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Listen
Back forever?Thomas has been admitted to our program. He is twelve, and his recent past, over six months or so, has been chaotic. It started back in February, with what his stepmother, Ginny, called "a week from hell". He started truanting (alone and not as part of a group) and when made to return to school he gave a number of star performances which quite shocked his teachers, for he had been "normal" until then, although a year behind in his grades. The "performances" included running out of the classroom, openly defying the teachers ("I won’t, try and make me!" stuff), swearing at one teacher who was trying to return him to his desk, and eventually running at the principal and punching him.
The school refused to keep him and he was referred to a clinic for evaluation. The reports which emerged were discouraging. His real mother had suffered a mental illness throughout the boy’s early years and the father eventually divorced her. He was a cold man who made unreasonable demands on the clearly deprived boy, and his second wife, Thomas’s stepmother, had little affection for him. In fact the father had left his second wife, and their divorce had been made final in December of the previous year. Since February the boy has been passed between a number of agencies whose main task seems to have been keeping him from running away.
Now our team is trying to put together a plan of action. It seems clear that the boy has never been mothered, and there is a general view that this is one of those rare "cases" when the adults have to go back and "begin again" with Thomas’s young life. This will, we acknowledge, be a time-consuming exercise which will take great care and skill as we try to rebuild foundations which were never satisfactorily consolidated first time around. We find ourselves talking about a year of preparation for return to school, primary caregiver figures, allowances for regression as necessary, private space ... and we are impressed by our colleagues’ readiness to give this a try.
Roger, our team leader, has been listening carefully. "I acknowledge that in many cases we are faced with this need to "redo" the primary experience of a child, and I have been moved by your generosity in agreeing to be part of such a plan – which may well prove to be necessary – and I thank you."
Twelve pairs of eyes are fixed on Roger.
"But," he went on, "I think there are two heroes in this story. One is Thomas, and the other is Ginny, his stepmother, who between them and against all the odds, seem to have kept going pretty damned well until February this year. I think maybe they finally lost heart last Christmas when their family, such as it was, had finally and legally broken up, and they lost the hope which had kept them going."
"I say let’s give them the credit for the twelve years or so that they have put into this, and rather than starting all over, how about us just getting back to February? Back to when they were managing. Let’s focus on the "family" of Thomas and Ginny which, even though they’re hardly related, nevertheless had Thomas getting up and going to school every day and heroically being just one year behind his age group in Grade 6."
* * *
In our practice today we recognise that we are often rebuilding uncertain foundations for families and children, but that we are really in the business of keeping kids and families functional – and that they often have something to teach us with their courage and resourcefulness. By providing some scaffolding and opportunities and ideas we can make it possible for them to succeed in their own ways.
One of the meanings of what is called "the strengths approach" is that we can hold back with our radical interventions (which have their own risks) and do no more than facilitate what people are capable of doing by their own strengths. Let them try. And let’s give them the credit.
