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I believe you. My daughter graduated with a degree in social work and promptly landed a job. She was well-liked by most of her clients-- parents of autistic children, some of whom actually followed her advice and saw real results; but most of whom did the bare minimum necessary to keep their government checks coming.

Trouble is, she made little money at it. The agency for which she worked had arcane rules on mileage reimbursement such as going directly to a client in a neighboring county was considered "commuting" and not reimbursable, whereas a five mile drive over to the next client was.

After a few months she landed a job at a nearby juvenile lock-up, better hourly wage, less time on the road and decent benefits. She loved the job and enjoyed seeing results when her charges were mostly runaways, teenage prostitutes and the like. The facility had such a low recidivism rate that they eventually went out of the area to keep it filled. Of course, that meant getting gang bangers and the like in from Philadelphia. As that happened, she begin to fear for her personal safety.

Eventually, she discovered that she could make more money with her degree at a call center doing customer service support, not that it has a lot to do with a social work degree, but because they wanted a college degree.

Your daughter was wise. Personal safety is an issue when you work with children, because as an adult, you come to be seen as completely unimportant. I mean, your safety simply does not matter next to "the needs" of the children. If that child "needs" to kick you, punch you, set a fire in your room, vandalize your car, well, you need to figure out how to "meet his needs" better.

I'm pretty good at handling children but we have an autistic boy who is bigger than me and apparently has some violent "needs" sometimes. I warned my principal (who is a nice guy but a little too mellow about such things) that if that kid ever hits me, I'm getting a lawyer. I'm hoping he won't be in my classroom next year.