A Portrait: Sammy: »I am a Doppelgänger«

8 years old, 3rd grade elementary school

by Sibylle Picot



November 2009

The house in a quiet part of Munich 6 km away from the city center does not fit any of my preconceptions of what a "children's home" or an "orphanage" should look like. Surrounded by a small garden full of play equipment, the one-story house with a roof extension looks just like one of the many other single-family homes in this residential district. It has a wooden facade and large windows looking onto the garden.
It was an old lady who made the roof extension possible. She left her property and a part of her wealth to the Munich orphanage foundation with the instruction that they should build "a little home for children." Inside, almost the entire ground floor serves as a common room with a kitchen leading off from it. The children don't just take their meals here. Some of them are doing their homework at the large tables, others are drawing or playing a board game. "There's always somebody here," says the child care worker. On the upper floor, she shows me the rooms for the eight children. Almost every child has her own room; there are only two rooms currently hosting two children. They are all furnished differently but tidy—the children are encouraged to keep them that way. In the cellar, there is a large room with wall bars and gym mats where the children can let off steam.

An "external residential group" of the Munich orphanage is housed here. The residents are mostly socially disadvantaged children. They have parents who are unable to care for them—at least temporarily—for various reasons. Some have been victims of abuse and violence; most are here because of extremely difficult family backgrounds. They are cared for by four child care workers and one intern who all also live with them in the house for part of the time.

I meet Sammy in the common room, and we go to a small office together for our interview. Sammy seems very bright, and he inspects me closely with his watchful brown eyes. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly asks me questions as well—including questions about things that don't really fit the interview. Sometimes he grabs the microphone, raises it close to his mouth, and whispers into it. I had told him that somebody would be transcribing everything we talk about, and this is his way of getting in touch with the lady who will be doing this transcription; I had already given him her name. So, at times, there are three of us taking part in this interview.

Sammy and his two worlds

I ask Sammy to tell me something about himself. We get off to a slow start. He tells me he is 8 years old and attending 3rd grade at school. And then we get to how long he has been "in the home."

He has adjusted well to living in the home. This was also confirmed by Sammy's "personal" child care worker, whom I had talked to before coming for the interview. However, at the beginning he was "homesick" for his mother. When I ask him to tell me who is his best friend, he says "Bobby" who is already 12 years old. He shares his room with Peter, and unfortunately they quarrel, although this now seems to have calmed down to the extent that they mostly just "discuss things" now.

During the further course of the interview, I find out that all three brothers meet up when they spend weekends together with their mother, and that Sammy really enjoys these meetings. The same applies for the weekends when he is alone together with his ma. Basically, he spends every second weekend with her. He has very little contact with his father. More or less incidentally, I learn that the father has occasionally, but rarely, visited Sammy here in the children's home.

When I ask him whether there are any child care workers whom he really likes, he gives several names—some of them are child care workers who are no longer working in the group.


A regular daily life in the group and weekends with Ma

Sammy's week days have a clear structure, as his detailed account clearly shows. The following passage describes the time between school and free time in the afternoon. Sammy admits that he sometimes "dawdles" on his way home from school. However, he seems to be able to say exactly to the minute how long this dawdling lasts, namely, "until twenty-five past two."


There are also clear rules about media consumption in the residential group. Television is limited to the time between the evening meal and going to bed. And to Sammy's disappointment, there are fixed contingents for playing Gameboy or Playstation. However, these have just been made a bit more generous.
It was not very easy to determine Sammy's time schedule with the time strip (see below), because the categories often did not fit his life. Time for the "family," for example, is something that is simply not there on weekdays. Moreover, Sammy has two highly different kinds of weekend depending on whether he stays in the group or goes to his mother. Otherwise, his weekdays are very comparable to those of other children living in families. School and homework make up almost 40% of the day and chores a good 10%. The latter is slightly higher than in most other children. Media use is very moderate, and he is left with a relatively large proportion of free time—also because of the lack of fixed leisure-time activities.

