We have been receiving punishments as a group many times in the orphanage, and often we don’t know what we did wrong. Often times the whole group would get punished because a few kids messed up.
One time four or five nannies took 20 of us to a big inside area to play after supper. After a short while, I saw two of the oldest boys get into a fight and two nannies were trying to stop them. I don’t know how long it had been going on, but after watching a minute, one of the nannies ran out of patience and ordered all of us to stop playing and go to the TV room to watch TV because of the fight between the two boys.
One night a group of kids, who were aged 8-13, were supposed to take medicines in a powdered form. They were told to go to another room and get water from a dispenser to dilute their medicines. A boy, who often got in trouble, put his medicine into the water dispenser and a couple of kids copied him. A nanny figured out what was going on ordered all of the kids in that group to go to bed right away, which was 30-60 minutes earlier than our usual bedtimes.
During a winter evening, some kids were playing outside while I was told to stay inside and watch because of my disability. Though I disagreed, I still obeyed them. An hour later, a small group of kids, who were far from where other kids were playing, were goofing off. A nanny went out and checked what was going on. The next thing I knew we were being sent back inside because she had fallen and being told to stand for a few minutes. While we were standing, another nanny blamed all 20-30 of us for the fall and told us we had ruined the wonderful treatments that the injured nanny had given us. For the rest of evening, the nannies told us to be silent and we were sent to bed not long after that.
We often were forced to watching TV and sit there and be quiet for long periods of time during the first three years of my life in the orphanage. Sometimes we couldn’t stay silent and would start talking. One morning we were talking for about an hour and it was time for the nannies to go off work and another crew of nannies to come in. They talked about our misbehavior, and then a nanny turns off the TV and pulls a chair in front of us and criticized, "I often give fair treatments, but you have taken advantage of me and bullied me." Then she just sat there and ordered us to be silent while she shed tears. I sat there and was puzzled: why does she need to make such big fuss about it. What wonderful treatment had they given us that we should feel so thankful? What did we do that deserved an hour of silence or ruin the wonderful treatment? Are we that horrible? Or are they just trying to make themselves look good?
You will think this way of educated kids would be the same on the positive behavior. It was similar, except it was much more rare. Often, the rewards for positive behavior only went to individuals. They would go off somewhere and play with no nannies around while others had to do the same boring things. Still, as a whole, we often got the message that we weren’t good kids, and sometimes they held up one or two kids as an example of a good kid in their eyes. These were the kids who very rarely rebelled against them. I can hardly remember a time when the nannies praised us as a group and said that we were wonderful kids.
I wonder if the nannies had any idea of what they had signed up for. I think they thought that watching kids would be a very easy job. I don't think they were prepared with a lot of patience. A lot of nannies either were texting or talking to other nannies when they supposed to be paying attention to us. Sometimes they had a bit more patience, but it only lasted about an hour. It's a shame that while all these problems were going on, a sign in front of our orphanage says, "Everything is for the children. The children come first."
