“I doubt those kids would have traumatic things to talk about, though,” Casey said.
“When you’re the therapist, the kid will talk to you about anything and everything they’re dealing with,” I said and looked at Naomi. She nodded, her expression was thoughtful. “But don’t get me wrong, working with kids is incredibly rewarding too. They’re resilient in a lot of ways but they’re basically clay. You’ll have to keep spinning the wheel and make corrections to the mold until they’re good enough to hold water,” I said.
Naomi chuckled, “Nice metaphor,” she said.
“It’s true though. When you get to grad school and start residency, you’ll see what I mean. Either way you can always fall back on teaching.” We talked more about career paths in psychology then I generally got to know more about Casey and Jess—what they do for a living and all that. Dinner didn’t turn out to be such a disaster after all. When Naomi and I left the restaurant together and got back to the car, I let out a deep breath and she laughed at me.
“See what I meant about them?”
“Yeah, they’re just different, a different kind of family,” I said.
Naomi clicked her seatbelt and nodded sagely, “Yep.”