Vicious circles

It is breakfast time. Most of the nine kids around the table have that 'early morning' look, wavering between mild surprise at being here at the start of a new day – and a desire to forget the whole thing and go back to bed. Kay Lambert, the child care worker, hates Wednesdays. She is on duty alone in the unit on Wednesdays, and right now she seems somewhat preoccupied by the logistics of all the trips, appointments and purchases and mananaging the group of children – which will be her sole responsibility today.

The electric toaster is not keeping up with the demand, and Kevin (14) is getting peevish having to wait for his next slice. Ellen (16) is chatting with Rosie on her other side, so he grabs her slice as it pops up, and has buttered it before she has even noticed it is ready.
"Hey! Gimme my toast!" she yells when she sees what Kevin has done.
Kevin scoffs it into his mouth.
"You bladdy-well ate it!" she cries, outraged.
Kay Lambert is irritated by the row. “Ellen, that's enoughl I will not have you using that language. You are always so incredibly rude!"
"I am not!" Ellen returns. “You just don't see what goes on in front of your eyes! You just take other people's sides!"
"I do not," snaps Kay “I simply expect more mature behaviour from people your age. You're acting like a spoilt child."
"Me?" Ellen is furious. “You're supposed to be in charge here? You haven't a damned clue!"
"Ellen!" yells Kay. “Leave this table at once and get to your room. This instant!"
"I'll be glad to," screams Ellen, slamming the dining room door as she runs out.
Kay, white-faced, holds tightly to the table, breathing hard. The other children are glued to their chairs.
Another Wednesday has begun.

I was working with a class of child care students a couple of months ago. I asked them: “How do adults feel when the children act out abusively, and violently, suddenly?" They made up a list: “The adults probably feel threatened, cross, startled, afraid, annoyed, anxious, and irritated, disturbed ... “And," I asked, “How do these adults then react or behave towards the children?" Another list: “They shout, warn, punish, restrain, threaten, accuse, isolate, belittle ... “And how, then, do the children feel when adults do all these things?" The students' third list included: “They feel scared and resentful, humiliated, and angry, rebellious, uncared for ... And so on.

The students had described an accurate picture of the negative merry-go-round which parents and their children easily get on to when neither are at their best. A child acts out over something hurtful or frustrating; we adults react almost instinctively (often attackingly rather than helpfully); the child resents this and might say something disparaging or insolent; we go for them again, threaten them, silence them or order them out of the room. Hey-ho! Here we are in the vicious circle which is turning in just one direction – probably to end with a bump: a slammed door, a verbal attack, an excessive punishment, and perhaps with one of us saying or doing things we don't really mean to.

Evaluation
1. The difference between Kay Lambert and any other adult is that Kay is a child care worker. She has actually chosen to work in an environment where you can bet that children are going to act out over things – where almost by definition they have poor images of themselves, where they have short fuses, little experience in behaving age appropriately, less developed verbal skills to express their hurts and disappointments, and where all of their frustrations and angers boil up closer to the surface ...

2. Child care workers, as a result of their training, carry about with them a 'toolbox' of skills, and through these –

they can design environments and schedules which are meant to be optimally helpful and minimally harmful and frustrating;
they can get a 'snapshot' idea of just what is going on when problems emerge, figuring out the immediate and long-term build-up of situations;
they can use 'fire extinguisher' methods to stop situations from escalating beyond the children's present tolerances and controls;
they can apply 'sticking plaster' solutions to soothe tempers and patch up bristling egos;
they can offer choices, alternatives and ideas to help the youngsters to regain their sense of control and well-being; and
they can develop treatment plans (for now, for later today, for tomorrow ...) for those youngsters who are still going to take some work in their development to maturity.

3. It seems that Kay Lambert didn't have her 'toolkit' at the ready with her this morning. The bottleneck of a slowed up toaster with a group of nine troubled kids, is nothing less than an major incident waiting to happen (poor environment planning). Kay misread the conflict situation by seeing only Ellen's rudeness rather than Kevin's impatience (poor observation and interpretation). The wheel of misfortune was beginning to rotate – in the wrong direction! She attacked Ellen ("You are rude, you are immature") instead of pouring oil on troubled waters (poor skills). She got into that silly 'I-am-not-You-are-I-am-not' slanging match (the wheel really spinning out of control now), and then lost the whole battle by pulling rank and dismissing Ellen from the room – and thus losing all opportunity for further helpful communication.

4. At a still more important level: child care workers should never be happy simply to 'slot into' the vacant positions left by the children's own parents, perhaps with the mistaken idea that they can do the parenting task better. With most of the youngsters, the parent-child situation is exactly what went wrong, and they expect more than just substitutes being brought into the opposing team. Child care workers are meant to offer something new, something different, to change (and improve) what has been going wrong before, to find creative ways of breaking those old habits and deadlocks. It is vital that we ask ourselves: With all that has gone wrong with this youngster and her family, what new and different thing will we be offering? Just imagine how the scenario at the breakfast table might have developed if Key had said: “Oh goodnessl What can we do about this toaster? Who's got a good idea?" From this first moment, the wheel might have started rotating the other way.

(Can you pick up other points in the story where Kay could have played “the adult role" and maybe saved the situation)

5. A child care worker I know achieves all this by smiling! She believes that a simple smile is the easiest way to give a positive message to children and start the wheel turning in a positive direction. Think about it.

6. And then again, maybe Kay Larnbert shouldn't have been alone on duty in the unit on Wednesday mornings.