Listen to thisEffective Child and Youth Care practitioners rely on experiential moments of connection which are more effectively delivered through physical sensations rather than verbal logic. Low attachment ability youths have brains that are hard wired to resist any verbal messages which adults use to get them to trust and be vulnerable to adult influence. Until a safe relationship has been established, the main messages about adult safeness and caring will generally be experienced physically. I have been calling this sensible Child and Youth Care practice.
Many of the youths we encounter have had multiple experiences of adults who try to help them, but are successfully pushed away. They also know adults who have not been helpful at all because they have comfortably fit into the youths” view of adults as self-centered and uncaring power abusers. Most of the unsuccessful adults have used what I call nonsensical approaches to try and reach these youths which has resulted in unintended, but predictable results.
The goal of any program, no matter what the theory being used, is to create youth who can function capably in the world. Individual Child and Youth Care practitioners and staff teams also have this goal, and most attempts to help youth have this intention. So why do many of our efforts and intentions fail? My belief is that we focus on the wrong target, believing that if we create good behaviour, we will create capable people. Child and Youth Care programs accept youth who do not attend school regularly, use alcohol and drugs, are very aggressive, swear and steal, etc., and within a few weeks, these youth are attending school, not using drugs and alcohol, interacting well with others, etc.. Yet one week after discharge they are back to their old pattern of misbehaviour. We take the simple short cut of using external control strategies to force good behaviour, rather than the longer, more complex approach of supporting self control. It is as if you went into a hospital for surgery and they fixed you well enough to stay healthy for just a week, rather than the rest of your life, because it was easier.
Nonsensical approaches typically involve using adult attitudes, socially logical thought patterns, securely attached belief approaches and behaviourally focussed strategies to create change. Words, written warnings and lists of rules, logical consequences, verbal “processing” strategies and behavioural targets based on Level systems are all nonsensical strategies. They rely on the youth having a similar mindset as the adult, which is not happening. Our youth believe that the adults in their world enjoy punishing them, whether it is called logical consequences, behaviour charts, house rules or any other fancy name. So every time a Child and Youth Care staff explains the logic behind a consequence, the only message received by the youth is that you are in a bad mood, or just get satisfaction out of making them feel pain.
When youths tell you that the only reason you are with them is because you are getting paid to do it, they are telling you something very important, and the only way you can convince them that you care is to go beyond the normal expectations of the job and demonstrate that you really do care. So every time you or a team member complains that they do not pay you enough to put up with (fill in the blank), you are confirming this belief. When one staff member is aggravated by a youth’s behaviour, yet another staff delivers the “logical” punishment, you destroy the trust being built by either of them (see EBT). Most attempts to counsel youths and lecture them into changing their behaviour are like trying to teach calculus to someone who can not add or subtract.
We are regularly confronted with the results of our nonsensical approaches, yet we make sense of it by blaming someone else; their parents, the youth himself, the lure of bad neighbourhoods, etc.. The fundamental acceptance of simple, behavioural targets needs to be challenged and more complex, long term, harder to deliver approaches should be advocated by all of us. Sensible Child and Youth Care practice is a good place to start.
