DEAR YOGESHREE Our own inside outs meet children's behaviour

DEAR YOGESHREE

You have had from me letters that have emphasized the importance of our self awareness whilst we work with children and young people. Also about trying to 'get into the world' of the child so that we can start responding from the 'inside out'. Thing is, our interactions with children and young people is complicated by the fact that in any interactions, that is exactly what it is... our inner worlds meets with the 'inner world' of the child .. ... and then.... the complexity of our being professional becomes very apparent.

Weekends in the Children's Home were always paradoxically tense. On the one hand, the place was virtually empty, on the other most of the most difficult and dramatic moments were acted out over the weekends.

Tea was always set out in the foyer. It was Friday afternoon and a favourite meeting place of child and youth care workers and the young people 'left in' for the weekend.

Some, like Nceba. were old and responsible enough to go to their homes for the weekend under their own steam on a Friday immediately after leaving school. He would do this straight from school and after soccer practise

 By about 4.30 pm, the main rush of getting children ready and packed of for their weekends with parents was over and the remains of tea were inevitably left on the huge coffee table in the foyer. The children could    always help themselves .

At about 5.00 pm I came up the stairs from the outside and through the great doors into the foyer and as I did , I saw "the feet". Large dirty tackies attached to scrappy jeans ...... and those feet.... resting nonchalantly on the middle of the coffee table. amidst the cups,sugar and milk.

I saw first the feet and the tackies and then, more and more of the identity of the boy wearing them as I came up the stairs. It was Nceba.

From that stairway  came a rush through my body from the pit of my stomach surging through my chest and my head felt asif it would burst.

" NCEBA !! Get those dirty feet of yours off that table!!" It came out as a fierce loud shout..

 Nceba, with a full cup and a saucer lifted it above his head and threw it with great force against the wall.of the foyer next to my office door. His feet were on the ground and he stood right up facing me before the whole caboodle smashed .  Milky tea , bits of broken china spattered everywhere.

My head was already pumped up and and my mouth runnith over " What the Hell  !! blah.... blah .... blah !!!!!"

Nceba slowly sat back into the chair that he had so swiftly vacated, his chest pulsated, and I saw for the first time that this was not anger or defiance. It was rage. Rage fueled by utter despair

Nceba sobbed

This was his world, and his view of it .. then and pervasively in his life,  Act 1 scene 1  in Nceba's life was a repetitive cycle ... trapped he was in a plot that repeated itself so frequently that it was his lens through which he interpreted the world.and made it fact. The world let you down.... it rejected you ...that's it... finish !!

Nceba had gone home. He had walked in to find his mother in bed with a man he did not know but who was hastily introduced as ' my boyfriend'. ,,,, and Nceba knew this cue only too well.. He must go back to the Children's Home immediately . The boyfriend had been preference to him for the weekend.... so he returned to the foyer and the tea, too brood again on the patterns of the world and his lost hope. Hope that was dashed like the cup against the wall of the foyer which we cleaned up together that Friday afternoon and together tried to pick up the pieces

 It took me a long time to make the connections into my own life and its events that 'pushed the buttons' for me that afternoon.The feet on the coffee table got me going and I misread all the signs that things for Nceba were not what I though they were. I didn't actually see them until the sobbing and then it was too late.At least we could still pick up the pieces . Nceba got the blast from a fuse that was lit in me some twenty years before.

 I was a teacher at a High School at the time. I had a free period so I went into Great Hall to watch the rehearsals for a Talent Competition to be held that night, I sat in one row near the side entrance to the hall and put my feet on the chair in the row ahead of me. The Headmaster came up the stairs to the door of the hall, saw the feet on the chair, thought I was a pupil ,and red faced screamed at me  " Get your fett off that chair"... right in front of a bunch of schoolboys who were my pupils. The event lives with me even now. My feet broke the sound barrier and as he passed me . he said very quietly "Sorry, I though that you were one of the boys"       I sank between the floorboards and disappeared in my embarassment

I can't explain this rationally, but I know that that incident sparked my reaction to Nceba's feet on the coffee table. I still cant condone the behaviour and I still don't like dirty tackies, but I think I have learnt to see more now of Nceba, and less of tackies and tables... to shoot less from the hip and not to come in with six guns blazing... to ask the question "What's really going on in me?".... and   "What's really going on here?"

Love

 Barrie

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