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Listen
I remember recently our discussion on CYC-NET about
having food available at all times for the kids in our programs. The debate
was hot and went on for weeks. Out came the healthy food lobbyists, the
stick-to-mealtimes folks, the go-for-fruit-not-cookies crowd, the
let-‘em-eat-cake brigade – along with a whole heap of related opinions.
Great fun.
One reply worried me. A writer had just warned about unhealthy eating habits
like youngsters being able to eat as many cookies as they like, and someone
replied “... yes but these kids have been through so much.” The
suggestion was that by being liberal with food through the day, we were
making up for their earlier privations. Unwittingly, and seemingly from the
best of intentions, this writer was committing one of the cardinal sins of
our field ...
Suggesting that, because "these kids" had been through tough times and were
in the program, they were entitled to unusual benefits -- thereby labelling
them as different from other kids whose caregivers would not allow
indiscriminate eating, making it comfortable for them to live in an
over-compensated care environment, without considering the longitudinal,
developmental view which necessarily connects kids where they are now with a
future in which they will hopefully be able to function in a reasonably
normal way.
An analogy of our work will help. We might look upon a youngster newly
admitted to our program as having fallen out of a train. The train has sped
onwards, and we are asked to help.
Our first task is to attend to the shocked and injured
child. Our immediate concern is whatever the youth has suffered arising from
the fall from the train. We will be interested in comforting and
resassuring, tending to wounds and healing, seeing to nutrition,
strength-building and restoring to an ambulatory and (as far as possible and
appropriate) independent state.
Our next task is to get the young person back on the train. The journey has
been interrupted, but the train timetable (like the normal pattern of human
development) is inexorable. Our initial solicitous role now becomes one of
encouraging, training, engaging ...
The point is that we pass the stage of saying "this poor
kid fell off the train"! It is probably fair to say that our sole and entire
goal in Child and Youth Care work is to accompany kids (who have somehow
crashed out) back towards mature, independent function. By expecting more
from them than is reasonable when they are in trauma or crisis is to destroy
their hope and their self-confidence; by expecting less from them than is
reasonable when they are convalescing is to encourage dependency ...
We can never run a program for young people without distinguishing between
these two positions: knowing when they should be in intensive care, and
knowing when they should be mending and doing more for themselves. So no. We
do not allow them unfettered access to cookies because "they have been
through so much". That is not only simplistic, but is also treating kids
with less consideration than we owe them.
