Unlearning to learn in child and youth care work

Parents ourselves, we come into child and youth care work bringing with us our own parenting beliefs methods, priorities and family values. Most of these we get from our own parent's ......so, we bring with us generations of parenting ideas and ethics.

The surprise is when much of this has to be unlearnt when we face the realities of working with troubled, distressed, hyperactive or deprived children. Sometime in training, but especially in practice, it comes as a shock to learn that much of what we hold to be true, prioritise, know to work or focus upon, simply is not so in our daily child and youth care practice.

An elderly, but athletic and sporting child and youth care worker had a group of troubled older boys in his care. One evening at 'lights out" the boys were "hyped -up", not manageable, when they should have been settling down for the night. His solution was to take them on a run around the soccer field. The idea was that they would get tired. Fatigued they would then just shower, get into bed and sleep like babies - makes sense as a parent - yes.

 The big shock came when they were more hyped- up, more out of control and less manageable than before. There was no fatigue " that was good, shower and to bed " as was parentally expected,. But just the opposite.!!

Perhaps there is research evidence  for this, but the experiential lesson was that in the population of young people that come into care, there are a fair number with difficult to manage behaviours whose behaviour escalates after exertion and activity and this has an infectious effect on the rest of the group. Result......... opposite to what we know.as parents.

One middle teenage boy struggled with stealing behaviour. Whenever he was tense and or stressed, he would steal. So, when he was caught, more especially by the police or confronted, the commonly held tactic by adults was to threaten him with punishment or court action. This would scare him into stopping.... no, no, .... this raised his anxiety levels and he would immediately - but immediately, steal again.

The commonly held parental/world understanding of what works - simply made it worse.

 As parents we hold a lot to be important in the behaviour of our own children. For us, as parents we tend to strongly value "good manners", "not smoking", "being tidy", "personal hygiene", "education".

On coming out of anaesthetic.after life threatening eight hour surgery, at age 12, I asked for a hospital bottle.I wanted to urinate. The sister, struggling and frustrated by the drip in into my arm said sharply,                   "Say PLEASE !" I heard a softer, lighter voice - a nurse behind her say" Sister, he's just a little boy and he has just come out of anaesthetic"
"I don't care," said the sister, "He can say 'please'"

That is us parents.... the please and thankyou of everyday manners, the don't smoke, watch your language is so important to us sometimes that we can miss the more essential priorities of children anaesthetised by hurt removal, loss abuse and discouragement.

These unlearning lessons just never seem to end for us. It doesn't always apply, but frequently professional child and youth care practice all too often takes us into a state of jolted shock when what we know works as parents simply does not work with the children and young people in our care.