INDEX OF QUOTES
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I have been intrigued by the concept of authority for a longtime. I remember in high school I used to wonder why some teachers had us sitting quietly and passively, while with others we would be rowdy and disruptive. Why is it that some have a natural aura of authority about them, and others must struggle to get even marginal compliance? When I entered the field of child care I began to experience first hand what it was like trying to control difficult children. I never had any magic aura about me, so I was one of those who engaged in a constant battle of power and control. It seemed the better I was able to control children, the more positive feedback I received from colleagues and supervisors. Put another way, the better behaved the children, the better I felt as a worker. But something seemed amiss here. Judging one’s competence as a worker by the behavior of the children is ludicrous, especially when we realize that these are not just any children, but children whose emotional disturbance and history of neglect and abuse makes them all the more difficult to manage. Using the children’s behavior as a gauge for worker competence is not only unfair and inaccurate, but destructive. Nevertheless, my experience in child care is that this was often the case, to the detriment of the workers, the programs, and the children. I would suggest that there presently exists a division between what we as child care workers do in behavior management, and what we do as treatment. Too often, we are forced to put behavior management on the front burner, and judge our programs, our progress, and ourselves on this only. While we concentrate on managing behavior, we fail to engage in any long-lasting, effective treatment. The theorists did not divide management and therapy for us but the two have become separate in our practice. The result is child care workers who judge themselves by how well they control the children, rather than by therapeutic results. This creates a miserable dilemma for workers. If they do not possess that magical aura of authority, they either resort to adopting a heavy-handed style which is neither comfortable nor effective, or they attempt to win children’s cooperation by being friendly and overly permissive. Meanwhile, the authoritarian style workers scoff at others who cannot ‘do it as well.’ This creates tension among staff, and, when the goal becomes whether one can make a child jump, and how high, fosters destructive competition. |
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