Listen to thisIt was late in the day. Everyone on the committee was feeling tired after an afternoon of reviewing cases, meeting with families, and trying to decide what was the best service plan for each individual family given the limitations of the agency’s resources. We were the Service Plan Committee, and our mandate was to meet with each new case referred to the agency and to decide, in consultation with the family, what services of the agency would be brought to bear on the problems the family was experiencing. We were good at our work: efficient, quick to decide, and caring of the experiences of the individuals involved “or at least so we thought.
At 4:30, Mr. and Mrs. Amando entered the room with their daughter Nina. Nina had been “causing problems” for the community and her parents. She refused to do as she was told, skipped school, and had been arrested for a number of minor deliquencies over the past year. The parents were at their wit’s end, and the social worker was recommending placement for a period of six months. The recommendation seemed designed to give the parents a break as much as it was designed to provide treatment for Nina.
The mother and father were going through a stressful time themselves. Mr. Amando had been released from prison only a few months previously. He had been incarcerated for about five years for a series of minor, but important, crimes. This had been his third time in prison. Mrs. Amando had essentially raised Nina by herself. Together, the social worker reported, they were struggling to create themselves as a couple, and the actions of Nina were making that difficult.
During our meeting the father was the most vocal of the trio. It seemed that he was the agreed spokesperson for the family. When the committee explored options with the family he would seem agreeable, saying that the deliberations of the committee made sense to him. When we explored placement, he said it made sense to him. When we explored in-home services, he allowed how that might be the answer as well. Wherever we went, he went with us as a willing participant, and Mrs. Amando and Nina followed right along. He seemed to be agreeable to almost anything that the committee might decide.
One of the committee members, feeling that Mr. Amando, and by extension the family, was too agreeable, made some outrageous suggestions. Again, the father said that those ideas might work and he indicated that he would do whatever was necessary. He asked the committee member what she thought he should do in order to make these plans work.
The process of the committee was not working with this family. The goal was participation, not compliance, yet all our approaches were eliciting only compliance. We appeared to be working towards different goals. Finally, one of the committee members, more in desperation than as a strategy, asked the father what this meeting meant to him, how he understood it. Well, that opened a new door.
“Oh,” Mr. Amando replied to the committee member, “I’ve been before lots of boards like this before. In prison, you are always meeting with a committee any time that you want something.”
As we explored, from this point, how the father understood the meeting, it became clear that he thought of this meeting like a parole board hearing. In this context he believed that his role was to try and figure out what the committee wanted to hear and then give them that in a manner that would convince them that he was sincere and cooperative. In this way, he believed, he might get what he wanted. And right now he wanted relief from the stress that he and his wife were feeling with Nina.
Thus, he explained, he had spoken with Mrs. Amando and Nina before the meeting and convinced them that it was best to leave the talking to him because he had had previous experiences with “boards” where they had not.
Had someone not asked him how he understood the meeting, how he had made it meaningful for him, we might never have realized that all of our strategies to involve the family were destined for failure. From the beginning of the meeting, his conceptualization of this experience and ours were totally incompatible.
Once we all realized that the way in which we understood the meeting, our various roles in it, and the goals of meeting together were different, we were able to begin anew through negotiating a common understanding. That accomplished, the meeting progressed in a very different fashion. Mrs. Amando and Nina became more involved. Mr. Amando became less agreeable and was able to explain why some of our suggestions had not really made sense to him.
All of us need to make sense of our experiences. We give to them a “meaning” that allows us to feel like we understand, and can even control, those experiences. When two people are involved in a common experience and they give to that experience different meanings, the stage is set for ineffective communication.
Imagine for a minute that you are meeting with a mother who has brought her daughter for placement. For you this may mean the opportunity for help. For the mother it may mean that she is a failure. For the daughter it may mean that she is rejected.
Once we have given meaning to an experience, we interpret what occurs in light of that meaning. So now imagine that in meeting with this same mother and daughter, you ask the daughter to leave the room so that you can talk privately with the mother.
You might ask this so that you can model for them that some things are not the daughter’s business. The daughter interprets this as rejection and leaves the room without argument. She interprets this request as a sign that you are aligned with the mother in the “rejection” of her. The mother sees the daughter leave the room without argument and interprets this as a confirmation of her failure because the daughter is so willing to do as you ask.
A simple strategy, interpreted or misinterpreted by all the participants. No one is wrong. In fact, everyone is right because they are all interpreting their experiences according to their own frame of reference.
Now imagine that after the daughter leaves the room, the mother becomes depressed, and the daughter begins to cry. You are left to interpret these experiences; to give them meaning. In the absence of understanding their frames of reference, you can only guess at the reasons for their behaviours. You might interpret, for example, that the mother relaxed as soon as the daughter left the room and thus let her depression show. You might interpret that the daughter is crying because she is beginning to experience loss. You might interpret a dozen different things. And any of them might be right. And any of them might be wrong.
We all give meaning to our experiences. We all interpret anything that occurs in light of the meaning that we have given to an experience. When we presume that we understand, we leave the door open for misunderstanding.
When we ask others how they are making meaning of our common experience, we open the door for understanding. We open the door to working together.
Once we had asked Nina’s father how he was making meaning of our committee meeting, we opened the door to working together, and the family became active participants in the process of helping them to find a solution they could all live with and have hope.
This feature: Garfat, T. (1995). Situations in Child and Youth Care: Opening doors. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 10, 3. pp. 93-95
