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Listen
Troubled kids who get themselves into scraps – with other kids, with teachers, with care workers – are very often blamers. "She started it ... I only ... He won't let me ... You’re always on their side." When the situation has been quietened down we don’t always have to pass an instant verdict and sentence. If we do, the blamer, let’s call him Robbie, will continue to be cross, he will strongly resist any suggestion that the conflict was his fault, and he will be just as likely to repeat his performance tomorrow. We should be able to draw more benefit from today's scrap for Robbie's growth.
In our kind of work we will almost always want to debrief after an upset ... to check that everyone is alright, and to move from hot blood to cool head, and hopefully to "make sense" of the episode.
But with blamers there is an added possibility. When we are all calm again, we use an objective narrative process beginning with "Now let’s see how all this got started and ended up in such an battle" – and then we sit down with the kid and we write everything down, making sure that we include all of the cast of characters.
Robbie begins: "Mrs Brown accused me ..." OK, we write that down, and then? "Then Mary chipped in and she said ..." OK, we write that down. And with all of his statements being accepted at face value and readily recorded, Robbie will sooner or later include his own words or actions into the story. "And I said No ... " OK we write that down. Now the aim of this listening and recording is not to gather evidence to convict Robbie, and there is no come-back when we finish. What's done is done. The aim is only to get Robbie’s name and participation objectively included in the story. When we look coolly and non-punitively at the story, he is there as a character in the play, with at least an acknowledged role in the plot – and as part of a cognitive intervention, we don’t really need to go further today ...
This is no magic or instant cure. It is a process we repeat as needed until Robbie "gets" the fact that he plays a role in all situations which arise in his life – which implies that (a) not everything can simply be blamed on others, and (b) that he has some control in what happens.
