Coping, Learning at the Italian Home

"I'm a great fixer; whatever's broken I can fix it," said Jonathan. He led me to a row of long shelves where trucks, dolls and other toys lay piled up against each other. "I have that big Mack truck. Let me fix this; Lawrence wants it fixed."

Abandoning his half-tied sneaker, he lifted a plastic windshield and carefully snapped it into place. Nodding his head, he asserted, "It's to protect it. There's armies in this world, you know." Jonathan sleeps in this large, sunny room, in one of the beds which line the walls. He has lived since he was three at "the Italian Home for Children" in Jamaica Plain. I played, observed and attended meetings there last fall for Psychology and Social Relations 910r, an independent study course on children in institutions.

The Home provided a welcome shelter from the abuse and neglect of his natural parents who had scarred his early childhood. No wonder he wishes to be a "great fixer;" he spent his second year of life hospitalized for surgery, abandoned by his mother, and was later beaten and burned by his father. This sort of experience is common to many of the children there.

The Italian Home was originally a true orphanage, founded by members of the North End community in response to the swine flu epidemic of 1918 that ravaged the area. Now it serves as a group care facility, and most of the 38 children, aged four to 12 years, live there for about two years before adoption, or temporary placement with a foster family or in other residential homes.

The home's purposes are varied. Sister Sheila, director of group care, explains. "The whole philosophy here is not just to care for the children--though of course we do that. It's a place to be a child. It's a neutral setting where they don't have to feel guilty about living in a foster family, nor do they have to call the ambulance, or pick up Mother at the bar. It also is to restore self-worth; they are worth caring for, and that's why they're here. Sometimes I look at them and think, wow, how can they cope? They have a real sense of abandonment. This is a fear we all have had: Whose job is it to love me? And what if they're not there? Then I must not be lovable. We can't erase scars, but we can teach them to cope."

Quite often, the children maintain a tough facade--a facade that was a necessary ingredient for their survival at home. One social worker described a pre-placement visit to a family: "They peeped out their windows when I came, to see if I was someone they should be afraid of, and they had almost no food in the house, and were living in filth." The one parent caring for the children is usually emotionally disturbed, drug-addicted or alcoholic. Those who abuse their children were often victims themselves, a generation earlier.

In many ways, they are a normal group of kids. They have probably seen more of Boston than most Harvard students; the majority attend local public schools; they love McDonald's ice skating, or climbing rocks on the North Shore.

When we took walks to the Arnold Arboretum, their imaginary guns zinged electronically, echoing Star Wars. Inside I saw a lanky boy with puckered lips proudly enter a practice room, touting a city-owned trombone. Once a group of five little boys and I spent an afternoon discovering a cornfield--in view of the Boston skyline--plucking off dry cobs and scattering the kernels.

But the children do express their deprivation in various ways. Once, when a counselor was playfully roughhousing with a child, the boy suddenly drew back in fear, saying, "You hit me!" Their play is less constructive than is normal for children their ages; they seem to prefer throwing rocks and sticks to building blocks or story-telling. Under constant peer pressure, their level of competition increases to the point where many children seek the heaviest stones, and boast of having the strongest muscles.

After especially rough behavior, however, they worry that they have been "bad"--probably recalling the horrendous, undeserved punishments of their past. Such previous emotional trauma sometimes produces gaps in their basic thought processes: one 12-year-old guessed there were 21 months in a year, while a seven-year-old declared, "Owls eat people--I know because I was one last week." Thoughts like that do not seem to be normal childhood fantasies.

The State Welfare Department, which supplies the home with most of its cases, has reported that the recent trend has been toward placing neglected children with individual families, rather than in institutions such as the Italian Home. As a result, these institutions receive a rising number of children with emotional disturbances that make them "hard to place" elsewhere. In order to adequately treat these children, the department has recommended that the entire staff be professionally trained. Ideally, cottage-style living areas could be built on the home's grounds, where six to eight children would live and eat with counselors hired as house parents.

Although the style of the Italian Home may appear anachronistic to some, conjuring harsh. Dickensian images, the atmosphere is one of warmth and concern for each child's future. A typical scene is one I encountered two weeks before Christmas: two little girls were singing "Good Ship Lollipop" in unison, while others helped arrange chairs for the public performance, intermittently banging on the piano. One of the former inhabitants retains such close ties that upon growing up he moved next door, and now works as the supervisor of maintenance and construction.

During my time there, however, I perceived some conservatism among the staff. One counselor complained that the only way the older children would obey him was through fear--"pushing them around, but never really punching them." Playgroups are segregated by sex. In the "boys' playroom," children ride bicycles, run around, and climb monkeybars; in the "girls' playroom," passive behavior is encouraged, such as watching T.V. and crayoning. But through my contact with children, I realized the difficulty of translating theory into reality, and often sympathized with workers in difficult situations, though their actions were not the most "therapeutic."

Regardless of any unprogressive attitudes at the Home, the children who live there are certain to benefit from the consistent affection they receive. In view of the extreme deprivation which it handles, the Italian Home does a fine job of providing needy children with a stable, protected environment.

Susannah L. Sherry '80 lives in Winthrop House.