PracticeHint  

In or Out?
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Robert Frost wrote:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
I should have called it
Something you somehow haven't to deserve.

This is not the home experience of most of the youngsters we work with – who have experienced repeated separations and loss, and what they often see as indifference, neglect and rejection from their families. Much of the "problem behaviour" we face in our practice represents these kids fighting their way back into roles and relationships from which they have been left out or rebuffed. Or it refects the distrust and animosity which expects only the worst from the world. Or the tragic attempts to deserve what many of us took for granted.

Their behaviour is disturbing – destructive, hostile or unresponsive. And many of the adults they come into contact with are easily tempted to respond to this in the same way that adults did before – with defensiveness and judgement, with control and punishment, with distancing and, ultimately, again, rejection.

There is a simple theory to challenge us as child and youth workers: Included kids feel, and therefore behave, differently from excluded kids. So you and I have learned the value of saying come, come with us, join us, meet us, let’s ...  And if we don't do this, then who?

Take a youngster in today.