Girl Called Karen (7 page)

W
hen sister Grace was married in New York in 1975, all my brothers and sisters went to the wedding, and we have gotten together periodically ever since.

My brother Larry grew into a fine man of honor. He is an engineer and worked for the same company for years. Now that he is approaching retirement age, he is exploring other opportunities. He married a beautiful woman, and they have two sons.

Sandra came next. My father and Sally had four lovely daughters, and Sandy is the most striking of us all. In some ways, she looks less like our mother and more like Aunt Mary Louise, who mothered her after my father sent us to New York.

Sandy learned to read before she went to school. (I know because I taught her.) Aunt Mary Louise died
when Sandy was in college, so she has suffered the loss of two mothers. As an adult she worked in journalism, has published several successful books, and mothered a talented and athletic son, who is now grown. Her husband, Mark, has been an environmental and business reporter and is the author of two acclaimed books.

Patricia May was Sally’s fourth child. She was a very sweet, gentle girl who loved animals. She would crawl under the dining-room table with our little dog as company during her naps. She was always an obedient, compliant little girl whom adults liked. She grew into a successful adult.

Grace is a beautiful shining star. My children and grandchildren adore her. She has become a pillar of her community as a volunteer. The children who visit the library where she is the Story Lady clamor to be around her.

She has developed extraordinary skills in working with children with special needs, including autistic children. She has accomplished all this despite having to fight the demon depression – a physiological disorder that has taken down some of our greatest writers. She has a supportive, loving husband, a handsome, intelligent son who is following his dream as a teacher.

David was the baby. Our mother died when he was three. He grew up to be a sensitive, attractive young man. In his teens and twenties, he made poor decisions, but he was never malicious or mean
spirited. Ultimately he married a lovely young woman, is the father of a smart, athletic, and attractive daughter, and has trained and self-educated himself as an engineer. Today he is the manufacturer’s representative for one of the largest companies in North America.

I have written elsewhere in this book about the gains and triumphs in my life that my resilience techniques have earned for me.

As for all six of us, from the time my father dropped us off on various doorsteps like unwanted puppies, from Toledo to New York to Florida to Chicago, he never initiated communication with anyone. Not a single greeting card or letter or telephone call came our way, with one exception: After ignoring Larry’s existence for more than twenty years, out of a clear blue sky, our father called his first son to ask if he felt that Grandpa John’s modest estate had been fairly administered. During that conversation, he spoke of his “son,” meaning not his boys Larry or David, but Marge’s adopted child. Larry was so stunned that he couldn’t say what he was thinking, “Dammit,
I’m
your son!” It was the first and last conversation between father and oldest son since the days in Toledo.

When Great-Aunt May, Grandpa John’s sister, got disoriented and sick, a Detroit bank became her financial guardian. It compiled a list of her assets and sent copies to potential heirs. My father then called Aunt Eileen for the first time in decades to find out what that
was about, saying that Marge told him to make the phone call. It was a terse conversation.

Over the years, he and Marge visited and called his parents from time to time. I have heard that when Grandma Lucile died, my father called Grandpa John to ask what was in her will, and when Grandpa John died, he phoned my step-grandmother to ask about will provisions.

I have never forgotten what my father did to me that awful night, but perhaps the greatest damage came from his abandoning me and my brothers and sisters.

Children are sensitive. We didn’t have the maturity to say, “This is an unfeeling man. He has big problems.” Rather each of us individually felt a deep sense of personal rejection. We didn’t think, “He rejected all of us.” We each felt, “He rejected me. What bad thing did I do? My dad didn’t want me.”

Today he is an old man in his nineties living in Louisiana. Only one of us ever made an attempt to communicate with him. He was unresponsive.

My Uncle Lyle considers him an unfeeling monster. After he disposed of all six of us children, he showed no interest in us. Nothing for Christmas, nothing for birthdays, nothing for illnesses, nothing for graduations. It was as though we were dead.

Poor dad. He’ll never know what wonderful, bright, creative children he fathered. He’ll never know what excellent, intelligent, outstanding grand-children he has missed out on.

