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Listen to thisIt’s coming towards the end of January and most of us are anxiously scanning our Visa bills to see how we are going to live in February. The catastrophic tsunami in south east Asia has brought the international community and its many religions closer together and parents are attempting new threats to their children as Santa coming again next year is just too far away in the distance for them to be good boys and girls. So I want, in this month’s column to reflect on Santa.
A friend of mine, John, who works as a manager in residential child care sent me an e-mail this morning which made me smile. Most us will be used to Erickson's stages of life, but this is more current.
The Four Stages of Life:
You believe in Santa
You don’t believe in Santa
You are Santa
You look like Santa
We could use this as a metaphor for Child and Youth Care. We start off believing that most of the theories we learn in college will work in the field; we soon learn that, for a variety of reasons, most of them don't; we move to believing that we can generate excellent theories that will, in fact, work; and finally, we self-actualise and look as though we are as much in need of intervention as the children and youth with whom we work.
All of this reminds me of a radio show I heard several years ago when I was driving from Waterford to Galway on the west coast of Ireland. I had the radio on in the background and a discussion was taking place between the talk show host and a caller. It was a conversation on the merits and demerits of keeping the idea of Santa Claus alive in a house full of children. I was appalled to hear the caller say that she had been told when she was three that there was no such thing as Santa and she was “going to make damn sure that her own children heard likewise at an even younger age”! Well, I nearly crashed my car in anger. Why would a parent want to do that to a child? Is there not enough misery around us? Will the child not have to assume all manner of responsibilities soon enough? Is imagination not one of the few resources left to children in this post-modern age? Now, I know that Santa Claus was devised by marketing gurus, etc., but the idea is a nice one.
I suppose when I had calmed down, this short conversation once again highlighted for me the importance of family and of positive, consistent experiences for children. We take these into our adult lives in all sorts of spheres of engagement. Maybe that particular Mom just didn’t have it in her own lens to move away from her own hurtful experience.
It may sound strange, but it seems to me that one of the roles of the effective Child and Youth Care worker is to create belief in things, people, situations and dreams that would otherwise be too far out of reach. And I include Moms and Dads in this as much as children.
