The place of work in the residential community

Writing more than forty years ago, F.G. Lennhoff observes:
Perhaps it seems too far a cry from play to turn to the subject of work, which is often regarded as another invention of the “adult enemies” in the minds of disturbed children, whereas play is usually thought of as exclusively the invention, as well as the domain, of the child.

However, we are concerned with helping our boys to grow up and once they have done so, they will be expected to take their places in the world of work, so their attitude to this subject must be worthy of mention here. It is perhaps because of the background of English social history, with the all-pervasive influence on an entire population of the Industrial Revolution, that the outlook towards work of a large percentage of English people is that it is a necessary evil rather than a matter for pride.

We find that many of our children do not know what their fathers do for a living. Many parents obviously have a negative attitude towards their working lives and never discuss their achievements or their difficulties in the family circle. When they come to us, our children usually bring this negative attitude to work with them. For them it is merely something one does reluctantly, accompanied by much grumbling and if it could be avoided altogether, they would be delighted. Once we arranged for one of our boys to spend the summer holiday with the parents of a Swiss social worker, on their farm. On his return he told us: “You know I simply can't understand those Swiss farmers. Men and women, young and old, work all summer from five in the morning until ten at night and they actually like it! It's crazy!” And to him with his background in a slum family in a big industrial city, it must indeed, have been quite incomprehensible.

We aim to change this attitude-to get the child to see work as a matter of pride and satisfaction, something to take one's mind off one's worries, something achieved, which gives one courage gradually to widen out one's horizon throughout a long life of fulfilment.

Severely maladjusted children are generally not capable of concentrating for any length of time. Filled as they are with hostility, aggressiveness and the desire for attention, they regard work, as we have said, as an invention of the hostile adult world and they are not, they demonstrate, prepared to adopt it. How are we to achieve a transition? Once again, we must go back to our example of the mare and the foal. Young carthorses were once taught their work and broken to the shafts by accompanying their mother, and later tied to her by a long leading string, they gradually copied and developed her patient acceptance of work. In a similar way, our boys can best learn to adapt themselves to the prospect of work by doing it with us. We observe which adult a new child seems to like and these adults encourage him to be around when they are working in the garden, kitchen or repair shed. Slowly the child feels an impulse, helped on by the adult, to join in and lighten the load. Having achieved a task together with someone, the child feels a sense of satisfaction that is strange, new and rather pleasant. This sensation of sharing work and enjoying it helps towards a relationship and at the same time begins to alter the child's harsh attitude to any form of work.

The adult must continually, but sensibly, increase his demand on the boy until his effort is more concentrated and the result more complete. Then the boy can gradually be transferred to work in the company of another, older, boy.

It is amazing to see how helping with tasks can increase confidence, especially if the job involved is something bigger than the boy himself. Belief in himself increases almost visibly if a boy has taken a ladder and climbed up and helped to mend, for instance, the roof of a shed. For this reason we do a large amount of our own repairs, with the exception of most plumbing and electrical jobs. Decorating is a favourite job in which the boys achieve great skill and patience, perhaps because there is a lasting monument to their endeavour. They all share with us in gardening and eating the resulting vegetables, but their jobs are carefully regulated not to make too-great demands on their persistence and patience before they are ready and able to meet them.

Other duties require great and continuous effort – the cowman's contribution, for instance. He must milk twice a day, so he has to give up some spare time to clean and feed the animals and service his equipment and also to look after the electric fences round the pasture.

The boys often treat the animals just like human beings. One day I heard a child talking to a cow very aggressively and cursing it for not giving enough milk. Then there was a change and he put his arm round its neck, saying: “Never mind, darling, I know you didn't mean to do badly for me. I bet you'll make up for it tomorrow!” Which sums up better than I can the attitude of understanding tolerance we adults at Shotton hope to foster.

Everybody must have changes in his environment now and then and we believe it to be of particular importance that our children should have frequent contact with the world outside our walls; to learn in a practical way to come to terms with other people and to see what a working life is really like in practice.

One of the favourite trips is to work for a week with a team of telephone engineers. One of our boys described it in a long and most interesting essay from which we can see how much he learned in his week's operations with the Post Office! Not only technical data, geographical observation, timekeeping and job-handling, but much more important – the working comradeship of men who are good at their jobs – all of which will help him later in his vocational choice, and in his attitude to work in general.

This feature: Extract from Lenhoff, F.G. (1960) Exceptional children – Residential treatment of emotionally disturbed boys at Shotton Hall. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Pp 90-92