I
hope my history will extend your understanding of resiliency. The topic has barely been explored. Maybe it’s because scientific interest is focused on specific problems and finding answers to the perennial question: “How do we fix what’s wrong?”

The study of resilience examines a more positive question: “What went right?”

Throughout my years as a social worker, I have been astounded by the resilience of children. I wish we could pass it out in a capsule. As I checked the meager research, I realized that my life can illustrate how a child may grow into a competent, thriving adult after bad things happen. Children survive much worse abuse than I experienced. I’ve got to admit that when I read
A Boy Called It
by the very successful Dave Pelzer, which describes unspeakable abuse by his mother, I thought,
“There is adversity with a capital A. Such unrelenting, daily savagery is beyond my ken.” Certainly, what I survived was more tolerable.

Many children suffer adversity and flourish more or less successfully whereas others are crushed and never recover. Why? What are the factors that contribute to resilience?

Of all of these characteristics, the ability to positively reframe or look at things from different perspectives has been the single most successful strategy for me. I want to spend much more time on the art and ability to reframe, but first let’s explore the other characteristics of resilience.

T
he first aid to resilience is “a sense of personal competence.” How do we accomplish that? Not every therapeutic fad is helpful. Some “
esteem-building
methods” have included looking in the mirror and telling yourself how smart and attractive you are, chanting mantras such as “I am important,” or leaving lists on the fridge crowing about your many positives.

In a 2002 syndicated column, John Rosemond, M.D., asserted that this type of “self-esteem building” produces “counterfeit positive self-assessment” that can set people up for disappoint-ment in the real world. Dr. Rosemond and I are often not on the same page, but on this issue we agree.

I don’t question that it is a whole lot more productive to face the mirror and describe yourself positively than to look at your reflection and tell
yourself you are fat and plain and poor. Positive thinking is good.

But I think Dr. Rosemond is right in that artificial exercises are not useful over the long haul. When I was a caseworker for a state social service agency in child welfare, it was the collective thinking that we should positively reinforce the aspirations of our foster children.

“Crystal” was a really cute kid who had been in foster care off and on for ten of her thirteen years. She had decided to become a pediatrician so she could help other kids. But Crystal’s IQ was below average, and she was two years behind in school and had never successfully completed a mainstream science class. It was ludicrous to encourage her, and yet that was what was being done. Crystal could have conscientiously told her mirror how smart she was and her social worker could have reinforced this dutifully, but it simply was not constructive.

As one might expect, Crystal did not achieve her goal or even one less lofty. How much better off this girl might have been if her caseworkers had focused on recognizing her talents and encouraging her to seek success where she had a chance of finding it.

When I was in the eighth grade, Sister Mary Albertus said that I was very smart because I was a good student who consistently earned high grades. Sister was always quick to point out my academic successes. She also refused to let me bundle and band the
sales-tax stamps that the class collected. She said my fine motor skills left a lot to be desired. I concluded that I was smart but inept, that I was good intellectually but challenged when faced with practical physical application. It was not a useful idea.

When I went to work in the cake factory, I wanted to be the first female supervisor. I was going to move up the ladder and increase my income while working with my mind and my influence rather than my back. But I quickly recognized that I had to achieve some basic job success to be respected by my future supervisees. So I set about learning how to run the machines and meet the production-line standards.

During my very first shift as the first woman to run the big packaging machine on the Boston Cream Cake line, I almost cut off my finger. The paper got caught in the automated feed, and I was so frustrated and so anxious to do a good job that I started the machine without getting completely clear of the cutting blade, and my little finger was sliced. My supervisor wanted me to go to the hospital, and I flat out refused. In the morning, I went to Lucille, the plant nurse, who thought stitches were probably in order. I explained to her that I couldn’t fail as the first woman on the job. Lucille applied some butterfly bandages, and I returned to the line. I never became the best in the plant, but I got good enough to set a few records, and the guys respected me for how hard I tried.

With each successive machine I learned to run, each job I mastered, I became more confident. I became the first woman to supervise the manu-facturing floor. In fact, they had to change the job title, which had been “foreman” until I came along.

