What’s on your radar?

Paul Moore

I like to sail. There is not much nicer than the wind in your face; the sound of the water against the hull; the snap of the wind in the sheets and the sense of being “one" with the environment. The other side of sailing are the risks: what if the wind “blows up"; what if there is something floating just under the water; where are the shoals and shallows? To protect against these dangers, machines are designed to protect us against things that can happen to us. We install radar on out boats, we buy new GPS machines, we buy depth sounders and lap top computers to show us where we are.

Now along with the enjoyment of sailing comes the added fear of danger, so we constantly keep a watch on our equipment to keep us out of danger. So now while we are sailing along in relative safety, paying heed to our equipment, we are spending less time enjoying the environment around us and missing much of the stuff which we sail for in the first place.

What has this story have to do with working with youth and families. It is an analogy of us as workers paying more attention to the radar (and the dangers) than we pay to the environment (and the beauty).

It seems in our practice, we start out with the ability to embrace the beauty that working with youth often brings. We see the small successes of a youth making their first positive steps towards their goals. We see the school successes, the positive peer relationships, the strengthening of family and community relationships. We question what these youth are doing here in the first place. We relax in the beauty of the day and those whom we share it with.

Then, inevitably, we begin to see the set-backs and then the reaction to these. This is often displayed in negative behavior, running, violence and many of the other actions that we see in residential care. We question what happened to that youth with whom we were spending so much quality time with just a short time ago. We begin to withdraw from the youth; we spend less time interacting with them; we turn to a reactive response. The behavior displayed by the youth then “turns on" our radar and instead of seeing and responding to the positive we become like the sailor who continues to look for dangers rather than the beauty of the voyage.

It is times like these which we have to step back and try to create a balance between being aware of the negatives but having the ability to keep the positives in focus. Radar is a wonderful device when used properly. It has the ability to warn us of dangers, but it also has the capacity to show us where the shore and other safe harbours. It is to be used in conjunction with other instruments and not in isolation of our senses.

The moral of the story is that, as people working with families and youth, we must be aware of the blips on the radar screen , but also be aware of the beauty of each situation. Especially when the beauty is overshadowed by the dangers.