"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.