Listen to thisOriginal Editor's Note
In assuming editorial responsibility for the Journal of Child Care, Gerry Fewster made a decision to refrain from submitting his own work for
consideration. Maintaining this stance for five years reflects a remarkably
sustained gesture of self-restraint by a man whose psychopathy has taken him
close to homicide in many a traffic line-up. Released from the burden of
editorial writing by the one and only Henry Maier, Gerry jumped at the
opportunity to say something about his most beloved topic relationships. In
this article he uses paradox as a cleaver for butchering some of the sacred
cows of professional Child and Youth Care. Compared with some of his more
recent work, the ideas, along with their expressive forms, seem a little
'raw' but the essential ingredients of Fewster's personal orientation are
clearly spelled out. Caught up in a mindless quest for something called a
professional identity, it would be easy for Child and Youth Care to jump
onto the pseudo-scientific bandwagon of "objectivity." In the area of human
relations we need to be reminded, from time to time, that such science can
be little more than a dangerous illusion. Whether you happen to agree or
disagree with Fewster's position, such challenges have their place as we
struggle to draw meaning from experience.
Sharing the road
Through relationships, children learn about who they are and about the worlds in which they live. Through relationships they come to experience their separateness, their uniqueness and, ultimately, their relatedness. The pathway is laden with discoveries and beset with hazards but the process is as compelling as life itself ... for that is precisely what it is.
Child and youth care workers appear as fellow travellers along that pathway for an increasing number of children in our society. For brief periods of time they share part of their respective journeys, eventually choosing to part company to pursue their own purposes and destinies. The encounters are as varied as the wayfarers themselves but they all offer their own unique opportunities for each individual to learn from the shared experience of the others. The caring adult, as the more seasoned adventurer, has much to offer in the sharing of past struggles and discoveries.
Along with these experiences there are also fears, hopes and aspirations about what lies ahead. Those who journey with calm confidence and courage know that the possibilities and potentials are endless and that each person must learn to steer his or her own course and make his or her own choices along the way. They do not attempt to "show the way" or assume that they, themselves, walk the path of righteousness, for they know that their struggling companions have all that it takes too seek out and discover for themselves. For a time they may walk together, hand in hand, or with arm laid gently around the shoulder. They may allow the young traveller to follow behind but they are always teaching from experience, pointing out the options and examining the terrain.
Occasionally, the wiser companion may step in to protect the other from danger but the teacher knows that their association will be short and that the student must quickly learn to walk alone. Then, of course, there are times when the youngster makes a decision that imposes upon the freedom of the teacher. Here the student must attend to the other's experience and come to know that there are rules of the road and that "freedom" for one cannot be expressed as a suppression for another. Eventually, at the parting of the ways, the older companion, who is truly wiser, will know that the teacher learns from the student. Even students who are angry and resentful, mistrusting and evasive, or quiet and withdrawn, have much to offer. Each has a special story and a unique set of experiences that will be shared if the teacher has the necessary patience, strength, tenacity and commitment to learn. In listening to the young person's story, the adults learn more about themselves and about the fascinating and provocative journey that confronts us all.
Then, as they part and go their separate ways, there are no debts to be paid and the appreciations are for what has been shared. The sadness is good, for both companions know that they are now stronger and that in some way their shared experience will continue to link their separate journeys. In my experience, very few Child and Youth Care workers actually take this perspective when looking at their relationships with young people. More often than not they seem to believe that it is their task to "get to know" kids as quickly as possible and then proceed to "point them in the right direction" by whatever skills or methods are made available. Very few practitioners seem prepared to accept the notion that a relationship based upon shared experience is worthwhile as an end in itself. In most designs, it is seen to be a means to an end.
The irony is that an open relationship cannot be "used" in this way for such intentions would inevitably produce closure and separation. In the thoughts that follow, I will attempt to place the child care relationship in a particular framework; i.e., one that is detached from all of the projects and intentions inherent in producing change in others through the various forms of "intervention" or "therapy." This is not to suggest that adults should not have definite expectations of children or that there is no place for discipline or control in the adult/child relationship. In the following pages such contingencies are not discussed, although I would suggest that they could be readily and appropriately built into the perspective presented. The intent behind this article is simply to encourage the reader to "take another look."
The only child is me
To truly understand another person is an impossible task since we have only our own experience to work with. However sensitive, brilliant and insightful we are, we can never really "know" the experience of the other. So, in responding to the other person, we are actually responding to our Selves. From this perspective, our impressions and judgments reveal much about our Selves and very little about the other person. The feelings of joy, sadness, fear and security that we experience as we listen to another person's story are feelings that actually relate to our Selves and our own stories.
Think about this the next time you are quietly emoting in the protective darkness of your local movie theatre. Consider how "self-conscious" you would feel if the house lights were to be illuminated and you were to be seen by the rest of the audience in your state of vulnerability and self-indulgence. In Child and Youth Care work, ask yourself why the story of a particular child will produce anger in one person, condemnation in another, sympathy in another, despair in another and so on. The child and the story remain the same but the experiences of others are quite different, along with their direct responses to the youngster in question. The primary response is always to the Self. Hence, relationships are essentially connections with the Self and not with the worlds actually experienced by others. It is the quest for Self-discovery that constantly draws us toward others.