At the weekends, both in the children's home and with his mother, Sammy has a great deal of "free time." In the home, he still has some homework and a few chores to do. Media do not play any notably greater role than they do during the week. Reports on television viewing remain a bit unclear:

Sammy perceives almost all the time he spends with his ma as "free time." And this time is spent together, sometimes just with his mother, and sometimes with his brothers as well. In the mother's home, he plays, they cook together, and they go on excursions together to the park or into the city. The rest of the time is devoted to media consumption. However, this is also limited by his mother. It is not the case that, once away from the relatively strict rules in the home, Sammy can watch as much television or play with a Playstation as much as he likes.

It is clear that Sammy often misses his mother and that he tends to idealize being together with her. However, in a later conversation with the mother, she described the weekends in very similar terms to her son. It fits this framework that Sammy also does not want to specify who decides what the family are going to do at the weekends. He decides together with his mother. As he admits in the interview, his mother alone only decides on the amount of time he spends on television and Playstation.

Who else makes the decisions in Sammy's life? The child care worker to a major extent. His teacher at school has much less say.


Although they ensure a regulated and well-structured daily life, the child care worker's powers are not unlimited. Sammy stresses that he also has his say. When I asked him how much of the time he can do what he wants, he reports only a slightly lower number of hours than the average for all children. And he finds it good to have free time:



Sammy's network: At home in two places

Because he is now getting rather tired by the interview, Sammy is happy to start the new task. I have asked him to reconstruct his environment with building blocks and little wooden doll figures. The theme is places where he spends his time and the people he has contacts with in these places. He can raise up more important contacts on little platforms using one or more building blocks. Interesting buildings soon emerge—tower-like structures on which the doll figures can only be placed with great care and skill.

I asked Sammy to start with where he is "at home" and to place that in the middle. However, the problem is, where is he at home? There are clearly two "at homes." He decides to start by building the children's home, the house with the residential group, because that is where he spends most of his time and, in particular, "because that's where I sleep most." And "where I sleep" is not a bad definition of home. The building that now emerges is enclosed by a fence. Sammy wants to give girls, boys, and adults different colors, but that does not work out completely. He positions eight figures for children, including his friends Bobby and Marvin and also Jessica and Peter. His friends Bobby and Marvin are placed on a kind of platform quite high up; he himself together with the interviewer, who is also assigned a figure, are placed inside the building. The other children and two child care workers are placed outside in the garden. The most important people, Bobby and Sammy himself, are raised on platforms.

The next building in line is at home with his mother. Sammy positions this close to the children's home and much closer to the middle of the play area. The little building looks like an archway and provides a roof for his mother. In front, he places Sammy and his two brothers. All of them are given little raised platforms; all contacts are important here.

Finally, Sammy also builds his school—a bit further away. But this is also an interesting building with a roof resting on three pillars. Everywhere he can find room on the building and around it, Sammy sets up his classmates. He regrets not having enough figures for the whole class. There are also three teachers in the school yard. A small group of children are clustered round the green arbor in the schoolyard that Sammy positions at the edge of the play area. This is a current autumnal location. Sammy had helped the others to build such an arbor in the schoolyard and this is something that greatly fascinates him at present. This is why he also positions himself close to this arbor—once again on a little platform, because he is also important when it comes down to it.

When describing his daily routine, Sammy mentions two further friends who live near the children's home. Although he sometimes plays with them in the afternoon, he does not expand on either of these.

Sammy goes to school on foot. When he travels to his mother at the weekend, she fetches him, and they travel to her home by public transport.

The network that Sammy constructs tells us a lot about him. His world is relatively easy to grasp. There are only three main locations, and compared to children who are given a lot of opportunities by their parents, there are no locations like a sport club, a church, the piano teacher, or the ice rink. There are also no grandparents or other relatives. Even his own father is not given a position in Sammy's network.

All the adults in Sammy's network are female: his mother, the child care workers, the teachers. There are no men at all.

Moreover, it is quite clear that his world is divided in two. He is at home in the children's home and he is at home with his ma. The emotional significance of the family home and the wish for an intact family can be seen in the way he positions this home in the middle of the play area and stresses the importance of all its members. Even the brothers who actually live with their fathers are positioned here.

Alongside how Sammy positions the locations in his life, the way he constructs them also tells us about him. It is conspicuous that the children's home is enclosed by a fence. Several interpretations are possible here. Could this stand for structure, support, and security in Sammy's life, or also for limits? Or even for both? The home with his mother seems to be relatively unprotected: an airy construction with an interesting type of roof.

