Over the last school year, I got to know this little boy. Through a local agency, I was asked to meet him at his elementary school every Wednesday and read for an hour or so. I haven't seen him since the school year ended but he's been on my mind and I want to record everything I remember about him. I'll see him again this year for sure, but I bet he'll be a lot more grown up by then.
This is what I know. (For his privacy, we'll call him Buddy.)
Buddy is seven years old and is the fourth child in a family of five children. His eldest sister lives by her own choosing in another state with a relative. Next is his eldest brother who is at the elementary school with Buddy, I think in the sixth grade or so. Next is his sister who will be in fifth grade. Buddy is seven and will be in second grade. And Buddy's little brother is around three years old. These children live with their mother in the apartment of their 19-year-old aunt and her young children. In essence, Buddy is homeless, as his family does not live in their own place and is at the mercy of his teenage aunt. Once, the aunt kicked the family out of the apartment and they spent a weekend somewhere that had bedbugs. By the next week, they were back in the aunt's apartment.
Buddy's mother is in her late twenties. She works second shift at a job which means she is home when the kids go off to school but doesn't see them at all in the afternoons. She is home about an hour each day before the kids are due to be in bed. On the first day that Buddy and I met, within the first fifteen minutes of our very first introduction, he asked, "Why can't you be my mom?" That was a sign of things to come.
Buddy's father lives in another state but this year Buddy got to visit him for a weekend with the rest of the family. Toward the end of the school year, Buddy told me that his father was in jail for shooting a man because that man punched his father. I mentioned this to the agency liaison and she had no information or confirmation of this. Buddy was so specific about it, saying the man told him to remember how the man smelled, to never forget him while he was away, and that he wasn't going to be able to see him for a long time.
Buddy often came to school wearing dirty clothes. His school imposes a uniform policy of a white shirt and navy or khaki slacks. His white shirt was rarely white, mostly white-but-dirty-and-gray and was truly white only on the days when he showed up wearing something new. I would never see a new shirt twice. His shoes were a constant source of trouble. For most of the year, he wore a particular pair of tennis shoes; one shoe had a sole flopping off the bottom, having detached from the rest of it. He also kept his heels out of the shoes when he wore them and his feet crushed the backs down flat. They hurt his feet when he wore them properly. When I mentioned it to his agency liaison, she lamented about how the agency had provided several pairs of new shoes to him. When asked, his mother would say something like, "He lost them," or "They are in his closet at home." I asked Buddy and he said the shoes they bought him didn't fit or they made fun of him on the bus and he didn't want to wear them. I know that the liaison took him to Target specifically to buy shoes that fit. Who knows where the new ones went? In the meantime, Buddy got the ones falling apart.
Frequently, little Buddy had not brushed his teeth before coming to school and suffered from regular halitosis. He clearly did not bathe often. His nails were long and dirty. One day, the liaison chased me down on my way out of the school and apologized for his smell. It had been particularly ferocious. She at least was able to provide him a toothbrush. When asked about it, his mother said it was Buddy's job to get himself ready for school in the morning, not hers.
I remember one day we were reading My Very First Mother Goose. During one poem, he started relating about a movie he had watched "on the Lifetime channel" with his mom the night before. He then proceeded to describe in full detail the plot of "Fatal Attraction." Am I kidding you? No. He didn't remember the name of the movie but told me all about the rabbit on the stove and the "boy" and the lady kissing and the lady in the tub who wasn't really dead so the boy shot her and, basically, every memorable part. I said, "That must have been really scary," and he replied, "Yeah! My aunt was screaming!" I called the liaison and left her a message about it and she told me the next day that the kids had been an hour late for school the morning after the movie night. Each had said they stayed up late - past 3 AM - watching movies with their mom. The mother denied it, saying they were making it all up. After the liaison learned about "Fatal Attraction" and confronted the mother again, the mother changed her story, admitting that she just really wanted to watch it.
Buddy's favorite book is "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" by Mo Willems. Buddy fancied himself the pigeon. I sent all kinds of books home with him, never to be seen again. But he always had Pigeon with him in his desk. Every day he would take it home and bring it back the next morning.
With few exceptions, I brought snacks with me for our meetings. Stuff to eat together and extra to take home. I always only brought veggies and fruit and he acted like it was Christmas every single time. The joy of the carrots with their own side of dip! Cold apples from the fridge! His favorites, really, were the Cuties - the awesome clementines (oranges) that are small and really easy to peel. Once I let him eat four in a sitting. After a while, when they were out of season, I couldn't afford them any more and I had to stick with carrots and apples mostly. Eventually the liaison asked me to stop bringing the extra because he was taunting other kids on the bus with it and causing a disturbance. He did tell me once that his mother and aunt really enjoyed the bag of baby carrots I sent home with him. I'm still not sure if that's good or not.
