The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
We go through stages in our relationships with the young people we work with. Initially it’s the kid gloves stage with us being sensitive to their needs at a time of crisis or transition – or maybe cagey and suspicious when a kid comes in with a scary history. Once we know each other better and the ground rules are set, we move into the routine stage when we try to keep going those aspects of the youth’s life which can keep going, while we work at the rough edges. Much of the work now is what good parents would do – getting going in the morning, getting to school, managing (as well as anyone can) going out and coming back times and maintaining reasonable socialization tasks.
Later we get into what Berne would have called a more adult-adult relationship as we can work together on such things as career and accommodation issues – and then we reach the ex-worker/former-client relationship where we might bump into each other more or less regularly or amicably.
The above sequence is, of course, greatly sanitized. Along this route there is often much blood spilt, there have been storms and disasters as well as reconciliations and deep learning – on both sides! But what’s the betting that as you and a client have moved on through the later stages, the two of you have reminisced over earlier stages? "When I first met you, I thought ..." and "Remember the day you said I couldn’t ...?" or "I recall you being very apprehensive about moving on to ..."
I often think that this later reminiscence process is an under-used tool for assessing our current practice. Wondering how we are remembered today by kids who have "passed through our hands" can be a sobering exercise ... are we remembered as as admonishing or encouraging (did we get the mixture right?), as too remote or over-identified, as accepting or rejecting ...
An equivalent exercise is to ask how today’s sixteen-year-old child will judge our interventions ten years hence, when he or she is 26 years old. For what we are doing now, will we be remembered for being petty and punitive, or will it be our genuine concern and wisdom that is recalled?
In our practice today we are alert to the possibility that we might be prissy and right and hindering rather than empathic, committed and courageous; we might be controlling as against guiding, over-accommodating as against responsible. These can be tough calls.
Time will tell.
