What Happens in the Magic House?
Lots of folks have asked about what happens here day to day, what do the kids do, etc etc. Well, right now we are very cold...so I think wrapping up in blankets with long underwear,wool sweaters and hot tea is the favorite activity. I cannot be convinced that a cement house will ever be truly warm, no matter what my husband tells me. This house was not designed for winter use...
It's ceilings are 2 stories in rooms, and windows airy and stubborn to close. So, the first issue for the kids is getting out of bed. I do remember it was an issue in hot weather as well, so I've given up blaming it on the weather. 3 out of 5 of our kids are labeled as "retarded" by the state, but by no means does this fit them. I would agree they are slower in areas than a kid bound for Harvard, but probably quicker in others.
Imagine the normal problems of any teenager and multipy it by 5. A normal day here is never complete without some kind of crisis...mini or huge, we get them regularly. A Minicrisis goes something like this...chores not finished...garbage not taken out or toilet plugged. Other favorites are kids refusing to come out of bathrooms, hurling insults at each other, hurling punches at each other or taking someone else's eggs from the frig. Major ones are dropping out of school, refusing to show up for work, refusing to eat (we have a current anorexic), smoking in the rooms, balconies and porches after 10 million pleas not to...A few others are more medical...a nagging pain I finally diagnosed as an ovarian cyst(I was right!), depression of the hugest kind, and thoughts of suicide.
Every day Pavel and I haggle over the terms and conditions we are offering. Every day we discuss each kids countless times, until we finally place a moratoriaum on discussion of kids to eat dinner in peace! And every evening Pavel spends a few hours meeting with the group to discuss the endless list of issues that teens need to discuss...why are
you here...how can you hold a job if you don't show up...where the smoking rehab groups meet if you can't stop smoking inside...why you can't stay overnight in Moscow...and funnier things like stinky socks, undies left in the bathroom and who left the ice rink lights on last night.
The kids all know we won't kick them out unless they do a very horrible thing. The deal is, this is a rehab center. This makes the solutions department one of great pressure, as there are no real ultimatums allowed. Motivation is preferred to be intrinsic, a rare commodity in real life, let alone life after a crappy orphanage. I am finished feeling really sorry for these kids, as I see that they do have skills, potential and guts. Now they need to find that on a daily basis and dig up the strength to walk to the store with their stipend, buy food, cook it, wash their clothes and show up for plastering, English, cross-country skiing or cooking class.
There are flashes of improvement. But they are rare...mostly there are long days of talking and talking. We have an agreement to diffuse our immediate reactions of anger or frustration with each other first, so we don't rundown the stairs screaming at the next time that Vanya doesn't get out of bed. We figured out that he will just be fined 100 roubles!
My guess is the kids here still haven't figured out what kind of strange folks we are. We don't drink (they don't know about our late nite sips of wine in the bath), we homeschool our kid, we pick up garbage and require them to say a self made grace at dinners together. "what are you thankful for?" we ask?
They wiggle uncomfortably, turn red and squirm.
but then often come up with a magnificent answer like, "I'm grateful you are back from your trip to the US"
I guess that's why we do this work.
It's ceilings are 2 stories in rooms, and windows airy and stubborn to close. So, the first issue for the kids is getting out of bed. I do remember it was an issue in hot weather as well, so I've given up blaming it on the weather. 3 out of 5 of our kids are labeled as "retarded" by the state, but by no means does this fit them. I would agree they are slower in areas than a kid bound for Harvard, but probably quicker in others.
Imagine the normal problems of any teenager and multipy it by 5. A normal day here is never complete without some kind of crisis...mini or huge, we get them regularly. A Minicrisis goes something like this...chores not finished...garbage not taken out or toilet plugged. Other favorites are kids refusing to come out of bathrooms, hurling insults at each other, hurling punches at each other or taking someone else's eggs from the frig. Major ones are dropping out of school, refusing to show up for work, refusing to eat (we have a current anorexic), smoking in the rooms, balconies and porches after 10 million pleas not to...A few others are more medical...a nagging pain I finally diagnosed as an ovarian cyst(I was right!), depression of the hugest kind, and thoughts of suicide.
Every day Pavel and I haggle over the terms and conditions we are offering. Every day we discuss each kids countless times, until we finally place a moratoriaum on discussion of kids to eat dinner in peace! And every evening Pavel spends a few hours meeting with the group to discuss the endless list of issues that teens need to discuss...why are
you here...how can you hold a job if you don't show up...where the smoking rehab groups meet if you can't stop smoking inside...why you can't stay overnight in Moscow...and funnier things like stinky socks, undies left in the bathroom and who left the ice rink lights on last night.
The kids all know we won't kick them out unless they do a very horrible thing. The deal is, this is a rehab center. This makes the solutions department one of great pressure, as there are no real ultimatums allowed. Motivation is preferred to be intrinsic, a rare commodity in real life, let alone life after a crappy orphanage. I am finished feeling really sorry for these kids, as I see that they do have skills, potential and guts. Now they need to find that on a daily basis and dig up the strength to walk to the store with their stipend, buy food, cook it, wash their clothes and show up for plastering, English, cross-country skiing or cooking class.
There are flashes of improvement. But they are rare...mostly there are long days of talking and talking. We have an agreement to diffuse our immediate reactions of anger or frustration with each other first, so we don't rundown the stairs screaming at the next time that Vanya doesn't get out of bed. We figured out that he will just be fined 100 roubles!
My guess is the kids here still haven't figured out what kind of strange folks we are. We don't drink (they don't know about our late nite sips of wine in the bath), we homeschool our kid, we pick up garbage and require them to say a self made grace at dinners together. "what are you thankful for?" we ask?
They wiggle uncomfortably, turn red and squirm.
but then often come up with a magnificent answer like, "I'm grateful you are back from your trip to the US"
I guess that's why we do this work.