The Interview

HGL: Hi, I am here for the home-educator interview. My name is Happy-Go-Lucky. I have one year of part-time experience looking after under 5's. I am able to look after your son five days a week, although on Tuesdays and Fridays I am not available until after 10AM. Why, you ask? I go to physiotherapy twice a week for an hour. I had a nasty fall a few weeks back and my lower back is not yet quite what it is supposed to be. Aaw, is this three year old Jason? What a cutie, I know we will get along great.

FFH: Hi, I am here for the home-educator interview. My name is Fresh-From-High school. I am new to babysitting and therefore unavailable on Tuesday and Friday mornings, as I do my Early Childhood Education training on those mornings. But other than that I am available five days a week and I am really looking forward to caring for your son. Is this three year old Jason? What a cutie, I am sure we will get along just great.

Me: Hi, I am here for the home-educator interview. My name is Gracefully Insane. I have four years of part-time as well as full-time babysitting experience with under 5's. I am available five days a week, although on Tuesdays and Fridays I am not available until after 10AM. Why, you ask? I see a private psychotherapist twice a week for an hour. Oh, you would like to have a think about this? Of course, shall I ring you tomorrow to have a chat? Ok, of course I can wait until your call. Thanks for taking the time to meet with me.

Of these three fictional characters, I am the one least likely to get this job, which always poses a moral dilemma for me. Do I tell them why I am unavailable? Do I lie? Do I say "physiotherapy" and later on, when they have been able to see how great a nanny I am, I tell them I see a psychotherapist and that they must have misunderstood me to think I am seeing a physiotherapist. Am I deliberately vague and say I see a health practitioner those mornings but I would prefer not to go into detail?

Apparently you can be a great nanny or babysitter while also being diabetic, or having only one arm, or speaking close to no English at all. Yet having any form of mental health concerns almost always excludes me from the game. The parents whose kids I have looked after will tell you I was great. They will recount stories of me taking their kids to the beach, to the park, doing arts projects with them, as well as practicing manners and self-sufficiency. They will tell you how much their kids loved me and how sad our goodbyes were. They would be able to show you numerous drawings and paintings bearing testament to me once having been an important part of these kids' lives. But to get these jobs I have always had to talk my way around my mental health issues. I have had to cover up my arms with long sleeves for at least the first six weeks of any new nanny job and I have had to make up stories or be deliberately vague about the hours spent at Jay's office every week.

Because no matter how politically correct we think we are and no matter how accepting we are of those with mental health issues, we would still rather they stick to their own kind, especially when it concerns our children. I am not debating the fact we should be careful about who we allow to be in charge of our kids, but it seems that seeing a shrink or having scars on my arms that are quite clearly the result of self-inflicted cuts automatically makes me an unfit babysitter. After people find out I am in therapy, it suddenly does not matter anymore that I have great teaching skills, or that I am caring, loving and consistent, or that I just have a real affinity for kids. Nor does my experience as a babysitter and after-school care nanny matter. After all, a person so deranged she injures herself deliberately (and clearly she has not been cured yet, seeing as she is still in treatment with a shrink, twice a week even!) cannot ever be a good caregiver or make sound judgments when it comes to providing quality care for babies and toddlers.

I had an interview last week with a family who is looking for care for their three year old son, five afternoons a week. So there were no issues about whether I can or cannot provide care during the morning hours when I see Jay. I was careful to wear a long-sleeved shirt and put on my happiest smile. Hopefully they will give me a chance to prove myself and if, along the way, they find out I see Jay, or their son comes home telling them about GI's "stripes" on her arm, they will by then have judged me to be a competent babysitter and it will not be as important. Because really, there is so much more to me than just being a borderliner, if only I am given half a chance.

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI

World War III

After my rather unfortunate experiences at high school, followed by some minimum wage factory work, I decided it was time to exercise the old brain. Last July I signed up for a Certificate in Social Services, which should eventually lead me into a Diploma in Counselling.

