It's fun to stay at the...

Okay, I'm back from being abroad, but before I tell you about vacation, here's an update on my last week of work at Corrymeela before I left.
I worked with a group from a neighboring town with a COMPLETELY different accent than the locals I've met. Amazing, really. Sure New Yorkers have a slightly different accent from Bostonians, but I can understand both! This accent was beyond me. I sometimes found myself simply nodding along after asking them to repeat themselves more than 3 times. Often they just needed someone to listen to them, not to necessarily understand them, so hopefully I fulfilled that role successfully.
This group was mostly mums with their kids, and one father came as well. The kids were, well, kids. They were really active and excited to be away from home, I think. A couple were labelled ADHD, but they weren't really all that bad. Of course, I can say that now that it's been a couple weeks! :) Okay, so they climbed up onto the roof of the building, broke a glass door, and made a wee boy from the other group cry. Boys will be boys, right?
Anyway, the week was exhausting mostly because I was ill for part of the week. But it was interesting to see kids with their mums instead of in a youth group setting as I did the week before. This time I had more context to understand how the parents' behavior affected the kids' behavior. I believe there's a pretty strong link there. When parents yell and scream and threaten to beat their children for anything they do wrong, can we really be surprised when the kids yell at us and raise their fists?
Amid their misbehaviors were some really touching moments that sort of made up for the more trying moments. For instance, one wee little girl about 4 years old was very quiet and shy when they first arrived, even though she was related to most of the other children there. By the end of the week she was walking up to volunteers she had just met to demand to have her face painted as a butterfly after which she would run around declaring, "I'm a butterfly! I'm a butterfly!" Precious! Another boy of about 5 or 6 years old was helping a little boy from the house group who was probably about 2 years old, go up and down the big green slide. He was a gentle and attentive as any parent could be to a kid he had just met. And this was an ADHD "troubled" child. These little things give you hope that the program is allowing for these little moments where hopefully parents will see a different side of their kids and the parents will be relaxed enough, knowing that they are in a safe place, to let their kids go a little.
Two other things struck me about this group. First of all, many of the mothers were about my age. At least one was younger than me. Scary.
Second, the only father in the group shared that he has never read an entire book in his life. I realize that not every person likes to read as I do, but many like to read more. But even my brother, who has probably never willingly read a book in his life that wasn't about farm machinery, had to read books in school. Novels like Tom Sawyer or The Scarlet Letter. I can't imagine graduating from school without reading a whole book. Of course, I'm assuming that this gentleman graduated from school. I am glad that he shared this bit of information with us all because it helped me to realize what I have been blessed with and that I shouldn't assume that their lives have even closely resembled mine.