I take a kiddo from The Tennyson Center for Children to lunch every week.
Children aged 5-18 years come to Tennyson to heal from trauma associated with abuse and neglect, to help overcome behavioral challenges stemming from mental health issues, or when their autism is combined with depression or extreme anxiety. Many kiddos have been removed from abusive families and have struggled to navigate the foster care system, while others have been able to stay at home and heal with the support of loving parents and Tennyson staff. Many have sadly had particularly bad experiences with adults.
We develop customized trauma-informed treatment plans that help kids process their trauma and find their strengths and gifts as a pathway to healing, educational success, and seamless integration into broader society.
Kiddos join me for lunch off campus when they show progress in their treatment and are being “really safe” as the kids like to say. Being safe means that they are no longer self-harming or lashing out at others when unsettled (or running off campus when triggered) but are instead working through their pain in more mindful ways.
The lunches are pretty casual and usually quite silly, as there is no “treatment” of any sort as we down chicken, pasta or a burger. The kids pick the restaurants, and seem to be branching away from McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A as word has spread that it’s true, they can eat anywhere they would like.
It’s a promise we keep for these kids whose paths have been littered with broken promises.
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Conversations lurch from sports to hairstyles to new brands of shoes and cars. Kids drive the conversations and rightly feel special, feel seen.
Invariably they talk about other kids in the Tennyson program.
They talk of how others are “getting better.” They speak of something they learned from another kiddo who is “being safe” and how so-and-so shared her snack with a kid who was still hungry. They lobby for a certain kiddo who should come to lunch next. They speak with great sincerity and insight, and it is never prompted by me or the therapist who joins us for a meal. It bubbles outward freely and always oozes compassion.
A 9-year-old boy recently told me of a girl who is working so hard, who has come a long way and who is sometimes “not seen.” He always looks at her when another kid is “not being safe” because he knows she will “be quiet.” He told me that he is sometimes sad when he can’t go stand with her in these moments as he does not want her to be alone. My “wow” went unheard as he dipped his french fry into ketchup and switched the conversation to how his burger was getting cold.
This is especially heartwarming because few kids here have experienced much compassion on their journeys. They are fearless in their giving for others, which touches me deeply and suggests their healing is deepening.
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I also make dinners regularly in the residential cottages where kids without families live. They choose the menu and the final product often resembles what we intended but rarely tastes as advertised. One night there was a bit of a mix up so I actually brought pre-made and steaming hot pizzas to the cottage with the youngest kids at Tennyson—the 5-to-8-year-olds.
A door opened halfway through the meal and a family, who just completed family therapy, entered with their child who lives with us. The smell of cigarettes on their clothes and breath was overwhelming. Mom and dad try for sure and do love their child very much. The absence of teeth in their smiles signaled the personal battle they are trying to overcome—and the underlying reason why their child is with us instead of at home with them.
Their kiddo likes plain cheese pizza and the others have saved the last few slices for him. The mom sees the pizza, grabs the last slices of plain cheese and kisses her son goodbye as she and her husband bolt.
It happened in a glance but the impact was profound. The kids looked stunned and looked at their cottage-mate with sadness as it dawned on them that his favorite kind of pizza was gone.
A girl transfers her slice of cheese pizza to the boy’s plate. Then a boy follows her lead and now he has two slices. The generous girl and boy then walk up and grab the last slices of pepperoni and return to their seats to finish their meal. The boy whose parents just left takes his plate with cheese pizza and utters thanks as the boy who picked up a pepperoni slice starts removing the meat from his new pizza—he hates pepperoni, but compassion compelled him to give up his preferred type.
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Many healing kids will dip into a wellspring of compassion as easily as they dip their chicken finger in barbecue sauce. It’s instinct for them, and they haven’t developed any judgments about what it means to be compassionate. They simply act, modeling a depth of care for others that they themselves have never been on the receiving end of.
Many kids here have walked similar paths and tap into an almost limitless reservoir of empathy for those they meet each day. But empathy and compassion are different members of the same family, and it’s when the action that distinguishes compassion from empathy is unearthed that these kiddos blaze new paths to healing.
For them, for me and perhaps for all.
Photo: Getty Images
