 |
Who’s Teaching Who?
It often seems that the way I can best be of assistance to a child is to stop
trying to teach him anything, and instead focus on being fully open to learning
whatever he has to teach me. When I am trusting enough to allow such an
encounter to occur, I frequently find myself surprised at the depth of
understanding a child has. I realise again that he has the answers he needs now
within him, and has only been waiting for the opportunity to let himself become
aware of what he knows. The confidence and appreciation that begin to emerge in
his face are such fine gifts for the little trust it took for me to listen to
him!
– Child Care Work in Focus
Dependent cripples
As child care workers, we can guide and teach those in our care many things,
but if we fail to teach them to trust themselves, then we have crippled them. We
have helped to make them dependent on people and structures outside themselves
which ask that they sacrifice their own integrity and growth in order to fit
into someone else’s image of who they ought to be.
– Child care work in Focus
Talk and interview
Let us distinguish between talk and interview — the former is spontaneous,
flowing, emergent and essentially part of the everyday, while the latter is
work, goal-directed, purposeful and intentional. An interview can rarely be done
without preconceptions, but talk, in contrast, is simply the pre-reflective,
natural way of being present and available, ready for whatever emerges from
oneself or the other: ready to initiate, to join, to respond, to just be there.
During such moments, I do not care what the other will say; I care only that he
or she says. I don’t care what the other has decided or chosen; but only that he
or she has decided or chosen.
– Mike Baizerman
Problems for whom?
What if somehow it is true that the children we work with really have no
problems; that what may appear to be problems are only a different way to look
at what they have to teach us ... their gift to the World? What would be the
impact if the majority of our effort went towards discovering new ways to
appreciate and deepen our gratitude for each child for who he or she is now? How
would it be to have a job where your primary responsibility is to enjoy the life
you share with those in your care and with whom you work?
– Child Care Work in Focus
Being there
Troubled children have been psychologically and/or physically abandoned
throughout their lives and their greatest fear is that they will be abandoned
again. To trust and grow, they need dependable and predictable connections –
caregivers who they can count on, who are on hand to talk when they are ready,
to support them when they are motivated to to learn, to encourage them to try
again when they fail, and to also be there when they are neither ready,
motivated nor interested in a helping hand. Thus, coming into the field requires
a commitment to being there with an understanding of the time it takes for
troubled children to begin to trust adults.
– Mark Krueger
On stereotypes
With time and with increased interaction between workers and youths in
contexts which allowed the latters’ individuality to emerge, workers’
preconceptions about each youth were supplemented by information unique to the
individual. As personal information about youth burgeoned, they became
increasingly distinct. The knowledge about each was no longer contained within
the parameters of the form (stereotype). Hence they became individuals.
– Trevor Harrison |
 |
