Negotiating the in-between

Thom Garfat

Patty could hardly wait for the meeting to start before she zeroed in on the subject of one of the boys in her group. “Geoffrey Burke. Is anyone else having the same trouble with him as I am? Lord Muck, he thinks he is! Always the first to tell us what we're allowed to do and what his rights are and what we can't make him do! He has this great sense of entitlement. The world owes him a living, and let nobody forget it. So he had a rotten home – well he's going to have to grow out of that, isn't he? Or will we transfer him directly from here to the Ritz Plaza? When he's good and ready to go, mind you! Mr Entitlement Himself!"

Herb, who also worked with the boy, sat back and thought for a moment. “I've often found that kids who have been in extreme situations, unpredictable moves and changes, extended privations, that kind of thing ... when they get the slightest chance they’ll stake out a bit of unassailable territory for themselves, a dugout or a protective barricade, sort of keeping the world at a distance while they get a hold of themselves ... and they will defend this with quite some hostility ... until they feel they don't need to defend any more ..."

"Rubbish!" snapped Patty, “What you've just said is altogether avoiding what I said! A sense of entitlement, I said. What does all this dugout staff have to do with a sense of entitlement? Just tell me! Who agrees with me?"

I leaned forward with a sigh, thinking to myself, “Here we go again. The line-up. “Who’s on my side.” Guts versus intellect. Why? Why? Why is it always such a divide between the feeling and the thinking.”

I didn’t say any of that out loud, of course. As the supervisor, it is my challenge “do you hear the heavy sigh as I say that “to bridge the gap, bring the two sides together, find the common ground where we can all agree that everything is relevant and sometimes, just sometimes, none of it really matters.

“So, let me see if I can bring these two points of view together, before we drift apart,” I say. “He’s keeping us away from him and doing it in such a manner that it pisses some of us off.”

“I’m not pissed off,” Patty snorts back at me. “I just think he has an over-blown sense of his own importance.”

“And I’m not saying that he’s keeping us away from him,” Herb floats out from somewhere above us all. “As a matter of fact I feel quite connected with him.”

“So, you both agree that I am wrong,” I offer.

Patty and Herb look at each other, and then back at me like I am the inside of a rotting pumpkin left out in the field. They nod in unison. I’m happy to see them agree. I always dreamed of being a pumpkin anyway.

“Actually, it sounds to me like you are both quite connected with him.”

They both nod again. I am getting happier by the minute. Self-delusion is a wonderful thing.

“And you both agree that he has a way of being in the world “in relationship “and that there is a “reason” why he might be the way he is?”

Herb nods. Patty looks suspicious. She thinks I am trying to trick her, I bet. She’s right of course, but that is neither here nor there.

“Patty? What’s going on?” I ask.

“Well, I agree that there is a reason. I just don’t agree that it justifies his behaviour.”

“Fair enough. But you do agree that there must be a reason.”

“Yes.”

“Can you live with Herb’s reason?”

“I can live with any reason,” she snaps. “As long as it doesn’t mean we have to treat him like the King of England.”

Oops. I might have gone too far. But better mad at me than at Geoffrey. You know, when you are the supervisor, when it is your task to bring the differing opinions, experiences, ideas together so that you can have a unified approach to the young person, everything can get quite confusing. For example, I wonder, at this moment, if I am supposed to be profound. You know, offering a way of seeing that cause them both to experience the moment of “Aha!” Or maybe I am just supposed to facilitate the two of them negotiating a common understanding. But then I think, what if one of them is right? Won’t a negotiated understanding loose something, cause us to miss the boat, suffer our way down to the last common denominator? Or maybe I should just ask them both to shut-up so I can hear from the rest of the team. But that’s just my frustration talking, isn’t it?

“So, you say this,” I nod at Patty. “And you say that”, I nod at Herb. “But what does Geoffrey say,” I ask?

In the same breath, without a pause or a millisecond, Patty says, “He says he’s entitled.” And in the same split second, Herb says, “He says he’s scared.”

“Hmm,” I say, a moment of brilliance obviously not immediately at hand.

“The two of you,” I say, “Go together and talk with Geoffrey. When all three of you agree, we’ll meet again. And I want to hear it in his language. And under no condition, and at no moment, is he to be caught between the two of you.”