The number of contact persons and the way Sammy always places himself in the middle as a matter of course indicate how much he likes social contacts and that he is well embedded socially—even in the given conditions.

Back to the interview. After Sammy has finished his building work, we look at it again together. I ask him if there is anything he would like to change, and he finally says:


"So, I'm not really that poor"

One aim of the interviews is to find out which ideas children associate with poor and rich, and what this topic means to them. Our approach includes giving them a set of photographs and asking them to judge whether the people depicted are poor or rich. When given a selection of five photos that are particularly representative for "poor" or "rich," Sammy's choice is similar to that of other children.

Sammy's judgment is also based primarily on the quantity of possessions: Much is rich; little is poor—the full refrigerator, the empty refrigerator, the empty plate, the filled up shopping bags, and so forth. The photos also portray clichés of poverty and wealth in the sense of miserable and wretched versus glamorous and luxurious. For Sammy, this level is very significant. The photos that he selects to represent "rich" all have something that is really worth striving for in his opinion. This is, first of all, a Gameboy, "a DS light" as he knowingly explains to me. Such a Gameboy is what he wants, and he would really like to keep the photo. For him, it is clear that this Gameboy belongs to "rich": "A poor child could never afford that."

He also selects a villa with a swimming pool, a children's room fitted out with lots of toys and that "super Ford." Finally, he considers the luxurious shop window display of a cake shop as typically "rich." He rates the photos that he selects to illustrate "poor" as being "a bit silly," "strange," "very dirty," and "really sad."

I also ask Sammy to sort all the photos in the pile into rich and poor. It soon becomes evident that there also has to be a pile in the middle, namely a pile of photos that he cannot classify because they either could represent both categories or their message is unclear. I found this pile to be particularly interesting.

First of all, there is a red teddy bear, "he looks pretty threadbare." But Sammy considers

Looking at a playground with a suspension bridge, Sammy says, "Actually that belongs to the rich and the poor. A rich person can go there and not have to pay, and a poor person as well."

The same applies to school: It's there for all children. The photo shows a boy sitting at his school desk.

He also places a photo depicting a family in the middle pile "because anybody can have a family."

Some opportunities are available to all regardless of whether they are rich or poor. Hence, Sammy would probably also classify the bookshop to his middle pile. However, the photo depicting children in a bookshop is ambiguous. Sammy thinks that this is a private room, and concludes: "They belong to the rich, I think. Because they have so many books, and that means they've got lots and perhaps motor cars as well." Whatever the case, Sammy shows that he is already good at making judgments.

A further photo depicts a person carrying two plastic shopping bags full to the brim. The bags have Lidl and Aldi written on them—the names of two major discount supermarket chains. "He's also bought things with his money," Sammy says according to the formula much equals rich. I pursue this further:

He can't make his mind up about one photo depicting a father with children on a kind of family tandem. The father is wearing a cap and a yellow rain jacket. For me, the photo triggers associations with the green-party-alternative milieu. Sammy places it hesitantly in the middle. He justifies his decision as follows: "Yes, because the bicycle certainly must have cost quite a lot of money, but he himself does not look as if . . . ."

After he has sorted all the photos, I ask Sammy whether he knows any people who are really poor or really rich. He says no. But how does he see himself?


When I ask him to tell me where he would like to be on the continuum, he doesn't hesitate for one second. "Well, in any case there," he says and points to the extreme right-hand pole that is labeled "rich."

All the children interviewed also had to be asked whether they had heard about the "crisis" or the "economic crisis." The word does not mean anything to Sammy. People being afraid of losing their jobs does not mean anything to him either. His mother was unemployed until recently, but she has now found a job. He does not associate the topic with fear.

What are you afraid of then, I ask him. He rolls his eyes and says: "Of monsters." And then


Toward the end of the interview—Sammy is already pretty exhausted—I also ask him to name five things that every child needs. He reacts completely unenthusiastically to my suggestion that he should draw these for me. It soon becomes clear how very difficult that would have been.



Wishes for now and wishes for later

And what does Sammy wish for himself? There is one current, burning desire:


We have already got to know his greatest wish. Although he is doing well in the children's home, he wishes to go back to his mother.

And what does Sammy wish for his later life?