Despite his family situation, Buddy had a big smile on his face every time I saw him. He never once gave me trouble. He sat down when I asked, he read to me what he was supposed to read, he answered my questions politely and he was never loud or rambunctious. He had a wonderful spirit and a willingness to please. So the times when I would get a call from the liaison letting me know his latest discipline problems always came as such a surprise. I couldn't imagine Buddy being the source of such constant disruption in his classroom. I could imagine him being a follower and getting into trouble by chasing the pack, but he seemed to have more of a reputation for instigating events. It was clearly one-on-one time that made a difference for him. In conversation with the librarian, we agreed that it was the single biggest factor in his performance. Is there a program to provide that level of service to a child who just simply needs more attention?
Buddy was suspended from school this past year. And it wasn't his first time. Apparently, the teacher threatened to send him to the principal's office and was going to call his mom if he didn't stop doing whatever it was (talking? making noises?) that she didn't like. When the subject of his mom came up, he hid under his desk and refused to come out. Instead of ignoring him, the teacher continued the disruption by attempting to pull him out of the desk. She could not and she called in the principal. The principal also attempted to pull him out and he began screaming, "Stop! Don't touch me!" He was suspended for three days. And it wasn't the first time. He was in the first grade and he had already been suspended at least twice.
Besides being suspended, Buddy was regularly sent to the principal's office to spend the day. He also got sent to a Kindergarten class for days and weeks at a time. "Ms. J" was really awesome but Buddy had no business doing worksheets in a Kindergarten class. He could behave for Ms. J while sitting alone in a corner doing worksheets but wouldn't or couldn't for his regular teacher? I wasn't sure why that approach to discipline was allowed at all. And I think that choice reflected more about Buddy's teacher than it did about Buddy.
By the end of the year, Buddy was diagnosed with ADHD and (surprise!) put on Ritalin. His in-class behavior and reading skills did indeed improve dramatically. Unfortunately, his mother ran out of medication before the end of the school year and Buddy's behavior crashed and burned. He actually became violent, hitting other students. He had never done anything like that before. His mother was given enough medication to last Buddy through the end of the school year. So how did she run out? The agency's prevailing theory is that she was triple-dosing him every day. Or could she have been selling them packaged with his nice new clothes and shoes?
That's all I have for now. But I am seeking the solution to this problem, the little boy's life that already sucks. If anyone has the answer, feel free to let me know. I read Juan Williams' book "Enough" and Tavis Smiley's autobiography "What I Know for Sure". I'm about halfway through Bill Cosby's "Come On People". They pretty much all say the same things: black families need present fathers, families must value education, women must not get pregnant until educated and married. None of that helps Buddy. And Buddy's future is already written on his forehead at seven years old.
Buddy is seven years old and is the fourth child in a family of five children. His eldest sister lives by her own choosing in another state with a relative. Next is his eldest brother who is at the elementary school with Buddy, I think in the sixth grade or so. Next is his sister who will be in fifth grade. Buddy is seven and will be in second grade. And Buddy's little brother is around three years old. These children live with their mother in the apartment of their 19-year-old aunt and her young children. In essence, Buddy is homeless, as his family does not live in their own place and is at the mercy of his teenage aunt. Once, the aunt kicked the family out of the apartment and they spent a weekend somewhere that had bedbugs. By the next week, they were back in the aunt's apartment.
Buddy's mother is in her late twenties. She works second shift at a job which means she is home when the kids go off to school but doesn't see them at all in the afternoons. She is home about an hour each day before the kids are due to be in bed. On the first day that Buddy and I met, within the first fifteen minutes of our very first introduction, he asked, "Why can't you be my mom?" That was a sign of things to come.
Buddy's father lives in another state but this year Buddy got to visit him for a weekend with the rest of the family. Toward the end of the school year, Buddy told me that his father was in jail for shooting a man because that man punched his father. I mentioned this to the agency liaison and she had no information or confirmation of this. Buddy was so specific about it, saying the man told him to remember how the man smelled, to never forget him while he was away, and that he wasn't going to be able to see him for a long time.
Buddy often came to school wearing dirty clothes. His school imposes a uniform policy of a white shirt and navy or khaki slacks. His white shirt was rarely white, mostly white-but-dirty-and-gray and was truly white only on the days when he showed up wearing something new. I would never see a new shirt twice. His shoes were a constant source of trouble. For most of the year, he wore a particular pair of tennis shoes; one shoe had a sole flopping off the bottom, having detached from the rest of it. He also kept his heels out of the shoes when he wore them and his feet crushed the backs down flat. They hurt his feet when he wore them properly. When I mentioned it to his agency liaison, she lamented about how the agency had provided several pairs of new shoes to him. When asked, his mother would say something like, "He lost them," or "They are in his closet at home." I asked Buddy and he said the shoes they bought him didn't fit or they made fun of him on the bus and he didn't want to wear them. I know that the liaison took him to Target specifically to buy shoes that fit. Who knows where the new ones went? In the meantime, Buddy got the ones falling apart.
