1995, Florida

By Juliann Wetz

As I nervously waited for the children to arrive, I surveyed the room. In a few minutes, the children’s therapy session of the domestic-violence shelter would begin, and today was my first day leading it.

I straightened paper and crayons, fluffed up the dolls, then sat down and flipped through my “Emotional Charades” flashcards. A sad-looking face read “disappointed,” and I subconsciously made a frown and slumped my shoulders. The next card read angry, and I felt my shoulders tense. I flipped through the cards, making a few more funny faces to myself, before the first child came in.

Looking back, I was so well-meaning, but so ill-equipped, to work as a children’s advocate. I was working toward a concentration in women’s studies and had taken several classes focused on domestic violence. When I saw the job posting for a part-time children’s advocate to work with children at the shelter while their mothers had group counseling, I thought it would be a great way to get my foot in the door.

I was as naïve as the children.

The age range in the children’s group spanned from 2 to 12 years old. Some children cried as their mothers left the room and clung desperately to their legs. Some children arrived alone; miniature adults that probably had to fend for themselves more often than not. While I thought their mothers probably should have come to meet me and make sure that their children were in good hands, I recognized that for some, I was just a babysitter and that any port would do in a storm.

I cheerily introduced myself and started off with a game of emotional charades. I had a small deck of flashcards with different faces on them, depicting emotions: happy, sad, angry, disappointed, embarrassed, scared, etc. Each child would take a card, act out that emotion, and the others would guess what card it was.

They had trouble right from the beginning. Some of the children could act out happy and angry. Some could not. Some could guess what emotion was being played out. Others did not have a clue. Some of the children acted eerily the same when expressing varying emotions.

I was mildly shocked that this was not an easy game. After several rounds of the same two emotions (happy and angry) being played out, I decided that enough was enough, and I pulled out the crayons instead.

Some children immediately grabbed crayons and began scribbling on their papers, even as I was trying to give them instruction to draw something that made them happy. One boisterous boy scribbled his way through four sheets of paper before I could even get the toddlers settled in their chairs.

When I was satisfied that everyone was seated, and I’d explained that they could draw anything – ANYTHING – that made them happy, I started circling their desks like a teacher, peering over their shoulders and asking them to describe their pictures to me.

I oohed and aahhed over rainbows and puppy dogs, admired pictures of friends and playgrounds, and praised scribbles of bright colors. Then I came to the blank pages of a brother and sister who sat side by side, with faces as blank as their papers.

“You haven’t drawn anything! Do you need some crayons?” I asked them as I moved a pile of crayons closer.

They looked down at their feet and didn’t answer. I wished that I knew their names, but there were so many children, and I didn’t remember being introduced to these two in the first place.

“Can you draw a picture for me?” I cajoled. “You can draw anything you want.”

Silence.

“You could draw a dog, or a kitty, or a butterfly … whatever you want to draw.”

Still no response.

It occurred to me that maybe they didn’t speak English. So I picked up a crayon and put it in the girl’s hand. I motioned to the paper and smiled at her.

The crayon dropped from her hand and rolled off the table. I tried again.

“Do you want to draw a picture, Sweetie?” I was growing alarmed.

She kept her eyes down and her fingers limp. The crayon rolled out and fell to the floor.

I knelt down and looked up into her face. Her brother sat next to her, as unresponsive as his sister.

“OK, if you don’t want to color, do you want to play something?” I asked them softly. “Do you want to play a game? Or play with a stuffed animal?”

Nothing.

“Do you want to look at a book?”

It was like talking to a wall. The children were catatonic, and though I tried to win them over, to spark their interest, or to elicit any small response, I could not engage them and had to direct my attention to the other children in the room.

I realized that I couldn’t truly imagine what these children had been through. I had listened to the stories that their mothers told, of being pushed, strangled, kicked, spit on, dragged by the hair, and cut with bottles. I understood the cycle of abuse and knew the complexities involved in the women’s lives, but I was completely unprepared for working with the children.

How naïve I had been. I thought I would go into that room and change the world, but by the end of that hour, I was shell-shocked. Emotionally drained, I cleaned up the room and gathered my flash cards. As I flipped through them, I thought of the blank expressions on the faces of the children.

On my way out, I passed two children in the hall. I dropped one of my flash cards. One boy quickly stooped to pick it up and hand it back to me. I thanked him and plastered a smile on my face, despite the fact that the card I held read “scared.”

Juliann Wetz has worked as a women’s advocate in domestic-violence shelters for 11 years.

Posted by Common Ties on Monday, November 12th, 2007 | Email This Post

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 12:02 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.