Some writers and philosophers have argued that beyond Self-discovery there lies the more mystical world of trans-personal understanding but, for most of us struggling through our daily lives, we have only tantalizing glimpses of this realm of evolved consciousness. For the most part, the experiences of others help us to experience our Selves. The more others share their experiences with us, the more we learn about our Selves. Conversely, the more we share our experience with others, the more we offer potential for learning and growth. When taken seriously this perspective offers some fascinating paradoxical learning opportunities for Child and Youth Care workers. Some examples of such paradoxes are discussed in this article but readers are certainly encouraged to develop their own. However bizarre they might appear at first blush, the chances are that their further consideration and analysis will help practitioners to take a fresh look at their most critical professional issue ... relating to children and young people.
The more I can explain, the less I understand
As I listen to a child's personal story, expressed in either present or past experience, my senses are inextricably bound up within my own present and past experience. In order to make full use of what my senses have to offer I must begin by allowing them to be as open and receptive as possible. This means that I must be prepared to abandon, at least for the time being, all of the feelings, thoughts, ideas, theories and judgments that do not belong in the immediate project of attending to the young person who is sharing my physical space. Any pre-established attitude will undoubtedly limit my openness to the experience. Hence, a feeling, thought or judgment brought in from some theory or belief will adversely affect the learning potential of the encounter to the degree that it restricts me from moving freely with what is occurring from moment to moment. In this process the explanations that emerge from theory, hypothesis-testing or even past experience, are inhibitory to the task of learning.
As I learn from the story of the child as it unfolds in the immediacy of the moment, so I open up to my own direct experience of myself at that point in time. As I move toward the experience of the other person, as a child, the only threads of my understanding are drawn from my own experiences of childhood. This is not a regressive process of drawing upon images of the past. In growth and development we never simply "move on" from one period to another. Rather we incorporate our experiences from moment to moment and from year to year in an ever-expanding sphere of consciousness. So the child that we contact is not the child that was but the child that is. It is not the child of another world but the child within.
When we open up to our own experience in this way, we prepare ourselves for sharing that experience with others. In this case, we are creating the most vital and stimulating arena of learning for children and their care-givers. We are not concerned with explanations that tell us what to do next, give us potential control over others or promote our status as experts in child care. These are desires and intentions that take us in a different direction and while they might be perfectly valid in themselves, they have no place within the project being considered here. The more such explanations are sought or imposed, the less will be the learning potential for the two selves involved. While the search for empirical generalizations and scientist-practitioner methods may be laudable, there is clearly a distinction to be made between knowing a particular child through personal experience and knowing about a particular child through theory and prediction. They are mutually exclusive perspectives, of course, but it is possible, and probably desirable, for both to be incorporated into Child and Youth Care practice.
The more I succeed in my role, the less I relate to the child
When we are concerned about the roles we play, professional or otherwise, we are concerned about our "performance" in accordance with some prescribed set of expectations or aspirations. We are interested in presenting our Selves to others in a particular way and attempt to evaluate this impression by looking back at our performances "as if' through the eyes of others. Most successful people are very adept in this process and most professionals have a great investment in creating and maintaining a specific or idealized image in the minds of colleagues, clients and the general public. There is absolutely no doubt that successfully meeting the role expectations of others is a significant factor in the development of social competence and the enhancement of self-esteem.
On the other hand, it can inhibit personal growth and be diabolically destructive to relationships in the helping professions generally and Child and Youth Care specifically. A role is essentially an idealized presentation of the Self within a given context. It is an object created by our Selves for the benefit of others based upon what we believe their expectations to be. In professional roles such prescriptions are carefully established through the "ethics" of particular associations and through the job descriptions of particular organizations.
More pervasively, however, they are subtly created through the informal encounters and exchanges of people involved in their daily activities and routines. As most seasoned residential workers know only too well, it is the people who work together day- by-day who determine what good child care work is all about and which practitioners deserve and receive the "real" status and approval. While such roles might reflect the person in some ways, the Self is primarily involved in evaluating performance while directing its energy toward meeting external expectations. In a sense it has turned the person into an "object." In this process it is not readily available to become openly involved in relationships.
Among human service professionals, the more the Self directs its energies toward meeting external expectations, the less it is involved in its own learning, growth and development. Deprived of such nutrients the experience to the person is often one of fatigue and "bum out" as the Self and the role become increasingly detached. To make matters worse, the concern with role performance and evaluation makes it necessary for the person to place others into reciprocal roles. While this is obvious in the case of formally prescribed roles such as those of supervisor or administrator, it is the informal prescriptions that are the most influential in determining the quality of relationships. In Child and Youth Care, the role objectification of the young person places an invisible and impersonal barrier between the youngster and the caregiver. In order to be successful in the role of Child and Youth Care worker it is not sufficient to simply respond to youngsters in certain ways.
