Jack

The first time I picked up Jack^* for his counseling session, he stomped out of his classroom with his arms swinging, his hands in two tight fists. As he walked down the hall ahead of me, his legs bowed out as if he'd just jumped down from his horse. But this was Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. And Jack was only six years old.

This was pretty much the way Jack always walked. There was nothing wrong with his legs or his arms; he just wanted to make sure you knew how tough he was. And since he'd been referred to this special day treatment school for punching his teacher in the mouth, his tough guy walk was no little boy's empty bravado.

When I opened the door to my office and Jack stepped inside, he stood looking around at the bookcases filled with toys. There were two of them, one on either side of the room. They held dolls, trucks, clay, blocks, plastic cowboys. My office was nothing fancy, just a big room with a linoleum floor, a desk, table, a couple of metal folding chairs, and the toys. Jack looked up at me, questioning, his hands still curled into fists. A ringlet of brown hair drooped over his brow. He had a head full of brown ringlets. "Would you like to choose a toy to play with?" I asked.

Without speaking he strode over to one of the cases, his arms swinging. He grabbed one of the trucks and threw it to the ground. He looked up at me. I didn't say anything. He grabbed a doll by the head and threw that to the floor and then a plastic cowboy, then a Transformer. Then with both hands he scooped toys off the shelves, throwing everything to the floor. When he finished with that bookcase, he dashed over to the second one and threw those toys onto the floor too. Toys were scattered all over the floor in an ugly mess. A doll with its nose pressed into the linoleum looked like an innocent victim of Jack's war. I said nothing. I only watched.

This was Strawberry Hill Day Treatment Center and my new job. The treatment center was the place where kids who couldn't be helped or managed in the usual public schools were sent. We were in the middle of Bedford-Stuy, which was considered a dangerous neighborhood back then. They always stuck these places in the worst of surroundings. Our kids ranged in age from three to sixteen. Most were African American and Hispanic, but a few were white. Jack was Hispanic.

This was my first week. The day before I arrived there'd been a riot in the lunchroom. Police had been called in to settle things down. I was glad I missed that, but signs of it had not yet gone away. Kids roamed the halls outside their classrooms looking for someone to attack. The place was seriously understaffed, so for a time it looked as if the kids were in charge. Besides being understaffed, many of the employees were untrained. That was usual for places like this in the eighties. Untrained staff can cause more problems than they solve. Most of these kids were volatile; setting them off was easy. One wrong comment or response could do it. The staff made "wrong" responses all the time. They didn't know that you must never get into a power struggle with a kid unless you really do intend to kill the kid. The kid is going to win, and you're going to end up looking foolish, and more frustrated and angrier than you were when you started. Ultimately you were at risk of being unable to function in your job.

Sometimes it took hours just to get these kids seated in their classrooms. One time when a group of kids came charging down the hallway, tearing posters off the wall, I heard a classroom teacher say to a colleague, "All these kids need is a good beating. That would get them in line." What the woman overlooked was that many of...