After the clock runs out

Tammy Benjamin stared down at the white-faced clock she held in her hands – the seconds slowly ticking away. She looked back up at the 10 young faces in her small classroom, and gave a warning.

“Fifteen seconds left,” Benjamin said. “The deepest U.S. canyon is on the border of this state.”

The students franticly flipped through study guides, searching for the correct answer among the pages.

The children range from ages 10 to 17 and come from different cities across Florida, but all belong in the same class.

They’re well aware of the clock that Benjamin holds, but can’t see the invisible clock that counts years instead of hours. A clock that runs out at the age of 18, when the safety net vanishes and the young adults must answer to the law.

The children are residents of the Intervention and Assessment Center at Boys Town of Central Florida, an organization that reaches out to children across the state who’ve suffered from abuse, neglect and broken families – early struggles that could send their lives on a path of rebellion, crime and self-destruction.

Boys Town of Central Florida in Oviedo aims to keep children between the ages of 10 and 17 on the right path and teach them to be respectable members of society through a number of different programs, including In-Home Family Services, which consults families with children showing behavioral problems, and the Intervention and Assessment Center, which serves as an emergency shelter.

Boys Town of Central Florida and its programs help 1,600 to 1,800 children every year who’ve suffered from abuse and neglect.

“Our kids really are typically victims of the situation that they’re in,” said Gregory Zbylut, president and executive director of Boys Town of Central Florida. “They’re born into situations with not a lot of structure. There may be substance abuse going on in their home environment, broken families, physical or sexual abuse and a lot of things happening to them and around them in the environment that leads to bad decision making and role modeling.”

The emergency shelter at Boys Town gives children from all different avenues a temporary environment to stay in. Children on probation, runaways, and children on respite staying away from broken families all call the shelter home, whether it’s for one night or for several weeks.

Children receive meals, a shared bedroom, and a classroom education at the shelter. Class may end in the afternoon, but the students start learning as soon as they wake up; putting behavioral skills into practice like introducing yourself, accepting consequences and following instructions.

The center is the only adolescent emergency shelter in Seminole County, and serves 300 children a year.

“We take kids that a lot of people don’t want,” said Aleundro McCray, program director for the Intervention and Assessment Center. “We’ve been known to take any kids, because we feel any kid can be helped.”

The children earn points based on how they do with behavioral skills. These points are used to earn privileges such as going out to the movies or going bowling as a group. Boys Town of Central Florida hopes that this will help to get rid of negative behaviors that can develop into more rebellious attitudes.

Boys Town Family Homes on the program’s campus also allows children to stay for long periods of time if their family situation deems it necessary. Married couples volunteer and live in these homes full-time to look after up to seven children.

Other programs bring counseling directly to the homes of families. The In-Home Family Services program uses family consultants who identify areas of conflict in families and finds solutions.

Family Consultant Justin Colson learned the importance having a solid family firsthand.

Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., Colson an Irish gang offered to protect him when he was walking home from school. Before long, the gang was asking him for favors.

Colson was only 11 years old.

“It was your typical gang activity,” Colson said. “If you can think of it, I probably did it.”

Colson said his mother tried to keep him from falling by the wayside, but ultimately the gang had a stronger influence on his life – simply because they were with him more often.

“Time is the most important thing with a child,” Colson said. “If you’re not spending time with your child, someone else is. Someone else is talking to your child. Someone else is instructing your child.”

Colson’s mother later sent him to live with his grandfather, who ultimately turned Colson’s life around by keeping him accountable for his actions.

He moved to Florida several years later after getting his life on track, and has since dedicated his life to helping families stay together, volunteering at a community center in DeLand and eventually coming to Boys Town of Central Florida.

Boys Town of Central Florida data analyst Kristen Sweany is one of the many alumni who went through the In-Home Family Services program.

Sweany’s family received In-Home Family Services when her sister Victoria was struggling with an eating disorder. Her mother was looking for more stability in the home, which had been thrown off by Victoria’s condition that forced her to stay at several medical facilities to receive treatment. The family started to become dysfunctional, with Sweany’s mother constantly leaving home to take care of Victoria.

That’s where the services came in.

“Not only did it help me with a lot of the behavioral issues that I had, but it helped my mom learn to understand where I was coming from and learn to teach differently,” Sweany said. “I felt like it made me and my mom closer.”

In the past three years, Boys Town of Central Florida has put an even greater focus on the parents. Boys Town of Central Florida’s Common Sense Parenting classes teach parents how to effectively and positively respond to their children.

If parents can find positive ways to address problems such as talking back and not following instructions, it could have a better impact on the child in the long run, Zbylut said. The basic behavioral skills of following instructions and accepting consequences also better prepare the children in Boys Town of Central Florida to be better parents themselves.

“Here’s what we know: these kids are going to have children of their own,” Zbylut said. “If we don’t teach them how to be strong individuals and, in the future, good parents, then they’re going to repeat the cycles of abuse or neglect that they initially potentially grew up in.”