Amie's Story
Callie's Story
David's Story
Jessica's Story
Will's Story
Amie was so shy and quiet around the other children that her teacher would take her out of the classroom to get her to speak. Even then, Amie might only whisper a word or two into the teacher’s ear.
Staff members thought she had speech and social delays until they saw how she behaved in her own home. Though the home was dark and cold (the family couldn’t even afford fuel for the woodstove), Amie bounced around happily, showing affection for her mother and no problems whatsoever talking.
“I know you now,” Amie’s teacher told the girl during a home visit. “I hear your voice, and I know you can use it.”
The next day in class, the teacher reminded Amie of this. That’s all it took for the child to finally open up and be herself at Childhaven.
Some children take longer than others to get comfortable in new surroundings and situations. So it was for Amie, who had never been in any preschool, daycare or program before Childhaven.
Our youngsters typically love it when Childhaven home visitors and teachers come to see them on their own turf. They’ll bring it up again and again. “Remember when you came to my house?”
For Amie that connection made all the difference. She was able to meld the two worlds and see Childhaven as a safe place, one in which she could speak and be heard.
Anna thought she’d met the perfect companion in the fellow nurse at the hospital where she worked. When he asked Anna to marry him, the divorced mother of four was thrilled. Soon, the newlyweds added a fifth child of their own to the family and named her Callie.
But the happiness soon crumbled. Callie was 4 years old when she told her big brother in a tiny hushed voice, “Daddy touched me.” A violent confrontation between Anna and her husband sent him to jail and Callie to Childhaven.
The little girl was painfully shy and rarely talked. She timidly let other children dominate playtime and never asserted her own wishes. It was clear that the abuse she suffered might forever imprint Callie with a damaging self image: victim.
Childhaven therapists put Callie in control so she could rebuild her sense of worth. In one-to-one play therapy, Callie could be free of even modest classroom rules that further suppressed her violated spirit. The girl could instruct her therapist to take little actions, such as following Callie through the hallways as she rode her bike with training wheels. She learned to stand up for herself, to trust, to smile again.
One day, Callie suddenly began to talk. She chose to rejoin her classmates and to once again take joy in being a child. Supported by her mother’s fierce determination to help her child heal, Callie recovered.
Today, that once traumatized little girl is married, working part time and going to college. She has the strength to never be a victim again.
David needed his space – lots of it. Get too close and he might hit or bite.
Childhaven staff members would “shadow” the toddler to make sure he didn’t attack the other kids, including those who became targets of his aggression.
The boy’s behavior was understandable given his background. He had been physically abused as a baby, so severely hurt that some of his little limbs had been broken.
Now living with a grandparent, he needed the consistency of Childhaven’s therapeutic child care to heal emotionally and learn to trust adults.
His breakthrough came when he bonded with his teacher. She cared for and nurtured him, setting limits in a loving way that David understood.
That bond, that feeling of trust, was a new and different experience for him. He really wanted to cooperate. Eventually the hitting and biting stopped, and a different David emerged, one that was smart, creative, loving… and social.
He liked to play Spiderman and would involve the other kids in his superhero fantasies, leading the troops around the playground. When conflicts arose, he was the one who stepped in to mediate.
David was with Childhaven four years. During that time, safe and secure in our care, he experienced a real transformation.
In the classroom, Jessica threw tantrums and was often uncooperative, but in “play therapy,” she shined – literally.
The 4-year-old would dress up in every piece of princess paraphernalia she could find. On went the ballet tutu, the tiara, the high heels and the necklaces – all of them. Suitably dolled up, she and her therapist would make the rounds of Childhaven staff members, who would “Ooh” and “Ahh” and tell her how pretty she was.
When Jessica wasn’t being the princess, she was the baby, rocking in her therapist’s arms and pretending to drink from a bottle.
As the eldest child in a family struggling to overcome domestic violence and substance abuse, Jessica desperately craved attention. She got it in individual play therapy, which encourages abused and neglected children to re-enact life situations with a therapist to promote healing.
In play therapy, Jessica got to decide how she would spend the time, and she was determined to make the most of it.
When her time with the therapist was over and the vans were ready to load, there was always a mad scramble to get Jessica ready because she had on layer upon layer of clothes and jewelry.
After a while, her activities in play time became less frantic. Her behavior in the classroom also mellowed as she came to realize that her teachers cared enough about her to give her the attention she needed. Last we heard, Jessica was in kindergarten and doing beautifully.
With his elfish grin and engaging brown eyes, Will was a little charmer. “You just wanted to be around him. He made you happy,” a Childhaven therapist recalls.
But 3-year-old Will was also often out of control. The son of a drug-abusing mother who raised her son in a chaotic and inconsistent household, the toddler was left home alone a lot. He climbed out an open window once and rambunctiously darted through the neighborhood. When his father brought Will to Childhaven, the boy had even begun to strike out physically against other kids.
Working one-to-one with his therapist in a calm environment, Will gradually learned to control his actions. In the classroom, he was given special responsibilities to care for the class’s goldfish (a task that often left more water on the floor than in the bowl). By meeting the pet’s needs, Will came to understand that he and his friends had needs and feelings that deserved tending, too.
While our therapists guided Will toward recovery from his neglectful early upbringing, Childhaven also helped his father become a more effective parent. A recovering alcoholic determined to stay sober for Will’s sake, dad learned positive discipline techniques and behavior management skills.
We caught up with Will 10 years later when he was 15 – a calm, courteous young man who still remembered his fish and his pal, Jamie – the potentially violent teen he could have been nowhere to be found. His father had maintained his sobriety and the little family had grown stronger and happier together.