Shults-Lewis Home life was a Very
interesting type of living arrangement!
After I left work at Dwyer Instruments
as a Molding Engineer, I went home to work as a Resident House Dad. But since
it was a different
kind of work (& stress), I didn't mind it (most of the time).
Peggy and I were Resident House parents at Shults-Lewis
Children's Home .
Since Peggy has a degree in Psychology, this was right up her
alley.
Each child here not only has a set of house parents that they live, eat, and sleep with, they also have degreed counselors that work with them and try to help them deal with their problems and their issues in a responsible manner. Shults-Lewis takes teenage girls and boys that come from many different backgrounds. Many of the children suffer from broken homes, abuse (physical and/or mental), drugs, gangs, depression, psychological problems, neglect, or just that nobody wants them.
We learned a lot when we came here. It filled us with great joy when someone we'd worked with for a couple of years graduated the system successfully! That's why we were there.
We came
to the Home in June, 1995. How did it affect our
4 kids (starting at ages 9 mo.,3,6,7 & ending at 7, 9,12,13 yrs)? Well...it
did. The disciplined environment was good for everyone. It was challenging to get across to my children
that even though there were two different disciplinary systems in our house
(Home residents and my kids), that didn't make them better than
anyone else. They had to treat everyone with respect. And it was equally
as challenging to get across to the residents (we took care of boys)
in our house that they also needed to treat everyone (adults, my kids, and
fellow residents) with respect if they wished to have respect paid to
them. Other than that, we operated our home just like you would yours.
Except we had anywhere from 6 to 14 people under our roof. Our
resident boys ranged from 12 years to 17 years old.
It could get quite chaotic around the house at times!
Want to learn more? Check out the Shults-Lewis
homepage.