Friday, March 19, 2004
lice
Last night, a friend stopped by to see The Boy. After he was sound asleep snug in his bed, we sat around with a cold one or two and a coupla smokes and we all got to talking about many of the events that have lead up to right now. The wife and I related this story:
Prospective foster/adoptive parents are required to take a 9 week class on parenting skills and other subjects affecting kids in the State foster care system. Anyone who thinks that they want to become foster/adoptive parents so that they can raise perfectly behaved little blonde-haired blue-eyed children is in for a rather rude awakening. There's a reason these kids are in the system. They've been neglected. They've been abused. They been traumatized and in many cases subjected to treatment so heinous that a sailor would blush at the description. They come with lots of emotional baggage.
Oh, and frequently, they also come with parasites.
The class serves as a sort of screening process to weed out people who can't handle it and to make sure those that complete the process are fully aware of what they are getting themselves into. Every Thursday evening last fall The Wife and I endured rush hour traffic to drive to the suburbs so that we could take this class.
There were eight couples in the class: The Wife and I, an immaculately dressed former NFL player and his wife (who quite honestly, were the most beautiful couple we have ever seen in person), and six suburban Mr. and Mrs. Bubba Shlubs. You know the type, the slightly bumbling sitcom husband but without the hot wife. All of them very good, kind-hearted caring people, yes, but people who continue to live in a completely different reality.
Anyway, one night the class is doing this "creative thinking" activity. Yeah, we did lotsa stupid stuff like that. Had to fill the three hours somehow.
The instructor passed around this box with all types of objects in it. You blindly grabbed something from the box and then talked about what the object could symbolize about a foster child placed in your home. Stuff like teddy bears and band-aids and condoms and cigarettes.
(teddy bears, band-aids, condoms and cigarettes? reminds me of some parties I went to in college)
Like a box of kleenex could symbolize that the kid had a cold, or cried all the time because they missed their family; or the condoms meant that they had been sexually abused. You get the idea, right?
The instructor frequently separated husbands and wives "to take you out of your comfort zone" just to see how people handled the little bit of stress caused by sitting next to someone they didn't know while having to discuss deeply held opinions and beliefs.
So I'm sitting next to Ranchelle. Yes, that is really her name: Ranchelle. And she is exactly the image a name like that inspires in your mind.
Ranchelle reaches in the box and pulls out a package of RID, the over the counter lice treatment you can get at any drugstore. Well, obviously that symbolized that a foster child could show up on your door with lice. This lead to a brief class discussion about lice and the various procedures involved in treating it. Someone mentioned that there are strains of lice that have become resistant to the over the counter remedies. Well, wouldn't you know, Ranchelle had a sure fire cure.
RANCHELLE: "My 6 year old niece had lice once. My sister just took her outside, sprayed her down good from head to toe with RID, let it sit for about 5 minutes and then hosed her off."
INSTRUCTOR (with eyebrows raised in curiousity tempered with some hesitation out of concern that Ranchelle might somehow be overlooking the box in her hand): "Why yes, Ranchelle, like we have been discussing, RID is a common treatment."
RANCHELLE: "Oops, I sorry, not RID, that other stuff, you spray on cockroaches. . . RAID."
INSTRUCTOR (now with a look of shock and doubt as to whether she heard correctly): "Your sister sprayed her child with RAID, and left it on for several minutes before washing her off?"
RANCHELLE: "Yep. She said those lice never came back."
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Prospective foster/adoptive parents are required to take a 9 week class on parenting skills and other subjects affecting kids in the State foster care system. Anyone who thinks that they want to become foster/adoptive parents so that they can raise perfectly behaved little blonde-haired blue-eyed children is in for a rather rude awakening. There's a reason these kids are in the system. They've been neglected. They've been abused. They been traumatized and in many cases subjected to treatment so heinous that a sailor would blush at the description. They come with lots of emotional baggage.
Oh, and frequently, they also come with parasites.
The class serves as a sort of screening process to weed out people who can't handle it and to make sure those that complete the process are fully aware of what they are getting themselves into. Every Thursday evening last fall The Wife and I endured rush hour traffic to drive to the suburbs so that we could take this class.
There were eight couples in the class: The Wife and I, an immaculately dressed former NFL player and his wife (who quite honestly, were the most beautiful couple we have ever seen in person), and six suburban Mr. and Mrs. Bubba Shlubs. You know the type, the slightly bumbling sitcom husband but without the hot wife. All of them very good, kind-hearted caring people, yes, but people who continue to live in a completely different reality.
Anyway, one night the class is doing this "creative thinking" activity. Yeah, we did lotsa stupid stuff like that. Had to fill the three hours somehow.
The instructor passed around this box with all types of objects in it. You blindly grabbed something from the box and then talked about what the object could symbolize about a foster child placed in your home. Stuff like teddy bears and band-aids and condoms and cigarettes.
(teddy bears, band-aids, condoms and cigarettes? reminds me of some parties I went to in college)
Like a box of kleenex could symbolize that the kid had a cold, or cried all the time because they missed their family; or the condoms meant that they had been sexually abused. You get the idea, right?
The instructor frequently separated husbands and wives "to take you out of your comfort zone" just to see how people handled the little bit of stress caused by sitting next to someone they didn't know while having to discuss deeply held opinions and beliefs.
So I'm sitting next to Ranchelle. Yes, that is really her name: Ranchelle. And she is exactly the image a name like that inspires in your mind.
Ranchelle reaches in the box and pulls out a package of RID, the over the counter lice treatment you can get at any drugstore. Well, obviously that symbolized that a foster child could show up on your door with lice. This lead to a brief class discussion about lice and the various procedures involved in treating it. Someone mentioned that there are strains of lice that have become resistant to the over the counter remedies. Well, wouldn't you know, Ranchelle had a sure fire cure.
RANCHELLE: "My 6 year old niece had lice once. My sister just took her outside, sprayed her down good from head to toe with RID, let it sit for about 5 minutes and then hosed her off."
INSTRUCTOR (with eyebrows raised in curiousity tempered with some hesitation out of concern that Ranchelle might somehow be overlooking the box in her hand): "Why yes, Ranchelle, like we have been discussing, RID is a common treatment."
RANCHELLE: "Oops, I sorry, not RID, that other stuff, you spray on cockroaches. . . RAID."
INSTRUCTOR (now with a look of shock and doubt as to whether she heard correctly): "Your sister sprayed her child with RAID, and left it on for several minutes before washing her off?"
RANCHELLE: "Yep. She said those lice never came back."
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