PracticeHint  

Doing enough ...
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We all wake in the morning with at least some distress and anxiety — counterbalanced by some hope and optimism. What makes it possible for us to get up and get to work on time is that our positive stuff, however slightly, outweighs our negative stuff. Our balance is manageable.

It's easy to make a list of the harsh load the children and youth bear. They will often awake with feelings of failure and guilt, of exclusion and inadequacy, of isolation and loss. What makes it worthwhile for them to get started on their day? It is our acute sensitivity to their sense of self and their personal experience that tells us what we might do to redress their balance enough to make getting up worthwhile.

The whole purpose of our program is to fine tune and balance the environment of individual young people so that they can keep functional — strengthened to operate independently and protected from undue stress. But we are extremely careful how we do this. The rare youngster whose circumstances are so far out of balance (as at point A where he or she cannot see forward, cannot access resources) should be regarded as critical ... in intensive care, needing protection, focussed  careworker attention, reassurance, basic care, return to first steps ...

However, young people at point B need no more than a nudge into the green area. To do more would be to devalue the efforts they have made so far. We are tempted to intervene with superficial rewards and incentives ("giving kids candy") instead of helping them dig into their own resources and strengths. We facilitate kids at point B to continue progress (relying on themselves) rather than too easily letting them regress (depending on others). In preparing them to take up their place again in the real world, we are careful to do enough, but not more than this.

Holly Kreider in a recent CYC-ONLINE article about girls in care, quoted one: “I've always considered myself very lucky, because even through all the changes that I've gone through, there's always been somebody there who's been good to me, and who've made me feel good enough about myself enough to keep it together.”  This is a strong statement; there is no sentimentality or over-dependence indicated — just child and youth workers who were careful about keeping the balance just right.

We remember again Hobbs's view that we try "to get the child, the family, the school, and the community just enough above the threshold of the requirements of each from the other, so that the whole system has a just-significant margin of probable success over probable failure ... "