Giving the People (or, um Person) What They Want

The Absence of Alternatives (Hi!!! Hi!!!) commented on my post from Monday:
"I am amazed at how you keep your professional life apart from your emotional life. I can't even imagine how hard it is. AND you don't sound jaded at all. You sound sincere, genuinely enjoy and believe in your work. How do you do that?"

Why, was that a blog topic just handed to me, not-even-halfway-through NaBloPoMo? Yes, I believe it was!

I should put out there, first, that there are people with much more emotionally taxing jobs than me. People who deal with life-or-death situations on a regular basis, like surgeons and EMTs and, um...hostage negotiators. Hell, a lot of people who were in that room with me on Monday deal with this kind of stuff all the time. I deal with it more often than, say, Joe the Plumber (remember him?), but I should point out that, on many days, my job is full of cuteness and wheels on the bus and the negative stuff is more about the unending paperwork than the possibility of tearing a family apart.

However, some days I do have to call and report suspected abuse or neglect. Some days I am on the phone with tearful parents whose neighbors won't let their kids play with the "weird" kid next door. Sometimes I see my kids' lives in their play schemas, like when a child from what you know to be a chaotic home looks at a game with pictures of an adult and a kid and--rather than talking about "old" and "young" or "big" and "small" as the creators of the game intended--says, "That's the dad and that's the baby. The dad forgot to feed the baby."

So, the question of how to keep professional and emotional lives separate sort of butts up against the question of jadedness. In my experience, people become jaded as a form of self-protection. Because it is hard, to see these human struggles every day, and even harder to see their effects on innocent kids. So you start to come to expect it, so that you don't suck in your breath every time you see a bruise or hear about hot sauce on the tongue. And you know that the other professionals you deal with, those souls who work in The System, are likely to be jaded, and you want to be respected by them, so you try and match their level of detachment.

And, to be totally honest, a small bit of the jadedness comes from an ugly superior disdain. I think that even the most non-judgmental, most compassionate of service workers (and here I include medical professionals, social workers, nursing home attendants, teachers...anyone whose job includes taking care of other people in any way) have days or occasions where they react with revulsion. Especially when you work with kids and you become so invested in them. It's very easy to become impatient, frustrated, or just plain PISSED OFF at the adults who are making choices that negatively affect and sometimes outright harm these children. And then you feel it: the bile in your throat, the righteous speech full of condemnation, the sheer sickness that comes from seeing what Robert Burns* called "man's inhumanity to man." Hopefully it is short-lived, dealt with in formal or informal therapy, and kept far away from the actual people you interact with.

So that's reason/way number one that I try to avoid becoming too jaded. I don't want that nasty superiority to get a foothold in my psyche, because the reality is, the difference between me and "them" is basically luck. I am lucky that I have no cognitive processing issues or overwhelming mental health problems (panic attacks and a tendency toward anxiety notwithstanding). I am lucky that I got through childhood with no major trauma or loss. I am so, so, so lucky that I had great, wonderful parents. I am lucky that I am white and middle-class. I have overcome exactly no odds. So, as far as I'm concerned, I don't get to judge.

(I do, however, get to vent. I think that's also key: a good bitchfest every now and then, with confidentiality and caveats in place, is sometimes a necessary way of emptying the ol' brainpan.)

So how do I do this? I am, obviously, a more highly evolved being than most. Hee. Kidding. Look, I love these kids. Which is, for me, the biggest and simplest way to avoid being jaded: spend time with little kids. These kids don't know that they're getting the raw end of the deal. Well, I shouldn't say that. A few of my social skills kids, I suspect, are able to realize that not everyone lives in four different foster homes before they're four years old. I should say that they don't dwell on it, that it doesn't define who they are. They're not comparing themselves (or their parents) to someone else and getting mad about what they deserve. When I lived in Chicago, I worked in a day care for kids who were either HIV-positive or lived with someone who was. Sound depressing? Yes, it was certainly sad to see what these kids had to go through, but this was the only life they knew. Yes, they didn't like the constant medical procedures or the instability of their homes. But they didn't feel sorry for themselves, so--most of the time--I didn't either.

And finally? I am terribly self-indulgent. Bad TV, candy, pizza...I'm not above both escapism and rewards when I get home. Obviously, a young baby (plus giving up cable) has put the kibosh on some of my more sloth-like habits, but then, I have a chubby soft baby to snoogle with, which is indulgent in a whole different way.

Speaking of which, he's now up, bringing a rather abrupt end to this ramble.

I think I still owe you some knock-knock jokes.


*Don't be too impressed--I totally had to Google that.