In Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison's character Pilate recalls an unsual incident from her past. Pilate, employed as a housekeeper, is washing dishes when her employer enters the house. The man is shaking and frightened, convinced he is standing on the edge of a cliff. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, the man is terrified that he is about to fall off the edge of the cliff and plummet to his death. Pilate, in an act of creative wisdom, walks behind her employer and grabs him around his waist to prevent his falling. Pilate holds the man there in the center of the kitchen, soothing his fear of falling off the cliff. While they are standing in this position, the wife enters the house and is immediately suspicious of Pilate's activities with her husband. Pilate explains that she is keeping him from falling off a cliff. The wife demands Pilate release her husband. Obedient to her employer, Pilate let's go and the man immediately falls face down on the floor dead.
The symbolism of Pilate's intervention parallels to the way foster parents use their creative wisdom to help children. Children come into foster care in crisis, experiencing trauma from varying types of abuse and neglect. The trauma is often so severe that a smell, a fabric pattern, a room, a tone of voice, can trigger a child back to the circumstances of their abuse. To the outside observer, the child is not experiencing anything abnormal, but in the mind of the child the trauma is happening all over again. The experience is just as real to the child as it was the first time and we have to respond accordingly.
As professional parents, it is critical for foster parents to make their home safe. Just like Pilate, foster parents need to provide safety to a person who is experiencing an unobserved trauma. Safety can be established with appropriate boundaries surrounding routine times, times that to many families are not threatening: bath time, bedtime, travel time in the car. Often, this need for safety must result in parental creativity. What do you do when a child will not sleep in his bed at night? What do you do when a child refuses to take a bath? What do you do when a child hoards food and sneaks food into their room? How do you show a child affection when they refuse to be touched?
Foster parents working together with each other and supervisors generate some of the most creative and sensitive ideas to respond to a child in crisis. One foster parent told a story of a child who refused to sleep in the bed provided for her. No matter what the parent did, the child slept in the closet. The child shared that, when she was at home, her mother kept her safe at night by hiding her in the closet. Instead of forcing the child to sleep in bed, the foster parent made a comfortable pallet in the closet and decorated the walls. The foster parent abandoned her own need to be seen as the perfect parent, with a home where children sleep in beds, for the higher priority of meeting the child's needs to feel safe. The same foster parent was caring for several abused children. Because so much of their abuse had occurred at bath time, the children would not get in the bath tub and would not allow themselves to be touched. Weighing the costs of cleanliness and safety, this foster mother came up with an idea. The solution? Set up a kiddie pool in the kitchen and let the children put on their bathing suits and play in soapy water.
We must engage children in creative responses to their fears and traumas. We must maintain both physical and emotional safety in the home. When we move beyond our natural responses, when we overcome our own pride, when we acknowledge a child's experience as real, when we help them overcome their fear and meet their need for safety, this is creative parenting.
