Hanging-in

Last month in the editorial, I indicated that “hanging-in and hanging-out” were two important characteristics of good Child and Youth Care work. I spent so much time talking about hanging-out that I never did get to hanging-in, which is the topic of this month’s editorial.

“Hanging-in”. What could it mean? Well to me it means something like “staying the course, not giving up”, or “remaining committed”. Unfortunately it is not something which we, as a field, have been too good at in the past and, fortunately, that's something that is changing. When I look back over my years in the field and think about all the youth and children come and go, I can't help but wonder if their lives might have been a little bit different if the staff working with them had been more committed to “hanging-in”.

I remember Andrea, a young girl who managed to get herself rejected from one placement after another through the process of cutting her wrists. She actually had the rejection pattern down to an art and it showed up in her placement history. She would move in to a new place, cut herself three times and always, yes, I say always, after the third cutting, she would be moved on to another place – this usually took her about a month. I wonder how her life might have been different if, early on, someone had been able to “hang-in” with her through her insistence that she be rejected. I wonder if her sense of attachment wouldn’t have been greater, or if she might have developed a sense of being cared-for at an earlier age, if some program had been able to hang-in through her cuttings.
I remember Jon who, every time he received a response (consequence) that he didn’t like, responded in an angry and threatening manner until whoever had given the consequence relented and let him have his own way. It had happened in his family, it happened in foster placement and it kept right on happening through a series of other placements. In the end he learned that anger and threat gained him what he wanted and our inability to hang-in with him through his anger and threat, helped him to learn this. I wonder sometimes how his life might have turned out different if we had been able to hang-in with him through his hostile reactions to our interventions. I wonder if he would have learned that there are other, better, ways to be with people or if he might have learned that “might” is not necessarily right.
I remember Mrs Withers. She seemed to everyone to be an incompetent parent – she didn’t nurture or guide her children according to the way everyone thought she should. She seemed unable to change her behaviour and someone, using one of those wonderful “parental capacity assessments”, had decided that she was incapable of becoming an effective parent. So, everyone, it seems, gave up trying to help her and just left her to wander in her own inadequacies. I wonder though, if we had not given up on her, if maybe her life would have ended differently – or if maybe, a few of her children couldn’t have eventually returned home, if even only on a part-time basis. I wonder, if we had hung-in, whether she might have learned some skills, or whether her children might not have learned to see her differently.

There are a million (or more) stories like this, and they all have one common theme – a failure to hang-in, when the going got rough.

Now don't get mad!

I know that it can be extremely difficult to hang-in, and I know that, in a few cases, hanging-in is not always the best thing to do. But it does seem to me that, in general, we have tended to give-in rather early in the complicated process of our struggles to help children and their families. And I realize that it is difficult when:

we are afraid that something bad might happen
we are experiencing ourselves as not being helpful
when our own triggers are flashing rapidly
when we feel alone in our wanting to hang-in.

But, ultimately, this work is about them, not about us. It is about whether or not our actions are beneficial to the youth and families we are trying to help. It is not about whether or not we are comfortable. Because this is not a “comfortable” business we are in.

So, I think about the children and I wonder how Mary's life would have been different if, when we said “no”, we had stuck with it rather than giving in to the tears and anger; or how Ralph’s life might have been different if we had maintained those boundaries when he was pushing for an inappropriate intimacy; or how Judy’s future might have been brighter if we had just stuck to our belief that she needed to experience intimacy, even though, because of her fear of being hurt, she ran away every time she started to have that experience.

Hanging-in is one of the hardest of youth care competencies. It stretches us to the limits of our abilities. It threatens our sense of commitment. It demands professional greatness. And, above everything else, it challenges our self-talk about why we are in this field. But in the end, isn’t this what most of our children need? Someone to hang-in with them when the times are tough. Someone who says to them “We believe in you" – and then proves it through their action. Someone who is not frightened away by the way they, the children, act out their own fear of intimacy and connectedness.

For in the end, much of the children's behaviour is about this very central issue. Are you going to reject me like everyone else who said they cared? Can I scare you away, too? Will you back away, or back down, like everyone else? And ultimately “are you really committed to me?”

Hanging-in and commitment – it's the same thing. If we don’t hang-in, are we really committed? And without commitment, how successful can we be?

Thom