Offensive language, dirty words, deplorable expletives, absolute profanity—even in an era where virtually everyone has heard it all before, in the right context, bad words can still shock you. For instance, I often hear the word #@*% in movies and it rarely shocks me. Once I heard a minister say it during a funeral and…wow. I felt truly offended and shocked for the first time in years.
At Gillis, the nature of our client’s lives and backgrounds has led our boys to know some pretty creative profanity combinations. Once I heard a young girl using some pretty raw vocabulary in the school recovery room and no one seemed to be doing anything about it. Later, I asked the care worker with her, “Don’t you do anything about the language?”
H replied “she used to cut herself when she got upset. We think the cussing is good progress.”
Made sense to me.
I might be a special case. There are words in the English language that cause me a much more visceral reaction than the usual expletives. “Sleet” is one of them. As a veteran of decades of Kansas City winters, I’d much rather hear the foulest cussing and cursing than hear the words “sleet” and “ice storm.”
But “sleet”, utterly offensive as it is, is not the worst word I can think of. There is one word (it’s just an abbreviation, actually) so wholly disturbing that it messes me up for days. When I see come across my desk I start chewing the inside of my lip. My head feels light. I get so angry when I see it I sometimes pound my fist on my keyboard. At the same time I get so depressed that I just want to crawl in a hole. Nothing tastes good the rest of the afternoon. I walk around with a snarl on my face. I grind my teeth and sweat. I just can’t stand it.
That word is VTPR.
As a guy who likes words and is interested in vocabulary, the first time I saw it I thought it meant “vituperative.” Vituperative means “describing abusive language or venomous censure.” I thought for a second it just meant one of our kids was being mean verbally. We can handle that. Unfortunately, the context didn’t work. VTPR meant something far far worse.
We know from our work that almost always, no matter what abuse or neglect a parent might have perpetrated on a child, the child still loves them. That’s actually a very good thing. A lot of “bad” parents are good people that can learn to be nurturing forces that help their children become the most they can be. Sometimes all it takes is some learning and self-forgiveness, or a minor tweak on some depression medications. Sometimes it takes more, but most of the time, whatever has happened to a family, somehow they still love each other and that love can provide the hope necessary to get through the healing ahead.
VTPR kills hope. It destroys a child’s entire sense of self and their world-view; shakes any tenuous grip they have on normalcy and alters their lives forever. VTPR means a kind of loneliness most of us could never imagine.
VTPR stands for “Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights.”
Let me be clear, we aren’t talking about babies here. With babies it’s different. There are often good reasons for some women or girls to give their babies up for adoption. For many infants, it’s a good choice.
No, we’re talking about a child, maybe 3, maybe 6, maybe 10, who is faced with the knowledge that his mother just doesn’t love him and doesn’t want him anymore. She never wants to see him again. She will never take care of him again. Even true orphans can believe that their parents loved them; most believe that there parents watch over them and love them still, long after their deaths. But for those who were orphaned by choice, there is no such comfort.
Most children who experience VTPR at an age when they can understand it develop extreme emotional problems stemming from this devastating trauma. Maybe now you can begin to imagine why I find it so offensive.
Fortunately for me, when I see the abbreviation VTPR, it is always in a mitigating context. The very opposite of hearing a minister use profanity at a funeral where the context makes it worse, when I see this foul and dirty word, it is accompanied by something that makes it a tiny little bit less horrible. When I see it, the word Gillis is also on the page.
At Gillis, we’ve dealt with children who have gone through this horrible experience for half a century. We use a combination of the latest and the most time-honored techniques to address such a trauma. In our tool box are complicated processes like cognitive affect enhancement, right along with the simplest and most effective tool we have: love.
Foul as it is, when the word VTPR is accompanied by the word Gillis, it means there is hope.
Maybe the worst thing about the first time I saw the abbreviation VTPR was the feeling of helplessness. “My God,” I thought, “What can I do to help this forsaken child?”
I don’t feel helpless anymore. As an employee of Gillis, I do all I can to help such children everyday. But I’m also a volunteer here sometimes when I’m not working, and maybe most importantly, I’m also a donor. Writing a check to Gillis makes sure that Gillis will always be here for children suffering the devastating effects of VTPR. It means that I will never have to see those letters attached to a child, without also seeing the word that gives that same child hope: Gillis.
Submitted by Thom Fox, Gillis Grants Manager
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