Aurora teens work to find ways to handle bullying

We were on the news on Tuesday!

Dan Evans, country singer and also former participant of The Biggest Loser came to visit our facility on Tuesday. It's anti-bullying week, and he talked to them about bullying and what they can do about it. At the facility we run strong anti-bullying campaigns, and this time we got some news attention.

One of my favorite kiddos, (and quite possibly the worlds shortest basketball team captain (coming in at towering 4'9")) did an interview with Dan Evans, which was televised. C. was a former bully (and has the most horrendous past I've ever heard), who has now become one of the strongest roll models and leaders. She's such a cool kid.

I couldn't find the full clip of her, so sad...

Aurora teens work to find ways to handle bullying

Evil Bitch Monster From Hell

I have this client whom I shall call the evil bitch monster from Hell. Now I know that this is the antithesis of therapeutic. I'm way past therapeutic with this little shit.
A little bit of background is in order. The evil bitch monster from hell entered the facility about four years ago. She has some mild mental retardation a dysfunctional family and was molested once by her step brother. She has more attention from staff, family, mentors and special programming just for her. She is the most self entitled little snot I've ever met. Also she is incredibly assaultive but there's nothing we can do about it even though she's 18, because the court has declared her incompetent (which shes not). She even threatens "I can hit you and there's nothing you can do about it". It's infuriating.

This evening she was not following directives, and trying to do unnecessary laundry 20 minutes after her bedtime. I told her no, and that she needs to work on her time management. The evil bitch monster from hell started screaming in my face and posturing at me. She eventually went up to the intervention unit where she demanded that I give her a hug. When I refused, explaining to her that I would not hug her after the way that shed been treating me, and that when she was having better behavior I would be happy to give her a hug, she sat down in the middle of the hall and started screaming. I just walked out. (it would be different I this was not a daily attention seeking occurrence). Later, my co-worker D.V. Called and told me that she spent the next 45 minutes crawling between and around his legs. She then started licking his shoe. Gross.
She's fricking 18 and DECIDES to do this for attention.

Matching socks

This morning I let my extremely low functioning client with severe paranoid schizophrenia into the storage closet to pick out clean clothes to change into after showering.
As always, she ceremoniously opened each drawer one at a time, methodically riffled through each in turn, and closed them. By the end she has a collection or garments that you're not sure how she's going to formulate an outfit (yet she always manages to come out fully dressed).
Then she goes to the sock drawer, where all the socks are singles. She stares pensively at the socks for several moments and then picks a sock out. She then will very slowly pick up other socks and hold the two together, seemingly to carefully consider the combination, discarding the second sock into the drawer until she has found a combination that suits her - albeit not usually matching.

Prostitution for 400 please

The other day we had a phase group for a client (phases are the clients progress in therapy). When a client is applying for their phase II, they must complete a series of tasks including writing their life stories, making a road map of how they've gotten to where they are, facilitate a therapeutic group about their primary issue to their peers, and presenting/defending their phase to their treatment team.
This clients primary issues are prostitution and abuse(which of course go hand and hand). She read her life story, which depicted a traumatized child who was raised transiently in motel rooms, pretending to be asleep while her mother serviced her Johns in the next bed over. A child who was molested by her uncle at age 5 and was prostituting by age 12, and arrested for it at 13.
We then played 'prostitution jeopardy' which while was entertaining and educational, prompted some disturbing commentary and discussion from our hypersexualized kiddos. The comment that stands out to me the most was 'I hate it when men abuse me. I don't even really like it when they rape me". Even after eight months here those comments floor me. Their childhoods were so starkly different from mine that I don't know if I will understand the normalcy of this lifestyle for these girls.