Several years ago I sat in a room full of volunteers that were being trained to go into schools and work with children that were at risk of dropping out. One of our exercises was a simulation that was designed to help us better understand the day-to-day realities for their families.

• We were divided up into small groups.
• Each one of us was given a role to play.
• Then we were given a real life problem that needed to be solved.
• And a name of a place we needed to go to for help.

In the simulation I was the small child of a single mother that had no car.

• “My mother” needed food and a job and childcare.

The simulation was timed to help us understand everything that she needed to accomplish in one day – just to bring home food. (Let alone finding a job or daycare.)

Each time we got off the simulated bus, we walked into a facility and stood in a long line. To eventually be re-directed to another place for services that was across town with different operating hours and another long line.

My job was to simulate how a child begins to act as a few hours becomes a day without food, without a nap, without play.