a young mother how to nurture her child after the doctors had learned from Mama P the importance of cuddles and hugs. This is not the story of doctors in labs studying rats, but the story of a doctor willing to learn from children and parents about what is best for the child. Dr. Perry spent many hours on the floor with the child, paper and a box of crayons, letting the child lead the way rather than forcing therapy on a child who did not feel safe.

According to the authors, “The human brain develops sequentially in roughly the same order in which its regions evolved. The most primitive, central areas, starting with the brainstem, develop first. As a child grows, each successive brain region, in turn, undergoes important changes and growth. But in order to develop properly each area requires appropriately timed, patterned, repetitive experiences. The neurosequential approach to helping traumatized and maltreated children first examines which regions and functions are underdeveloped or poorly functioning and then works to provide the missing stimulation to help the grain resume a more normal development.” Basically, if a child missed out on a lot of play, nurturing, etc, the then need to have those experiences to be able to develop into full functional adult.

In the last chapter, the authors reiterate what we have also learned from Judith Herman’s book, Trauma & Recovery; healing from trauma occurs best in communities of healthy and nurturing adults. The implications of living in a transient society with less and less money available for safe and stimulating child care, and schools that focus more on cognitive development than on a child’s emotional and physical needs are also discussed, leaving the reader wondering how the recent cuts in many needed programs will affect the next generation.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is working with traumatized and abused children.