The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
It is one thing for us "to be ourselves", to be "in the moment", when we are spending time with individual kids. It is quite another to have to string together three or four such moments and at the same time to sustain our own levels of self-awareness and spontaneity.
An encounter with one youth is not unlike a chess game. There are the basic rules, there are the gambits and the games which they imply, the attacks and defences, the moves (and the plans which must necessarily change with each and every move), the choices between conserving and sacrifice ... and the end games. It takes all kinds of energy.
Really good chess players can move on to another game immediately, and we have all watched chess masters who can play games against fifty opponents simultaneously, and win them all!
But you and I are often at risk of moving into a new encounter with a different kid too soon, too quickly, before we have allowed the previous meeting to "drain". Our exchanges with kids in our programs are more likely to be "loaded", in the sense that we are often not simply trading opinions on the weather or yesterday’s ball game. The youth are struggling with experiences and perceptions and feelings which "get at" them, and which they can't easily let go; or if they manage to get on top of the worries and doubts, it is often not without much attention and listening and hearing on our part.
Today in our practice we know that before we can move from one challenging encounter into a second or a third, we need to get centred, to "re-collect" ourselves. In the naughty old days we might have wanted (gasp!) a quick cigarette; today we can take a walk down the drive and back, eat an apple or have a short conversation with the cat ... anything to help us enter our next one-on-one at our best, with a fresh mind and a warm heart.
Take a moment.
