Playing games

Brian Gannon

The sales hype on the box of the new computer game caught my eye: “18 arduous levels to conquer! Fresh foes to defeat! Added weapons to wield! Breath-taking environments to explore!”

"Hmm!” sniffed cynical me, “Sounds exactly like the start of a new shift for a child care worker!” (The breath-taking environment was no doubt Ronnie’s bedroom – he was a born-again enemy of fresh air.)

I also always had this paranoid feeling that the kids watched me through one eye as I came in to wake them, plotting (like Christopher Robin of sneezles and wheezles fame) “How to amuse them today!” The whole point of child care work, of course, is that no day is meant to be easy. Around every corner there is something new waiting to happen “and when challenges run low, any self-respecting youngster will be creative enough to invent new ones – to test the waters of newly-emerging anxieties, to reassure themselves about our reliability, to hone their own developing skills at negotiating with their world – or just to get up our nose.

And don’t be afraid of developing new weapons. Nothing is less stimulating than a “same old you” to kids who are growing and learning. You get no points in this game if you are predictable; reliable, yes, but please God not predictable. The bonus points come when you surprise them with new moves – expanding their view of the possible when for so long their expectations were dulled and limited.

Even scores
In the Child and Youth Care game, it is a good rule of thumb never to expect to win more than half the battles. Win them all, and you’re not giving the kids room to expand into new territory; lose them all, and you are busy unleashing some self-centred monster into our world! A score of fifty-fifty shows that you are aware of the youngster as a emergent and developing person “and that you are steadily passing the centre of control from yourself to the child.

The breath-taking environments we get to explore come from the fact that our same old unit is getting (should be getting) a make-over and a change in the cast of characters every day. If your place is the same today as it was yesterday, then you were not at work yesterday! If yesterday the kids learned something and changed even a little, then the environment you create today must accommodate those new differences. Only then do you (together with the kids) get promoted to the next arduous level of this great game.

If ever the point comes when you don't feel like moving up to the next arduous level, then that's terminal, man. Game over!