The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
In the company of kidsJust in front of us as we walked into the mall was a well-dressed woman with her son (nephew, neighbour’s kid, we couldn’t be sure) who was perhaps fifteen or sixteen. She turned to him and said sharply: "I told you, with those stupid pants and that silly thing in your ear, you're not walking next to me!" – and quickened her pace as he looked down in embarrassment. Half an hour later we came across them again, she striding stylishly ahead, he, downcast, a few yards off her starboard beam.
I remembered a member of my Board in a program I ran a quarter of a century earlier. "All that these young people need," he assured me, "is to be taught how to speak properly!"
How many millions of youngsters come adrift from their families because they don’t measure up to expectations of appearance, of superficial acceptability? Bad enough for the average youth who is in any case going through the doubts and risks of the transition to young adulthood; how much more serious for the kids who are already pretty convinced of their own unacceptability and worthlessness?
So with the kids in our programs. How complex and rich needs to be the human contact and communication between us and them if we are going to confirm for them the worth of who they are thus far, so that they have something positive to build on for the future? How much listening do we have to do to "learn" them and know them – so they feel that they have something worthwhile to leave behind and something good to look forward to when they go?
In our practice today we know that we are so easily distracted by the superficial expectations which life places on our kids – that they are on time, they have done their hair, their rooms are tidy, they are "behaving" – so we may have to remind ourselves that it is they in whom we are interested, and we have this unique opportunity to be alongside them for so limited a time before they get back into their often unimproved and difficult lives. So, with those stupid pants and that silly thing in your ear and your awkward manners and foul mouth and scratchy moods and provocative behaviour ... it’s great to have you along. What do you think of that comfortable-looking couch ...?
