Last week I got to experience Scienceworks, a science museum for children in Australia. I went with one of my best friend, M, her brother, Mt, and her 4yr old boy, D. It was a lot of fun! Tiring in one sense because I was trying very hard to not let the little parts in me that would be MORE than happy to climb over the signs and exhibits with D out (even though M has met some little parts before, I really didn't feel like losing focus in the middle of absolute mayhem.....and yes it was mayhem for it was school holidays! Thus kids and parents everywhere.) But I equally loved watching D play on things and just play WITH him. I love kids. Kids make me smile, they make me want to get up in the morning.
I don't think I'm likely to ever get pregnant and have my own children because, well its a bit complicated, but I don't think my body could withstand it. My mum had severe morning sickness (hyperemesis) for both my sister and me...for all nine months of the pregnancy. Giving birth was relatively swift but breastfeeding was a nightmare for her. She also suffered post-natal depression following both of us. Now I have a great treatment team that would look after me if I happened to get pregnant and they'd help me watch out for things like post-natal depression, BUT they wouldn't be able to stop the morning sickness and given my body is already prone to cyclical vomiting (syndrome?), I highly doubt I'd get through without a lot of morning sickness. THen there is the sheer difficulty of carrying a baby to term. My mother had 4 miscarriages that she's aware of, I know (from being an ultrasound model) that when I'm not on the Implanon (a form of contraceptive) that I'm extremely fertile, even at very very low weights so I doubt getting pregnant would be a problem but carrying might be. Then there is the stress on my body, my body is already in severe pain every day, I take morphine for this. I've reduced my dose significantly and would obviously try to avoid opiates as much as possible, but the strain on my body would be intensified not lessened through being pregnant....I doubt I'd get away without having morphine. I don't know if I could knowingly bring a baby into this world that will immediately undergo opiate withdrawals. I would be high risk due to my age, my medical status, my mental health AND simply because of the morphine. Now other parents get pregnant and require morphine at times and they are NOT to be condemned in any manner, but given my usage now and given that it would likely increase through being pregnant, well its not an occasional bit of morphine, it would likely impact the baby and I don't want to do that if i don't have to. So put all of it together (minus the fact that I haven't actually found anyone to get pregnant WITH yet, that's a whole other issue I'll write about another day), I don't think getting pregnant is a smart thing for me.
So in light of this, I could foster or do long term care or even adopt....I'm definitely open to those options. But I suspect I would be better off having an "open house" where young people can come and go as they need support, a second home, a time out place, to be loved upon and cared for. But that STILL means that I don't get to enjoy the "kids" (which I consider to be people under the age of 12 for purposes of this blog post)..... So my aim is to work with children.
The main problem in working with children is that they come with parents and even though most parents like me, I've definitely come head to head a few times when counselling with sick children/youth...or sometimes come head to head with a LACK of parents (usually in the case of child protection cases) which also brings with it difficulties. But back in the day (haha, I'm not THAT old but seriously it was awhile ago now) when I was counselling I was good at trauma, dissociative disorders/PTSD (from trauma), crisis intervention, eating disorders and a bit of general counselling thrown into the mix. I was good at what I did. I want to do this with kids. The reason I continue to pursue my Masters of Social Work qualification comes down to wanting to be able to work at the Royal Children's Hospital with CHILDREN! When I'm crying over an assignment we can't do, or wanting to give up because the idea of working again seems out of reach and pointless it is the desire to work with children that keeps me going. I may never get to work with them, but for now I don't know that so I keep trying.
See children bring a different set of qualities to the counselling and social work equation....they typically just want to be loved and respected. If you respect that children are children, don't know everything but also aren't stupid, then it is pretty easy to love and respect children and in return it is often fairly easy to get their trust and respect back....even if it takes awhile. I mean think about it, if you're working with an abused kid, then often its from someone they know and trusted and so its going to take time for them to believe that you're not going to hurt them too and for them to know they can trust you....but if you can keep loving them, keep respecting them and keep being a consistent person in their life, they will respond to you. There are difficult cases, like those kids with conduct disorders or oppositional defiant disorder...but even they will come to love you even if they can't show it so easily. I might not be good at a lot of things, but one thing I think I'm pretty good at is loving people unconditionally and showing that I care about them.
The nice side of being a counsellor/social worker is that there are boundaries and rules and this helps when the cases are difficult or intense. It makes it easier to leave the work at work and go home. It doesn't mean you stop caring or stop thinking about them, but it makes it a bit easier to just smile. When you try to raise a child on your own (and/or with a partner) it can get tricky because you can't just put them aside and say, "Okay going home from work now"....it's harder. If I work as a counsellor/social worker with kids I know I'm going to see some horrible horrific stuff (I've already worked with a lot of people that have horrible and horrific things happen to them), but I get the joy of helping them while also being able to maintain "me" time. I need a lot of "me" time to refresh and recuperate.
So back to Scienceworks, I got to see all these kids running around from exhibit to exhibit, watch a circus act and learn all about lightening! It was like a breath of fresh air reminding me of what I want to do in this life, at least in the nearer future. It also gives me the strength (I think) to keep working on getting well so I CAN work, even just 2 days a week (my goal) and so I can work with the children I long to help. It helps me to get out of bed in the morning when I"d rather turn over and pretend the day doesn't exist, they remind me why I need to not just do my assignments but learn from them....because I want to work with very precious and fragile treasures, children.
(Thanks for listening to my ramblings!)
PS. To all parents reading this, you are amazing! I couldn't do what you do and I admire you all for it.
