What is the point of having a bedtime if the kids don't respect it?

When it comes to work with troubled kids, why pick on bedtime? What is the point of having rules and laws if the kids don’t respect them? Or developmental timetables – physical, cognitive, emotional, etc.? Why have school hours and homework assignments if the kids don’t respect them? Or warnings against drugs and alcohol or other dangerous behaviours? Or conventions about tidy homes and table manners and normal families and loving and caring adults and safe neighbourhoods?

Sorry, I am getting ahead of myself. The point to be made is that whatever values and norms and timescales we may think appropriate as part of the socialisation of young people, all bets are off when their families and their lives are disrupted by poverty and separation and illness and substance abuse and unemployment and domestic violence and homelessness ...

What is the point of having a bedtime if there are no beds? Or if there is no rest or peace to be had? Or if there is fear and danger? Or if there is no protective adult around ...

You and I work with young people whose lives have in some way been disrupted. That disruption will impact on their development and their growth and learning and behaviour in different ways ... according to how old they were when the disruption became more dominant than the order (if ever there was order), the nature of the disruption, how severe it has been, or how chronic or actually still continuing; whether it was physical or psychological, whether its was rational or impossible to understand, whether it was suffered alone or with at least one other human being as company ...

Imagine taking one of these children into our program and insisting that, upon our command, he or she behave as any other three-year-old or seven-year-old or eleven-year-old or sixteen-year-old! We are giving you a warm bed and nutritious food and a regular time-table and in return we expect you to be “normal". This is like taking a ward-full of youngsters recovering in the orthopaedic ward of a trauma hospital and insisting that they perform a ballet! The classic pas de deux will now be performed, because you have eaten a good dinner and have been given nice dancing shoes.

Oh, that Child and Youth Care work were so easy – that all we had to do was to write a set of rules and paste them on the walls! That we could choose the easy route of the child advocate or “activist" who can state (with indisputable and obvious truth) that all children should be protected and given such-and-such advantages and opportunities and protections – and go home to sleep easy knowing that their work was done. That we could be as secure as the juridically-minded who can insist that a youth who assaults another or refuses to do what the law commands should be charged and legally prosecuted. That we could take the moral high ground which rejects the child who insults and rejects us or fails to live up to the social norms which we expect. Or that we could punish or otherwise “consequence" or sanction the youngster who does not respect our set bedtime.

No, our work is quite different. It is the generous and gutsy and risky work of going back and walking alongside young people who must re-lay the foundations of their lives, who must experience anew and for real the reassurance and security of infancy, the parental love which transcends the yelling and diapers and late-night comfort of the child between 18 months and two years who never experienced this, the patience and sensitivity of the adults who see their infuriating children through the “terrible twos" ... and so on, stage by stage, so that we bring them reasonably up to date, however long this may take, with their age cohorts, as soon as we can, because we want them to be able to resume their place in the world with some competence and dignity and respect and achievement. So that when they reach x years of age they will be able to compete or at least function adequately roughly at their age level and understand the laws and expectations of their society and have a fair shot at meeting these.

Of course bedtimes are important, because bedtime is the end of the day when kids need the comfort and attention and affection and peace of mind to be able to sleep with some expectations that tomorrow will be at least rational and manageable and hopefully positive and pleasant. With our kids, who knows how many bedtimes will pass before we reach that stage, but however many it takes, Child and Youth Care workers will be there for the kids. Because bedtimes are there for the young people in our care; they are not there for our tidy time-tables, they are not there for us or to suit the end of our shifts. They are there for when the kids need them and can use them and welcome them ...

And then of course they turn fifteen or sixteen and bedtimes are once again up for grabs because we reach the age when at 10 pm we are ready for bed and our kids have not yet decided whether they are going out for the night!