Well, my campers left today, and so begins my day and a half off. We have to be back by noon on Thursday...And then will be on for ten days straight. I'm feeling a little burnt out after just three, so I'm pretty concerned about how I'll feel after ten.
This week's group proved to be pretty challenging. Like I said before, it was ten seven- and eight-year-olds, with a variety of issues. The first being my favorite camper that I mentioned earlier--we'll call her Mara because I don't want to use her real name and she's going to come up a lot in this entry--who has a dental appliance in her mouth that I now recognize is a block for thumb-sucking. It gives her a speech impediment that makes her hard to understand. I'm also fairly certain that she has something going on with her legs; it looks like she maybe used to have braces on her legs. Whatever it is, it makes her stride not quite right, and she walks slower than the other campers, and running is difficult. To top it all off, the poor kid had a stye on her eye, making it half closed and all red. Oh AND she's lactose intolerant. Poor baby. :(
On top of that, we had a girl who has ADHD, whose parents decided to take her off her meds for the summer. We had a girl with a serious kidney problem who we had to let go to the bathroom IMMEDIATELY upon her request. We had another girl with a mysterious form of asthma which apparently manifests itself as a sore throat...okay... But she had an inhaler that we had to deal with at odd times (like the middle of the night). And finally, we had what I can only describe as That Girl. You'll know the type...extremely sheltered by mommy, can't do anything on her own, is eight years old and doesn't know how to tie her shoes. She is like an obnoxious little adult, who is enabled by her mother. Her mother wrote on her HEALTH FORM to not unbraid the little girl's hair from the very simple braid it's in, because she didn't trust that we could rebraid it. The best part of it all is the disease her mommy made up just for her-- it's called "gagmosis" and it's A Very Serious Condition. It literally means that the kid gags on food she doesn't like; this includes beans, salad, hamburgers, cereal, and what seemed like everything else we served. Again, her mother listed this condition on her health form--the place you mention life-threatening allergies or amputated limbs and stuff. Google gagmosis; it's not a thing.
And those are just the kids with actual conditions (or fake ones). Most of the others had extremely strong personality traits, such as the absolutely incessant talker, the girl who must have undiagnosed ADHD, the girl who is a natural trouble maker, and the girl who naturally follows the trouble maker. Putting them all together was a very draining mix.
For a few examples, one girl walked out of her tent absolutely buck naked because she wanted to show me her road rash (I did NOT look). One girl tried to squat on the latrine toilet instead of sitting on it, and peed all over the floor...The natural, unfinished wood floor. Which absorbs odors. Extremely well, I might add. Another girl decided to talk at the dinner table about how she got taken away from her mommy because her mommy smokes pot. Another girl talked about how all her mother talks about at the dinner table is her boobs. And of course, the countless times of the usual, such as talking over other people, not sitting down, being loud at night, not listening to directions, fighting with each other, tears, tattling.
So it was a challenging week to say the least. It was a rough week for everyone, apparently. Three day camp is for our youngest campers, so camp was entirely made up of girls under ten years old. Usually the girls are older. Most of the counselors were extremely negative at the end of this session, bitching about how awful it was, how much the kids sucked, how much they hated pretty much every minute the kids were awake. And I totally had moments like that too; but mostly I've come out of this week knowing that I learned an incredible amount in just three days, more than I've learned in entire years of working with kids. I figured out what works by failing at it the first time. I think that might be the one time when my age does make a difference in a good way, rather than being an awkward difference like it is most of the time. Most of these counselors are around 20 years old, and they're just in a different place in life. I feel like I failed at some things, and some things were very difficult, and sometimes I wanted to just go to sleep and not deal with the kids... But, I figured out ways to resolve the problems that led me to those feelings, or at least make them better. I was determined to fix the things that made me feel like that, because the problem is with me, not the kids. The other counselors seem to get stuck on the first part--"This is hard and it sucks"--and can't yet see the second part.
All that being said, I had a few amazing moments this week, all of which revolved around Mara. Mara was my shadow all week; she sat next to me at every meal, walked right beside me any time we went some place, stood with me at every group activity, and spoke almost exclusively to me. And even that wasn't very much, not at first. She didn't interact much with the other girls; it seemed like she kind of wanted to be invisible in the group, and she was. The other girls hardly noticed her.
And then...We went swimming. It was a freezing cold day, it was raining a little and wasn't normal swimming weather. But, we don't cancel any activity for rain, we still do everything. So we went swimming. And the moment Mara stepped into the lake, it was like she transformed. She was laughing, she was talking and shrieking and playing with the other kids. And they totally accepted her. It was like seeing a different little girl; she seemed SO happy, so confident and care-free. And after that, she continued to loosen up more and more. She never became a social butterfly or anything, but she mass some strides that were huge for her. Every once in a while, she walked and talked with the other girls instead of sticking by me. Once, she sat next to my co-counselor at lunch because I want there at first, but once I got there she didn't ask to move next to me. She actively participated in games, and did all the dances that go along with camp songs. I was so proud of her that I thought my heart might burst.
And then today, it was of course time for her to leave. Her mom got there, and when Mara went in her tent to gather her things, I followed her in there. I knelt down to her level and took both of her hands and told her, "You are a very special little girl. Always remember that, no matter what." Then I have her a big hug. We're supposed to just give "side hugs" at camp but I broke that rule and gave her a real one. I think she got a little shy again at the unexpected talk from me and seemed a little hesitant in the hug. We left the tent then and she walked away with her mom, scarcely looking back at me. I was very sad to see her go.
Then I saw her at a picnic that we have on closing day, where parents can bring the kids for hot dogs and burgers after they collect their girls from us. I saw Mara there and got to say good-bye to her again. Then I sat back at my table and started talking to another counselor. A couple minutes later, I felt two little arms wrap around my waist from behind, and I turned to see Mara, clinging to me in a tight hug. I turned and hugged her back and she hung on for a long time, then I told her I would miss her and we said goodbye again and she scampered away. But I didn't see her family anywhere; manning, she had come all the way back to give me that huge hug, probably from the car. After she left, I was so touched that I had tears in my eyes. It still makes me teary even just retelling the story. I'm not sure that anything else this summer will be able to top that moment for me. I felt like it proved that I HAD reached her in some way, that she understood it and recognized it, and hopefully she will remember what I told her and continue to grow.
This has been an extremely long entry, so I'll end it here and go to bed. Time to recharge for the next group.
No comments:
Post a Comment