There is really no such thing as a "practice hint". None of us will walk into our practice today armed with one or other of the hints in this series. Rather, throughout our careers we pick up thousands of pieces of information, ideas, illustrations, attitudes and insights, and those that are any good we might store away in a mental carry bag — some never to be used, all perhaps close at hand.

And of course they talk to each other inside that carry bag. They tell each other when they happen to help or fail to help; they generalise from each others’ experiences; they group together and gossip when we're working with a particular kid or a particular issue — and we sometimes overhear what they say.

But any single practice hint is doomed to irrelevance. This one's not going to help us with this young person today because today –

• the kid needs challenge, not candy
• the kid needs complexity, not simplification
• the kid is physically seventeen, not seven
• the kid needs his own plan today, not ours
• the kid needs autonomy, not support ...

Equally, no doubt, it may be that today –

• the kid needs comfort, not stress
• the kid needs company, not solitude
• the kid is emotionally seven, not seventeen
• the kid needs boundaries, not risk
• the kid needs a pull, not a push ...

Every approach we make requires not a bag of tricks but an awareness of what's going on in us, what's important, what's being said, what is relevant right now in terms of the youngster’s accessibility, readiness, development, duties, progress. As we take in the situation, wait for the cues, and listen to the youth, all of those things in our carry bag are buzzing away in conversation, clustering in argument, longing to be heard. (And it may be that the more things we have put into that bag over time, the better the insights we may overhear ...)

But what we are going to experience is a complex, integrated, personal, unique encounter ... We’re not going to pull out a practice hint.

No such thing!