CYC-Net

CYC-Net on Facebook CYC-Net on Twitter Search CYC-Net

Join Our Mailing List

CYC-Online
88 MAY 2006
ListenListen to this

practice

Child Care Work

Fritz Redl

While it is certainly true that we have learned a good deal during the last fifteen years it seems to me that our problems have become not easier but more difficult. It may be that these issues are not as evident here in Canada as in the U.S.A. but it seems to me that changes in our society during the past fifteen or twenty years create new challenges for the child care worker. Let me give you a few examples:

1. The adolescent has depersonalization and role freeze against the adult.
Bobby likes you, the child care worker. But he can’t like you too much because you set the rules. He must freeze his role because you are the one in uniform (not literally, of course, but in effect). Even if he likes the worker a lot he may have to give him or her up. These children may abandon you, sometimes when you least expect it. Always one way of dealing with authority, it seems to me that more youngsters are using it than previously. It is not the worker but the role they are battling. The more they have a positive relationship, the more they have to give it. As I said, we have always seen this but it seems that adolescents are now more of a society unto themselves than was the case 40 years ago.

2. The adolescent has an inability to deserve.
In my view many adolescents suffer from the fact that they cannot come to deserve their earnings. Penalty and reward systems do not always work well in a society where cadillacs are simply won by parents. Our whole culture feeds into this illogical dispensation of goods. There is a difference between finding $10.00 on the street and earning $10.00. Many adolescents (and adults) do not care whether or not they earn the money. But they become indignant at the end of the week if the reward is not forthcoming. The problem, from the perspective of the child care worker is: “How do I help this youngster enjoy fulfilling the contract?” Workers need to learn how to be able to help the child experience how to deserve.

3. There has been an increase in the suction power of rituals.
We adults have all sorts of rituals, everything from handshakes to carnivals in New Orleans. We also enact rituals with the children in our care. The threat is a good example. Take, for example, the kid who gets bounced from the dining room. To be sure this was a friendly bounce. The child knows he deserved to be bounced. Five minutes go by and all is fair. But after five minutes he begins to wonder if he deserved twenty minutes. What will he do for the next fifteen minutes? The child care worker is patrolling up and down in the corridor.

Of course we have to make children aware of the consequences of their behaviour. But sometimes we as workers lose sight of these consequences. We resort to threats we could not possibly want to carry out (if we were in our right mind at the time). But to return to our John who is now getting bored after five minutes have passed. He puts his foot into the corridor. The worker ignores it. He does it again putting it out a little further this time. Again the worker more or less ignores it. Now he puts it out even further still. The counsellor is now worried about his own prestige. He says to John: “If you do that again you'll have to go to the quiet room”. (Where you can make as much noise as you like and even try to wreck the place). Now if only the worker had not said this. He has thrown down the gauntlet. We might as well be looking at two four years olds or we might well be working ourselves up to fight a duel in 19th century Germany. One man makes the slightest suggestion that the other has erred in his manner. The other replies suggesting that the other, not he, was in the wrong. Finally, it escalates into one saying to the other: “You are lying”. Now they have to choose weapons and shoot. Now they are puppets on a string, nothing can be done to prevent the duel for honour is at stake. Too bad it happened that way but ...

Our therapist has succumbed to the suction power of the ritual. Now he will get into trouble from the chief counsellor. It was not necessary. Under what conditions is a threat reasonable? Under some circumstances it has to be a help but not under those outlined above. We should remember that the adolescent’s need for ritual is great. The power of the reference group is strong. Which kids have high vulnerability to suction? Most of the data we get on the children may be very helpful for combatting disease but they are of limited value compared to a knowledge about a particular child's suction power of rituals maintained by the peer group.

4. There exists a group code cassette.
In trying to make my point I am in this instance going to turn to modern technology. I wish to make an analogy between the adolescent’s behaviour and the operation of a modern-day tape cassette recorder. In using such a comparison I suppose I am only following in Freud's footsteps in the sense that he too used a pressure system loosely based on the physical sciences in order to describe his theory of mind. In seems that sort of physical analogy is the only sort that people will entertain ...

Not uncommonly a youngster will make a violent attack on me. He is in a rage and he lashes out. It is as though the “group-code system” has suddenly been switched on. Many youngsters do not actually want to hit anyone but they have to face the question. “What will happen to me if I don't?” The code does not permit a youngster to “take it” from an adult. Even children who have a reasonably settled superego are likely to have trouble. The child care worker has to know what the dueling code is. Kids are dependent on the group code and the worker has to know about the group’s values.

From the child care counsellor’s perspective it is important to remember that it is not so much that the adolescent rejects you or your rules but that the child has now come under a new code. Has the child “blown” or is it that the “Group Code Cassette” has come into play. This phenomenon of group code cassette would appear to be different from the breakdown of controls.

Let me close by commenting briefly on something we need and on where we are as child care workers today. One thing we need and often don’t have is data on a given child. Is this particular child allergic to the usual calming techniques or not? If I put my hand on his shoulder will it work or will it make matters worse? Everyone who had the child before me had to figure this out and many people know the answer. But now when I need the information there is no one who will give it to me. We have got to learn how to generate our data and how to transmit it to colleagues.

Where are we today? The role of child-care worker is emerging out of a sort of poorly-paid baby sitting job into a new profession. It is not just a composite of nursing, social work, psychology and so on. It has started to emerge. We are beginning to be able to offer thoughtful suggestions to the people who count but who often think the issues surrounding disturbed children are simple. Can we help people get over the idea that it is not a matter of either/or, for example, either all these children should be locked up, or they should be on the street. What this means is that we should have a variety of programmes. We have more children in need than ever before. And all too often only one or two of their needs are met in a programme. Often there are a dozen or so needs left over. We as child care workers must become experts in creating life spaces for children.

This feature: Redl, Fritz. (1982). Child Care Work. Journal of Child Care. 1 (2) pp.6-9

The International Child and Youth Care Network
THE INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK (CYC-Net)

Registered Public Benefit Organisation in the Republic of South Africa (PBO 930015296)
Incorporated as a Not-for-Profit in Canada: Corporation Number 1284643-8

P.O. Box 23199, Claremont 7735, Cape Town, South Africa | P.O. Box 21464, MacDonald Drive, St. John's, NL A1A 5G6, Canada

Board of Governors | Constitution | Funding | Site Content and Usage | Advertising | Privacy Policy | Contact us

iOS App Android App