Through the years I have worked with many children. I am a social worker. I started my career working at a residential treatment facility for emotionally disturbed adolescents. The children I worked with were between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Some of them had delinquency issues in addition to mental health problems. Most had been abused or neglected in their homes. My job as a residential care counselor was to do individual and group counseling sessions, develop individual goals with each resident and help the children achieve at goals of daily living such as home work, chores and personal hygiene. One of the groups that I was in charge of planning and supervising was recreational therapy. This involved teaching healthy past times as well as sportsmanship.
In an effort to meet this challenge I had a co-facilitator. We would have an hour before each group to come up with games for children. We would try to pick a theme that could be discussed during the game as well as during the rest of the evening. We had basic rules for all recreational therapy nights, such as waiting for your turn, listening to rules, everyone had to try their best, no one was to make fun of others and try to have fun. With the wide age span as well as abilities in the group it was not always easy to come up with games for children that were going to be inclusive of each group member. We tried to have a variety of games for children that included physical abilities but also strategy and team work. One of our favorite things was scavenger hunts. We would randomly pair kids together through having them draw names out of a hat. We manipulated with somewhat by having the popular kids be the ones to draw the names. The names that were in the hat were the kids that were less out going and less liked. There was more than once that the oddest pair would end up remaining friends after the scavenger hunt. This happened one of the first times we ran the hunt. One boy that was quite good looking and smart that was sixteen was paired with a very nerdy boy that had a hygiene problem that we were constantly working with him on. The nerdy boy was fourteen. He did not have any friends and was picked on frequently. When the over counselor and I discussed the pairing we thought they could be good for each other. We were right. They became quite close friends. They even asked if they could play a night of games for children that would include board games and a pool tournament. They did a good job of organizing this and because of their efforts the other kids made a great effort to participate.
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