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20 JANUARY 2010
NO 1531
Working with groups
It is helpful to realize that the children's behavior, positive or negative, is often not really directed at the worker as a person. The children use the worker for their own needs, and whether he is treated lovingly or angrily, he must learn to accept it and not take it too personally.
One little girl in a treatment center selected two of the women staff members as the targets respectively of her angry and loving feelings. One of them, her own worker, she continually attacked, often physically, trying to bite and kick her; to the other, a worker in another but accessible group, she showed her sweetest and most feminine side. True, there was some rational basis for the child's choice. Her own worker was necessarily very much aware of the little girl's need for control, and being in charge of the group, she had the task of controlling her. The other worker responded somewhat more freely to the child's need for indulgence. It was probably important to the little girl at that time to have these different needs filled by different people, so that she could sort out the ambivalent feelings that she had for her own mother. Since both staff members were experienced, they maintained the integrity of their own relationship, and each accepted her role as the child had defined it. After many months of "working through," the child was able to bring the negative and positive feelings together and express both appropriately to her own worker, the one who had received the negative treatment but who was the one, like her mother, the child most wanted to be close to. The child and the other worker remained good friends, but finally the child could show anger toward this worker, too, as well as affection. Both relationships were realistic and genuine. The ambivalence was manageable, as it is with normal children.
This subtle interplay of feelings between children and staff, particularly the feelings of staff members themselves, can cause much trouble and confusion unless it is carefully evaluated. It furnishes much of the subject matter for supervisory conferences and staff meetings. Staff members need not be ashamed of having feelings about the children, even very strong ones; if they did not have feelings, they could not help the children. The feelings that go back and forth between the children and the adults help to provide the ladder by which the children can climb out of their disturbances.
Feelings among staff members are important and affect the structure of the worker group and the quality of the work with the children. Every human being has both positive and negative qualities; and when people work together as closely as they must in a treatment setting, their whole personalities become involved, not just their polite superficial side. As one professional has said, "In this work, everyone's slip is showing from time to time." Thus annoyances arise, as well as honest differences of opinion. These things must be dealt with in staff meetings or in one-to-one discussions, or else they may adversely affect the work with the children. Children are quick to pick up a feeling of strain or of unworked-out controversy among adults.
Some children are proficient at playing one adult against another, if the adults are not alert for this. They may, for instance, ask permission from one adult for something they want and then if it is denied apply to another adult without revealing that they have already asked the other. Child care workers, like good parents, learn to check with each other first, to make sure they are giving reasonably consistent answers. The child sometimes does not even really want the thing he has asked for but gets his satisfaction from upsetting somebody. The workers can recognize his manipulation without offense and without "putting the child down" – without being his victim and without victimizing him. Here again a bit of humor often helps.
Basic lack of respect between workers can be even more damaging than lack of consistency. Workers and all team members owe it to the children to study the structure and dynamics of their own group and to work hard to establish an atmosphere of trust among themselves. With enough good will it can usually be done.
GENEVIEVE .W. FOSTER, KAREN VANDERVEN, ELEANORE R. KRONER, NANCY TREVORROW CARBONARA AND GEORGE M. COHEN
Foster, G.W.; VanderVen, K.; Kroner, E.R.; Carbonara, N.T. and Cohen, G.M. (1972). Child Care Work with Emotionally Disturbed Children. Pittsburgh, PA. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 94-96.
