The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
Listen
We are all warned in our training about responding to situations rather than reacting to them. Responding suggests listening, understanding, and then replying; reacting sounds more like knee-jerk counteraction. Responding is personal and is about mutual communication; reacting is shoot-from-the-hip and too easily looks like attack.
An attitude of responding presupposes some sort of continuing dialogue. When we have understood John and talked with him about the aims of his placement, an incident of offensive behavior deserves an "alongside" response of "Hey, we’ve talked about this; we’ve been learning this and trying that ..." and then, later, more work on the current intervention plan. The response style aims to keep the conversation going, to avoid going backwards to raw command-and-obey stuff.
An attitude of reaction suggests a one-size-fits-all measure of control or suppression. John’s offending behavior evokes from us an in-your-face "Hey, don’t do that!" which will sound like "Don’t you dare do that here!" Precisely because reaction is more visceral than cerebral, it becomes impersonal and loses the momentum of any relationship which we may be building.
Of course it’s not that simple! We will have been working at relationship building with the youngsters from Day One. We will have been talking about what brought them into the program and where they want to get to. We will have earned our privilege to use the word "we" with them. We will also know that when we are able to "respond" we have reached a goal of our own – and when we find ourselves falling back on mere "reacting" that we still have a lot of work to do on our relationships with them.
There are wider implications. When new kids see the way we relate to those who have been here for a while, we are already building something new for them. We model our relationship and our responsiveness to those who don’t yet know us. We challenge their own ways of behaving and inter-relating, and we give them hope.
A mantra for our practice today: respond, don’t react.