Frequently, little Buddy had not brushed his teeth before coming to school and suffered from regular halitosis. He clearly did not bathe often. His nails were long and dirty. One day, the liaison chased me down on my way out of the school and apologized for his smell. It had been particularly ferocious. She at least was able to provide him a toothbrush. When asked about it, his mother said it was Buddy's job to get himself ready for school in the morning, not hers.
I remember one day we were reading My Very First Mother Goose. During one poem, he started relating about a movie he had watched "on the Lifetime channel" with his mom the night before. He then proceeded to describe in full detail the plot of "Fatal Attraction." Am I kidding you? No. He didn't remember the name of the movie but told me all about the rabbit on the stove and the "boy" and the lady kissing and the lady in the tub who wasn't really dead so the boy shot her and, basically, every memorable part. I said, "That must have been really scary," and he replied, "Yeah! My aunt was screaming!" I called the liaison and left her a message about it and she told me the next day that the kids had been an hour late for school the morning after the movie night. Each had said they stayed up late - past 3 AM - watching movies with their mom. The mother denied it, saying they were making it all up. After the liaison learned about "Fatal Attraction" and confronted the mother again, the mother changed her story, admitting that she just really wanted to watch it.
Buddy's favorite book is "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" by Mo Willems. Buddy fancied himself the pigeon. I sent all kinds of books home with him, never to be seen again. But he always had Pigeon with him in his desk. Every day he would take it home and bring it back the next morning.
With few exceptions, I brought snacks with me for our meetings. Stuff to eat together and extra to take home. I always only brought veggies and fruit and he acted like it was Christmas every single time. The joy of the carrots with their own side of dip! Cold apples from the fridge! His favorites, really, were the Cuties - the awesome clementines (oranges) that are small and really easy to peel. Once I let him eat four in a sitting. After a while, when they were out of season, I couldn't afford them any more and I had to stick with carrots and apples mostly. Eventually the liaison asked me to stop bringing the extra because he was taunting other kids on the bus with it and causing a disturbance. He did tell me once that his mother and aunt really enjoyed the bag of baby carrots I sent home with him. I'm still not sure if that's good or not.
Despite his family situation, Buddy had a big smile on his face every time I saw him. He never once gave me trouble. He sat down when I asked, he read to me what he was supposed to read, he answered my questions politely and he was never loud or rambunctious. He had a wonderful spirit and a willingness to please. So the times when I would get a call from the liaison letting me know his latest discipline problems always came as such a surprise. I couldn't imagine Buddy being the source of such constant disruption in his classroom. I could imagine him being a follower and getting into trouble by chasing the pack, but he seemed to have more of a reputation for instigating events. It was clearly one-on-one time that made a difference for him. In conversation with the librarian, we agreed that it was the single biggest factor in his performance. Is there a program to provide that level of service to a child who just simply needs more attention?
Buddy was suspended from school this past year. And it wasn't his first time. Apparently, the teacher threatened to send him to the principal's office and was going to call his mom if he didn't stop doing whatever it was (talking? making noises?) that she didn't like. When the subject of his mom came up, he hid under his desk and refused to come out. Instead of ignoring him, the teacher continued the disruption by attempting to pull him out of the desk. She could not and she called in the principal. The principal also attempted to pull him out and he began screaming, "Stop! Don't touch me!" He was suspended for three days. And it wasn't the first time. He was in the first grade and he had already been suspended at least twice.
Besides being suspended, Buddy was regularly sent to the principal's office to spend the day. He also got sent to a Kindergarten class for days and weeks at a time. "Ms. J" was really awesome but Buddy had no business doing worksheets in a Kindergarten class. He could behave for Ms. J while sitting alone in a corner doing worksheets but wouldn't or couldn't for his regular teacher? I wasn't sure why that approach to discipline was allowed at all. And I think that choice reflected more about Buddy's teacher than it did about Buddy.
By the end of the year, Buddy was diagnosed with ADHD and (surprise!) put on Ritalin. His in-class behavior and reading skills did indeed improve dramatically. Unfortunately, his mother ran out of medication before the end of the school year and Buddy's behavior crashed and burned. He actually became violent, hitting other students. He had never done anything like that before. His mother was given enough medication to last Buddy through the end of the school year. So how did she run out? The agency's prevailing theory is that she was triple-dosing him every day. Or could she have been selling them packaged with his nice new clothes and shoes?
That's all I have for now. But I am seeking the solution to this problem, the little boy's life that already sucks. If anyone has the answer, feel free to let me know. I read Juan Williams' book "Enough" and Tavis Smiley's autobiography "What I Know for Sure". I'm about halfway through Bill Cosby's "Come On People". They pretty much all say the same things: black families need present fathers, families must value education, women must not get pregnant until educated and married. None of that helps Buddy. And Buddy's future is already written on his forehead at seven years old.
1 comment:
Caroline - I am so moved by your words. The story of Buddy will stay with me for a long time. I especially appreciate the way you reported events in a specific and concrete way without indulging in a lot of emotional judgement. Just the facts ma'am. . . it's very powerful. You're a terrific writer. Have you seen Buddy this year yet?
PS - what school does Robbie attend?
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