It is also necessary for practitioners to be able to describe them in particular ways and reflect values prescribed within the formal and informal role structure. This may invoke the use of some formalized assessment or classification system or the informal assignment of roles that inevitably occurs in staff rooms or through case conference. Finally the role of Child and Youth Care worker is assessed through the behavioural responses of the kids themselves. Here the youngsters become active objects in the role performance game. This is a depersonalized arena of action in which open relationships become virtually impossible to attain. The best that can happen is that practitioners can practice their professional roles and youngsters can practice their "disturbed," "alienated," "hostile" or "adolescent" roles.
The more responsibility I take for kids, the less effective I become
Since it is not possible for me to "know" the experience of another person, I cannot take responsibility for that experience. Moving a step further, it is not possible for me to assume responsibility of the options perceived or the choices made on the basis of this personal experience. This is a difficult proposition for us to accept in relation to any person we care about and particularly in situations where we assume that the person in question is suffering from some form of diminished responsibility.
Among Child and Youth Care workers there are powerful internal and external expectations that practitioners are responsible for the experiences, options and decisions of the children and young people in their care. This misdirected working hypothesis is distinctly hazardous to the health of relationships. Once we stop believing that we can actually change people through psychotherapy, conditional love, coercion or manipulation, we give our Selves permission to be who we are and grant the same degree of freedom to the other ... even where the other happens to be a child. This makes it possible to establish a relationship with another person as a separate and unique entity. This does not mean that we should not do our utmost to assist the youngster in becoming personally responsible or that we should not exercise our adult responsibilities as teachers or even protectors. In the early developmental years we should acknowledge that children must first learn to separate themselves as individual entities in the world and support them through this process of experiencing and learning. The point is that within their own worlds, however restrictive or expansive, all human beings are alone, coming to their own conclusions and making their own choices for their own reasons.
As outsiders, we have no access to those worlds, however much we believe that we "know" the person and however knowledgeable we believe our Selves to be in the human sciences. Of course, we can attempt to influence experiences and choices by meddling with the external environment but even children will continue to make their own decisions and there is no way that we can really connect with the experience that actually influences this process. The more we believe that the experience of others parallels our own experience of the world, the less we accept the uniqueness of their experience and unless we have experienced some shared state of "intimacy," we are most certainly deluding ourselves. If we move one stage further and actually take responsibility for the experience of others we have taken the ultimate step in denying their very existence. However obvious this might appear, Child and Youth Care workers often assume this responsibility as part of the "caring" mandate. Those who do will never be in a position to develop relationships with young people since, for the practitioners, such youngsters are no more than extensions of them Selves. There is nothing else to relate to.
The more I relate to others, the more alone I become
Developmental psychologists have consistently suggested that a critical period of growth takes place as the child begins to form a concept of Self as separate from the world in which the child lives. This process takes place in direct interaction with the world. By the same token, children become aware of their personal uniqueness as they develop a sense of Self that is separate from that of their parents and other people in their lives. Moving through adolescence and into adulthood, the more we are able to share our experience with others and the more they share their experience with us, the greater becomes our sense of individuation and separateness.
Developmentally speaking, then, Child and Youth Care workers will probably have very different needs and experiences in their relationships with youngsters from the youngsters themselves. The "healthy" adult, possessing an integrated view of Self as a competent, autonomous and worthwhile entity, is free to move in and out of relationships while maintaining an on-going sense of personal integrity. This personal sense of Self does not require the daily support of the evaluations of others and the person may choose to move to those places where the opportunities for personal growth and self-discovery are the greatest. Personal inadequacies or deficiencies are taken as tolerable "givens" that can be addressed without having to be propped up by the strengths or attributes of others.
As people continue to relate from this perspective, they become increasingly "sure of them Selves," establish a sense of comfort with who they are and move in the world with a state of grace and independence. They are separate, unique and free to explore themselves further through relationships with others. Children and young people, particularly those who come to the attention of Child and Youth Care workers, are generally not at this stage of development. Frequently they have a poorly integrated sense of who they are, their perceived inadequacies are experienced as irrevocable failures and they move clumsily in a world that is intrusive, oppressive, hostile and overpowering. While some of them might choose to withdraw from this world, they are unable to separate their Selves with any sense of integrity and, when hiding fails, strike back with anger and resentment. Alternatively, the youngster may recognize the power of the world. Whatever response a particular youngster decides upon, a relationship with an adult who recognizes the state of aloneness, and who is prepared to share in this experience, offers the ideal learning opportunity.
Through such a relationship, the young person may come to understand that being alone is not the same as being "lonely"; that autonomy is not the same as "alienation" and that loving another person is an act of freedom and not an expression of "dependency."
Fewster, G. (1991) The Paradoxical Journey: Some thoughts on relating to children. Journal of Child and Youth Care, Vol. 6 No. 4 (First published in Volume 3 Number 3)