Ultimately I earned my undergraduate degree attending school part-time while working full-time at the plant. When I left the plant, I was the day supervisor in charge of safety and training in the packaging department. I was the chairperson of the Manufacturing Safety Committee for seven food processing plants across the nation.

I think this is a good illustration of how a sense of competency can be built on successive achievements. Valuing one’s talents and personal competency are not ingredients that some guru pours into your psyche. A sense of competency is developed. It can be likened to a major construction project. The foundation has to be reinforced with the right materials, and the walls have to have the correct supports. As challenges are successfully met, confidence and ability grow.

My oldest foster daughter, Shelly, was sixteen when she came to live with us. I hadn’t put up a Christmas tree for several years, but Russ insisted that we recognize having a child in our home again and put up one.

The truth is that he really liked a fresh-cut Christmas tree, and he had missed the tradition. So off he went to select the very best tree, which he
hauled in and wrestled into the tree stand. It was large and grand.

Through the years, the custom in my household had been that the kids put the lights on the tree, and I’d join them for the decorating part. So I brought in the lights, untangled them, and told Shelly to put the lights on the tree and to call me when she was ready for me to help decorate. I was in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies when Shelly called me into the family room where she was working on the tree. It was a horrible scene. The lights were bunched in wads and stuck haphazardly all about the branches.

Whereupon, in my best “social worky” manner, I snarled, “Darn it, Shelly, if you didn’t want to put the lights on, why didn’t you just tell me?”

She didn’t answer right away. Then as one lone tear slid down her cheek, she said, “They never let me decorate the tree because I’m so klutzy.”

That incident taught me a lot about assumptions, expectations, instructing, guiding, listening, and more. It hurt my heart.

That first Christmas, Shelly and I took the lights off and put them back on together. We decorated the tree, and then we baked cookies. Each year, Shelly did more by herself and did it better. Today Shelly and her children decorate a beautiful tree without any help from me.

Shelly was sure she could not do anything right. When she came home from school while at her former
foster home, she was not permitted to enter the house until another family member arrived. Shelly was sixteen years old and had to sit outside because she was not trusted in the house alone. It was not a question of honesty. They knew this child wouldn’t take something that didn’t belong to her. They simply felt she was likely to have an accident or make a mess if left on her own. Shelly had lived with these people for thirteen of her fifteen years in foster care, and they still treated her like the hyperactive toddler she had been when she first came to them. They did not value her, and she did not value herself. She had no basis for believing in her own ability.

I am very proud of Shelly. She continues to struggle with issues of confidence and competence, but she has come a long way.

You can encourage a sense of worthlessness, just as you can help cultivate knowledge of competence. Fostering resilience operates at a deep human level that includes inter-connectedness, positive role models, and opportunities for participation.

We need first to respect and respond to the humanness of all people. I have a poster that says, “He didn’t look like I look or talk like I talk but when he cried he cried like I cry and when he laughed he laughed like I laugh.” We are all fundamentally more alike than not.

Children need to feel that fundamental rapport of the human connection. When we live in parochial
sameness, we build walls. When we label others, we show our approval of labeling.

There are powerful reasons for change.

The headlines scream of school atrocities. Parents and teachers are struggling to handle an increase in bullying among the young.

Our kids are prancing around in clothes with some designer or manufacturer’s name emblazoned on their chests or backs or butts. Those are labels. Kids love them because they believe they tell everyone that they are cool, that they are affluent. Those labels are symbolic of what is going on with our young people.

By the way, I don’t mean just teenagers. Look at the tots. They, too, are designer clad.

When we move from the symbolic to the cultural and societal labeling, it gets uglier because the human connection is lost. The human connection is that crack in the wall that allows us to see each person where she is. It is the oldest of the social worker’s constructs. Begin where the person is. Meet our children where they are. Teach them to meet the other guy where he is. Strip the clothes of the labels, and, by the way, I would encourage a literal interpretation of that. Get rid of the designer labels. Tell your kids about other cultures, and I don’t mean the sanitized popular versions. I am talking about cultural descriptions that, for example, have gone from vilifying to sanctifying the indigenous people of the United States, speech and the written word about
African Americans that oversimplify both their history and their role in today’s society, and the impossibly generalized view of anybody not American as somehow inferior – all these ill equip our youth for any meaningful understanding of life beyond their own neighborhood.

