The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
In our work we have to be scrupulous with words. It is not just that words can hide or hurt or betray or confuse (and that therefore we are careful about how we use them), but that words are a common currency which admits us all into a shared understanding of the world, of each other, and of ourselves.
If you think about it, many of our clients carry around with them limited vocabularies, limited conceptual understandings and distorted meanings, due to their often isolated, depriving or abusive environments. We know, for example, that infants whose mothers leave them alone will respond with preverbal and instinctual terror. For most children, “goings” soon become associated with quick “comings-back” and in a few months phrases like “Back soon” become symbols of reassurance. But for children who endure extended absences and erratic physical and verbal attention, “goings” and lack of attention can continue to be experienced as ultimate threats.
How often do we who work with troubled kids find that we are having to work with infantile emotional and verbal developmental blockages and backlogs – even with teens. We want them not to deny or distort but to see what we all see and hear what we all hear, and fearlessly make sense of it.
The Greek word logos means “word” and “meaning” and even such concepts as “universal rationality” – and our work is often to provide the experiences and words which will allow children to construct less frightening meanings for earlier and unresolved events. At a non-verbal level we offer children the respite and assurance of absence of threat, while we help them to accept the essential symbols of words to contain their fears and dreads, and so to make rational sense of their experience.
Logos. Words. Meanings.
In our practice today we remember that words are the codes by which children gain mastery of their feelings and their worlds. Words are the reliable categories and meanings through which we all share our commonality with others and our insights into ourselves. We use them consciously, generously and carefully.
