ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 3, 1996 TAG: 9601030033
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES STAFF WRITER
Wanted: Mature people, generally 18 or older, though some teens may qualify, to coddle, cuddle, play with, feed, entertain and nurture immature people who are generally 12 months and younger. No cash compensation, but plenty of reciprocal love. And sweet, guileless grins that bring even the staid and sophisticated to their knees.
Which is why on a recent afternoon staid- and sophisticated-looking Sandra T. Carroll, wearing a tailored suit and pricey-looking jewelry, was down on her knees on the floor making silly sounds and funny faces at guilelessly grinning 7-month old Jacob Moore. Carroll is executive director of Greenvale School Inc., which wants volunteers to work in its Baby Rockers' program.
Founded in 1934 and for the past 45 years sponsored by United Way, Greenvale provides child care from 6 a.m. - 6 p.m. weekdays for about 300 children from six weeks to 12 years old. The division serving up to 12 infants - defined as children too young to effectively walk or talk - and incorporating the rockers' program, was started in May 1994.
Parents from the community at large and employees of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Salem, where Greenvale's infants' and toddlers' programs are located, are eligible for the child-care services which, like the rest of Greenvale's programs, are priced on a sliding scale based on the child's age, parents' income and ability to pay, with low-income parents given priority.
Greenvale employs a full-time professional staff, so volunteers do not determine whether the child-care services are offered. But, Carroll explained, "We felt there was a need for extra arms to help give care to the children, and we thought there might be people out there who would like to do this. So, we contacted the Council of Community Services, TV stations, the newspapers and used word-of-mouth to send out a call for help."
That call attracted five volunteers, two of whom later withdrew because of health and scheduling conflicts. Carroll said none of the respondents were men, although she would like to have some to help lend positive male images. Remaining are Mary Darby, a rocker since October '94; Teresa Chanzala, a rocker since July '95; and Betty Allen, with the program since it began, who wanted a way to serve and care for others after health disabilities forced her in 1993 to leave her position as director of nursing for Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
One recent afternoon, Allen was busy feeding a bottle to eager 3 1/2-months-old Samantha Powers and listening to 14-months-old Joshua Morgan's blossoming nonstop verbiage. In the small, surprisingly quiet space full of toddling, crawling, getting-under-things infants, Allen found it safer to sit on the floor, than to rock in the one big, homey-looking chair that filled a corner of the room. The veteran baby rocker wore a washable cotton top and slacks, fit for the burping, spit-ups and diaper-dividends aspects of her job.
Despite her 18 years' background in nursing, including pediatrics supervisor, having taken numerous child-development classes, years of baby-sitting for others, and raising her own adopted daughter to adulthood, Allen said the small people still amaze her. Her pride in the babies, like that of lead teacher Melissa Agee and assistant teacher Willa Roma - Greenvale staff members whom Allen assists - is evident.
Get the women started and they'll gladly boast about a former infant, now graduated to the toddlers' level, who can sing entire hymns; or about the babies' uncanny abilities to sense when it's time for their parents to pick them up from the center. They'll tell you how there are no mean babies among the bunch; how they're all happy, although like big people, they too have bad days.
"You find out how quickly it's obvious who's a boy and who's a girl," Allen said. "Even as tiny babies, the boys are more aggressive, even in the way they grab and suck on their bottles, and the girls are softer and sweeter and more feminine. The boys court the girls when they're six months old and pat them on the head.
"They have their own personalities, too. Take Kasey [McGhee]," Allen said of a 13-month-old girl with eyes like saucers full of gray sky and hair like puffs of platinum clouds, who from behind her bottle cautiously observed two strangers in the room.
"She's very sweet and likes love, but she likes to be alone a lot. She's not a real interacter. Samantha, here, is sweet and every inch a little girl," Allen said of the infant in her arms, who was busy cooing and kicking off a bootie. "And Joshua wants all the attention."
As if on cue, Jacob, who had earlier entranced Carroll, used his pull-with-the-left-arm, push-with-the-right-leg mobility technique to maneuver over to a reporter, now sitting on the floor, and smile sweetly before drooling onto her leg.
"He doesn't crawl, he scoots," Allen laughed. "He loves anyone who'll let him."
Need consistency
The interaction that Jacob so easily inspires is important for both babies and nurturers. Allen said that while she was in college during the 1960s, many babies were abandoned because they had been deformed by thalidomide, a sedative given to expectant mothers. Studies have shown that those and other babies suffering from failure-to-thrive syndrome due to abandonment or neglect blossomed when given love, attention and physical contact. The rockers' babies - well cared for and from loving homes - just benefit that much more from interaction, Allen said.
On the reverse side, many doctors recommend that their patients do some type of community service because numerous clinical studies have found that people can improve their physical and mental health - and maybe even increase their life expectancy - by performing volunteer work that puts them in close contact with the people they're helping. Allen said that caring for the babies and having contact with their parents and the school's staff is one of her most fulfilling pastimes. But being a rocker requires more than a desire to interact, Carroll clarified.
"Our volunteers go through the same application process as our employees," Carroll said.
That includes undergoing personal-references and criminal-history checks and providing proof of being free of tuberculosis and in good general health. Volunteers also are encouraged to observe the teachers and other rockers at work before making a final decision. They need to know that there will be times - as there were on this particular afternoon - when there are only three adults and the babies set up a simultaneous cacophony, all crying to be fed, changed or given attention at the same time.
"We want them to be comfortable with what they would be doing. And while we work with them according to their schedules, we do need some consistency so the babies get used to them," Carroll said.
If the volunteers do decide to sign on, they are given on-site training, plus Greenvale staff members are always nearby to advise them, if needed, on doing those things that will help the babies graduate to the toddlers' room down the hall.
"When they start walking, we start mourning," teacher Agee confided, "because that means we won't get to see them as often."
Eventually, if they enter the programs for older children at the school's main location on Westwood Boulevard Northwest, Roanoke, the infants' teachers and rockers may no longer see them at all. But not to worry; a new crop is arriving even as the old guard moves on. Like eight-week-old Ann Ickes, pretty in her tiny pink sleeper and hardly fretting at all as she tried to adjust to the change from breast- to bottle-feeding on this, her first day at the center.
Perhaps Ann sensed that it was time for the strangers to leave. For the first time that afternoon, she fully opened her baby-bluish eyes, turned them toward a photographer and either grimaced from gas, or guilelessly grinned.
For information on becoming a baby rocker, contact Carroll at 342-4716.
LENGTH: Long : 142 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Stephanie Klein-Davis. 1. Volunteer baby rocker Bettyby CNBAllen (left) plays with Jacob Moore and Joshua Morgan at Greenvale
School day care. 2. Assistant teacher Willa Roman (above) holds
8-week-old Ann Ickes. 3. On top of the world: Jacob Moore, Kasey
McGhee, Samantha Powers and Ann Ickes lie on a mat designed to look
like the Earth. color.