Re:Working with young children

I enjoyed reading your message. In my work with troubled children and adolescents I focus on tapping in on their strenghts. Nobody can be a screwball 24/7. In which context(s) and relationships the child is strong and successful is one of my main questions. I care less if the child now and then drops the ball (misbehaves). My intererst is to see if the child is getting closer to the "touchdown" (able to manage his/her life with little interference from the adults).

Last July I started working with an Afro-American kid, who didn't respect anybody and constantly was going AWOL from our facility. When he was not disruptive he was a funny kid. So I told him that I would like to talk to him everyday, because his jokes released my stress. Slowly the kid realized that I was on his side, but I didn't approve his misbehaviors. When he misbehaved all I had to do was to ignore him for a while, but before I went home I spent a good 20 minutes with him. Our initial conversations about jokes turned to conversations about his family and his dreams. Once I started seing the good qualities of the child the rest of the staff noticed them too. Then his adoptive parents started receiving phone calls of the staff praising their child. Now the child is one of our best residents and ready to be discharged in December.

Charles Fishman, MD once told me that the therapists sometimes spend too much time "chasing the symptom" instead of creating a context in which the symptom is useless.

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