Cliché, I know. The patient wanting to become the helper. I have no intention though, of working with people “like me”. I’d love to become a child psychotherapist one day, and work with young kids with behavioral problems. This interest has sprung forth from my part-time work as an after-school care nanny. But that is a blog for another time.

On my very first day at school, I was grouped together with 24 other students. We were all doing the certificate in hopes of either gaining entry into a Social Work qualification or a Counselling qualification. So these were all people wanting to “help” people. I could already see which of them were a walking God-complex in the making. Those that talk about the mentally ill as “them”. Then there was the group of people that just didn’t know what to do with their lives, and this certificate was a short-term commitment, so not too much of a risk. There were those that were well into their adulthood and had decided to make a 180 degree career change. And then there was me. A bit of an outsider. Wearing long sleeves to hide my disturbing personality, and trying my hardest just to blend in.

On these first days they always try to make the group “bond” with exercises that force us to “meaningfully” interact. The exercise we got stuck with was called the “Bomb Shelter Exercise”. The gist of the exercise was this:

World War III is raging all around you. Nuclear bombs are detonated left, right and center. You are a high official and are safely tucked away in a bomb shelter along with other important people (your group members). A group of 10 survivors knocks on your door. They all want to take refuge in your shelter. The problem is, there is only enough space, food and water for another 6 people. These 10 people leave it up to you, the high officials, to decide who these 6 will be. So in your groups you must decide which 6 people you will take on, and which 4 you will basically leave to die. Keeping in mind that these 6 people might be the ones that have to repopulate the whole earth.

This is all you know of the 10 people waiting impatiently outside your shelter:

* 16-year-old pregnant girl, low IQ

* 75-year-old clergyman

* 28-year-old ex-policeperson. Kicked out of police force for aggressive behavior. Not willing to give up their gun

* 42-year-old female physician, can no longer have children

* 36-year-old violinist, served 8 months in jail for drug related charges

* 38-year-old prostitute, has been retired for five years.

* 22-year old black militant

* 25-year old lawyer, married, refuses to be separated from his wife.

* 26-year old wife of lawyer, spent last 10 months in a mental hospital, heavily sedated, refuses to separate from her husband

* 52-year old architect

So the whole point of this exercise was to show us how we stereotype. How everyone would probably think that the militant was a man, the violinist was a woman, etc.

But something far more interesting emerged. For me it was obvious we would at least take on the pregnant girl, the doctor, and the young couple that seems very committed to each other and are young enough to still have tons of kids. But I was very alone in that opinion. My group was very opposed to taking on the “loony”. “She’s fresh from the loony bin, probably psychotic, she might kill us all.” “Yeah, she’s too much of a liability.” “What if she gets aggressive?” “If she is sedated she probably came from the isolation cell.”

I was taken aback by how much opposition arose from the simple fact that this woman has spent 10 months in a mental hospital. People end up there for numerous reasons. And if you take a closer look, most of them are not aggressive and won’t be psychotic. But I was soon outvoted by all my group members and just like that, the lawyer and the loony died during World War III.

When we came back into the classroom, every group got to read out whom they had decided to let into their shelter. I was gobsmacked to find out every single group had voted lawyer and loony out. They were letting a young couple that obviously love each other very much, die, because they were scared the wife might go bananas. When this was discussed everyone was very much in agreement she was just too much of a risk.

As a borderliner undercover, I felt very uneasy. I should have said something, but didn’t, not wanting to give away my cover. I am ashamed to say that the prejudices my classmates were holding up of people like me, were the same prejudices that stopped me from speaking up about how ridiculous it is that this class full of social science students is scared of people suffering from a mental illness. I was scared that, like the lawyer’s wife, I too would be shunned and left to die.

In that classroom was the next generation of mental health professionals. And they had already bagged, labeled and thrown out our future loonies.

What is to become of the next generation of borderliners when tomorrow’s mental health professionals have already written them off?

Thank you for reading.

Yours truly,

GI