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27 JULY 2009
NO 1466
Relationship
Lewis, Amini and Lannon (2002) in their discussion about relationships, give an example of what happens when you hold out an old shoe to a dog. He will enthusiastically grab hold of it, tugging and thrashing. If you drop the shoe he will bring it back and hold it out to you, because it is not the shoe that he wants. What he wants is the feeling of you tugging away on the other side, doing it with him, making relationship.
Residential care staff often do not realise the immeasurable potential value of 'doing and being with'. We need to understand the role of the adult in terms of the developing child. We need to be seeing that the child is still trying unconsciously to complete some developmental tasks essential to maturation. The child needs us to play the other part in that development. We need to pick up all the shoes the child brings, and tug and tug. It is our responsibility to provide the child with lots of interesting, good 'shoes'.
What often happens is that the adult throws a shoe – in whatever form – to the child, then goes off to pursue something else. All the technological, screen-based entertainments are perfect for this: shoes they can chew on all by themselves. But it may be far from what they always need or want. The young people may have been so consistently disappointed that they do not know that they have a right to bring the shoe back and ask us to engage. Alternatively, if they still have that capacity and try to get our involvement, they can get labelled as manipulative and demanding. They may go off to a corner and try to soothe themselves with the 'shoe', but will probably end up chewing it to bits. What begins as a reasonable need for appropriate adult engagement can end up with a child destroying something, being labeled, and having to take all the consequences.
All of the activities we are experimenting with in this project are wholesome and enrich the child's inner and outer worlds, encouraging use of hands, body and mind. (Steiner 1988; Nobel 1991). We are helping the child to form a relationship not only with the material, but with us. The 'shaping physiologic force of love' (Lewis et al., 2002, p. 25) does not come in the form of the occasionally-thrown shoe or latest computer game, but in consistent sensitive relatedness formed from an ever-deepening understanding of the child's needs. It is only from this solid, fertile common ground that the child's moral sense can develop and that the potential for spiritual activity, moral undertakings and compassionate relating can grow.
CAREY MORNING
Morning, C. (2008). Opening the gifts and treasures of relationship in residential child care. Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care, 7, 1. p. 52.
REFERENCES
Lewis, T, Amini, E & Lannon, R. (2002). A general theory of love. New
York: Random House.
Steiner, R. (1988). The child's changing consciousness and Waldorf
education. New York: The Anthroposophic Press.
