its all in the wallpaper

Maybe I'm over sensitive to what I guess could be called the "feel" of a place, - its "tone", its "atmosphere", its "ambiance"

Surely you too must have felt it!

You go into an empty church building and raised in you is a powerful sense of quiet, prayerful reverence and awe. Then into another and it feels joyful and yet another and nothing ......just a meeting place.

How is this? What makes a building communicate feeling, ... a tone?

Its the same when I go into a children"s home, or for that matter any organisation that provides services to children, or into a group home or even a dormitory. Empty.... yet it talks to me of a prevailing climate.......and when it's filled with children, young people and staff, the climate fairly screams at me.

Each of the four group homes in the organisation I ran had a different "feel". But over time the climate seemed to change. Different staff, ....different shift... different climate.

Seems that the ways in which people respond to each other and the different ways they react or respond to life-space incidents affects the tone of that place. It's almost asif the pattern of people's behaviours and feelings in a place soaks into the walls and becomes the pattern of the wallpaper , its signature. I noticed that staff coming into an organisation often , without noticing it, simply become part of that prevailing tone.. the wallpaper creeps into their being and they too become part of it.

I can understand that.our behaviour does shift to fit the tone of a place. I walk quietly in the empty convent. I speak in whispers in the holy place. I am loving in a hospice. I am tense and cautious in that Youth Centre. I'm ready to stand my ground and be defensive in this group home . I am relaxed and responsive in another.

In the Child Care settings, it seems to me that WE set the tone and others can slip into it. We are, or maybe we just become the institutionalised  pattern of the wallpaper.

So there we are busy either creating the tone, or slipping into it.......making a pattern of reaction , feeling  and response that the children can very easily and I think DO just adopt for themselves.

 For me, the most disturbing of these climates is the pattern of staff behaviour that sends out sexual messages. It comes from a pattern of staff behaviour in the workplace, of flirtation, a somewhat seductive flirty manner in interactions, sexual innuendo in conversation and provocative in body talk. This then becomes the pattern of the organisations wallpaper. I've been there - seen it,  felt it and thought of the risk that surrounds the children. If its all in the wallpaper, then that is the way in which they are most likely to build relationships and resolve relationship issues ........ because you see, it is all in the wallpaper.!!