The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
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In the absence of adequate stimulation or responsiveness in their environment, many of our kids have turned in on themselves and become self-centered – in a self-dependent rather than a selfish sense. Their behaviour may look selfish, but this is often self-protecting and self-conserving – and ultimately self-limiting behaviour. They have stopped seeking nutrition from outside of themselves and are living off what they have – and ultimately at great cost to themselves. We all know children like this whom we easily characterise as "bottomless pits" and as having a "high capacity to take". Children in this condition do, as a matter of survival, show more interest in what people have to give them than in people themselves.
To use a botanical analogy, these kids become "root-bound". We are tempted, for the sake of peace and quiet, to buy into this transaction. We "give kids candy" rather than face up to the difficult development task ahead of us – while the clock inexorably ticks on ...
We hesitate to use the word, but we are feeding into the psychopathic personality: we are heading for kids who ‘relate’ to others only for what they can get out of them.
When we draw a root-bound plant out of its pot, we are amazed at the intricate tangle of roots which have amassed in their limited space; roots which have obviously started off by reaching outwards and downward only to be turned back on themselves. Botanists will tell us that many of the roots we see have become too thin to function properly, others have rotted and died. Also, that to save the plant we will have to loosen this root system a little so as to start some interaction with the new soil into which we must place it.
The environment which we offer to such vulnerable children and youth allows a little more room and enough added nutrition to draw them outwards into a reciprocal relationship. They will not respond or thrive immediately, and will not easily give up their existing ways of survival until they are assured that the alternative is reliable.
This is one example of the ways in which we, in our practice today, act with thought and carefulness with each child. While we may talk globally about children and families and communities, we remember the technical work which sometimes must take place at the borders between these systems. This is complex. While our primary concern is with the health of the plant we know that this is achieved by improving its environment – yet just as much by our sensitivity in understanding and facilitating the plant’s capacity to let go of its existing ways of coping and yield to that environment.