Express your respect for the rights of other people and their cultural norms. We don’t always have to agree, but we need to respect. Try different foods, and go to different places. Connect your children to the humanness of others.

Our children need positive role models. I am writing this at a time when the United States of America has unilaterally invaded a sovereign state on the basis of totally unsubstantiated evidence. Our financial leaders are, for very good cause, being indicted right and left for misuse of their positions. Sports and entertainment celebrities are in the headlines for drug abuse, sexual harassment, and cheating.

You could make a case for the dearth of positive role models, but you would be only partially correct. Twice a month, month after month, youngsters at a weekend retreat have been asked, as a classroom exercise, to identify the person they most respect or look up to or want to be like. It is not the president of the United States or the football quarterback or the movie star that is routinely cited. More often than not, it is mom or dad, followed by grandparents and teachers.

If you cheat on your income tax, set your radar detector so you can exceed the speed limit, take the towel from the Holiday Inn, you are being a role model. Young people have often acknowledged to me that these practices are wrong. But when I push them on it, they admit they think the mistake is in getting caught.

If you sincerely want to contribute to your child’s sense of competence and resilience skills, you need to begin with your own behavior. I raised my sons during the 1960s and 70s. I remember when my Daniel confronted me about smoking. I gave him a big song and dance about adult behavior and mature physiologies. This can be an appropriate response at times. Certainly enjoying recreational sex with your spouse is, and should be, an adult activity. But smoking cigarettes is harmful to your health no matter what age you are, and I didn’t tell Danny that. First I modeled an unhealthful behavior and then rationalized it in an attempt to justify my injurious habit. I didn’t quit until the doctors told my mom Doris that cigarettes were killing her and my fourteen-
year-old
son started stealing my cigarettes. My beloved Doris, who became the mother I chose to fill the hole in my heart, died four years later, but it took Daniel twenty years to quit.

My Aunt Eileen was one of my most powerful role models. She was an independent woman with strong, unshakable ideals. My contact with her during my
formative years was sporadic, but my sense of womanhood was inherently tied up with my image of her. She will always be one of the most intelligent persons I have ever known. She taught me to ask why and expect answers. She didn’t preach. She practiced. That is what a role model does.

I don’t think it is possible to grow in confidence and a sense of achievement without opportunities to participate. We deny people that prospect when we overprotect and overindulge them. I refer particularly to the parenting approach prevalent in American society today. Children are blatantly overindulged and flagrantly underemployed. Don’t get me wrong. I am not promoting sweatshops or child labor. I mean that children are no longer considered contributing members of families. When our grandparents were parenting, the economy was largely agrarian, and all the family members, adults, oldsters, and youngsters, worked to provide for the family. In ensuing generations, the work ethic has eroded. The sense of personal entitlement that permeates today’s society begins at home. Our children need to participate in the work of living.

At the shelter for runaway and homeless children, periodically we’d take in one of what my staff would call “the royalty.” This was a young person who came to us alleging parental abuse, when she was, in fact, the abuser. Usually a parent woke up one morning, realized that the home was harboring a parasitic
young person, and required this youngster to make some small contribution to the household. The mother might ask her daughter to clean the kitchen or some other equally odious chore. The princess then fled to our shelter. On more than one occasion, we arranged for the princess to visit our weekend
attitude-adjustment
retreat. Usually mom’s requirements did not seem as outrageous after a weekend of classroom, exercise, and community service.

Parents of these children were grateful for whatever small improvement there was in their children’s attitudes. The problem is that work is so often viewed as punishment rather than a privilege. I once visited a residential facility for adolescents that took a very different view of work. It was based much more on what the real world is like. The young residents had some basic required chores that had more to do with personal space than anything. Beds had to be made, bedrooms maintained, and laundry done. Beyond that, there was a variety of opportunity in the work life of the community. Participation earned extra privileges and money. A young person who broke rules lost the right to work. Certainly this is more like the real world where poor performance or rule breaking will result in loss of job and income.