Starting yesterday through to Friday this week and then again next week
I am working at a VBS (Vacation Bible School) at my parent’s church. This week
I am a crew leader for crew number 5 – I’ve got school aged kids between third
grade and fifth grade. There are ten kids in my crew and three of them happen
to be named Aden (but one spells it - Adan). Today was day two, so I figured
things would go smoother than they did on Monday - which was a pretty good day
for my crew other than just not listening well and having a lot of energy at
all the wrong times. However, today wasn’t really a great day for some of my
kids.
Here's what happened --
Two of my kids, Cole and Faith, showed up about five minutes late, which
isn’t a big deal. We sing songs first thing in the morning so they came during that
- really didn’t miss much. Cole has to take a pill after he is finished eating
lunch, I asked him when he came in if he had his pill with him - I hold on to
it during the morning and then give it to him when he needs to take it so that he
doesn’t forget. But today he said that he didn’t have one, which was strange
since Monday he was telling me all about why he has to take a pill everyday
(key word there was 'everyday'). I let it go for the moment since there were
100 kids singing while I was trying to talk to him so I was having a hard time
hearing what he was saying.
Our first activity is snack, everything was just peachy then. Nobody was
having problems with each other or anything - overall I’d say they were being
perfect angels. Imagination Station is next where we do experiments - todays
was alka seltzer and water in a film tube. The kids loved it and watching the
caps blow off because of the pressure. The real trouble didn’t start until we
went to outdoor games. Aden(#1) got hit on the right side of his face with a
ball during Bump, Set, and Spike (a volley ball-ish game). He was down for the
count, I took him off to the side so that the game could continue with the
other kids. Once he was feeling better and got laughing again, he joined back
in for the last few minutes. From games we go to bible story, which I would
have figured would be the last place a kid would get hurt because they are only
sitting and listening to a bible story but somehow we ended up with Aden(#1)
hurt again. But this time it was only a slight tap of a foot to his side so it didn’t
take him as long to bounce back.
This is where things go from 'okay' to 'bad news bears'.
After bible story we go to the movie room and watch a short film about
how 'Everything is possible with God'. The kids enjoy watching it because well it’s
a video and who doesn’t like a video. Once the video is over, the kids are each
given a star to write something that they are thankful for or a God moment on
them. My boy, Cole, wasn’t overly interested in doing that so he just wrote his
name in big letters on his star. I was
fine with that since I wasn’t going to force him to write something - not all
the kids in my crew believe in God so it is sometimes hard for them to
understand what a God moment is. When I asked Cole if there was something he
was thankful for he said 'no, I just feel like stabbing someone with a knife'.
Not the kind of answer I thought he would come up with. The lady in charge of
that room saw a marker go flying through the air, she asked for the person who
throw it to come and pick it up. All the kids looked at it and said that I wasn’t
there’s. I looked over to see what color
it was - to find out it was black and the only person who had been using black
was Cole. I asked him what happened to his marker and he just looked at me and
said it’s over there and pointed to the black marker on the ground. He didn’t
say that he didn't throw it over there but I wasn’t too sure how else it could
have gotten there. So, proceed by asking him if he throw the marker over there
when he was done writing on it. Nope of course he didn’t, why would he do
something like that. Cole hadn’t been a trouble maker, he was shy and tended to
keep to himself unless called upon. He was a nice kid, from a hard background
and sometimes those are the kids you need to watch out for the most. He at this
point had stopped listening and was just walking out of the room while everyone
else was working on their God moments.
There are a lot of things going on in the church and we need the kids to
stay with their crews or have a crew leader with them all the time. The second
time Cole left the movie room before we were done, the lady in charge of the
room went after him, when they didn’t come back right away, I went to see what
was happening and if I could do anything. I left the room to find Cole sitting
under our crews table, saying he didn’t want to be here anymore. There wasn’t
much we could do, his mind was made up and every time we tried to talk to him,
he'd run away. So I ended up kind of corner him to sit by some chairs while the
Head Lady, Jaci, she came. She sat with Cole for a few minutes, then he started
to talk. We soon found out that he had had a knife in his pocket this whole
time. However, it was plastic but the comment about wanting to stab someone
became a tad be more real when I saw the plastic knife. But when asked to give
the knife up, it only made matters worse. It was almost lunch time and all the
kids were hungry - having Jaci talking to one of my boys meant everyone had to
wait to sing two songs and then go for lunch. But what else was there to do but
wait. Cole agreed that he wouldn’t bring the plastic knife out again, it would
stay in his pocket until he was picked up to go home and that he was going to
have a bit of a time out while we were singing - he'd sit by out crew table and
wait until I picked him up to go to lunch. While we were singing I stood behind
all the kids so that I could still see Cole off to the side and the rest of my
crew. I didn’t know if he was going to just walk off again or not so I need to
have him in eye sight all the time.
Aden(#1) has a bit of an issue keeping him name tag on, he likes to play
with it and put it on his back. Everybody was singing and it sounded so nice
until I could hear that same little scream I had heard twice that morning
already. Between all the singing kids came Aden holding his finger. The back of
the name tag had a safety pin on it so that it would stay attached to the kid’s
shirts. He had poked his finger with it and started to bleed. Crew 6 leader,
Steven took Aden to the bathroom to clean up his finger while I watched both of
our crews. When he came back he just wanted to sit down - I was totally fine
with that. So now I have two boys to watch and eight kids singing. Things started
to get better in the afternoon until somehow and we still aren’t sure how this
happened - Aden cut a different finger.
love,
A.M
A.M
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