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No Man is an Island

Rezina Kelly • 12 February 2021
After my blog last week, I had a couple of people commenting that sometimes when you try and help children or young people, it can make them angry or aggressive. This is true. Working with many of the young people I have encountered over the years, has proven this to be the case over and over, and it feels like we should just give up. It makes us feel vulnerable to be putting ourselves out there, only to feel daft or hurt when we are met with rejection. However, these are exactly the children we need to persist with. 

We all know someone who can be in danger of sabotaging their own relationships, particularly romantic ones, and often this is because subconsciously there is a temptation to reject before you get rejected. Particularly if you have been hurt before, a survival instinct, an act of self-preservation. Imagine now that since being born you have encountered rejection, and from the person or people who are supposed to love you unconditionally. If your own parents reject, abuse or neglect you, then why on earth would you trust that anyone else is going to treat you any better? So, in just the same way, these children can reject before they get rejected. 

We see it in schools, where for the first time ever there is a someone going above and beyond to help a child who has always struggled before. There are strategies in place, understanding teachers and adults around them, and seemingly everything needed for the child to feel safe and succeed. There is sometimes a ‘honeymoon’ period, then out of the blue the child appears intent to destroy it all. Determined to throw all that hard work right back in the face of the people trying so hard for them. It can be soul destroying. It is, however, often a necessary part of the journey. For the child, all this support can make their internal instincts go haywire, as it all feels a little bit too good to be true. So… they panic and press the self-destruct button before anyone else can. 

Our instinct at this point is to pull back. We feel so deflated, that its natural that we just want to give up. In addition to this of course, we are playing our own game of self-preservation here too. The reality, however, is that we are then doing exactly what they expect us to do, and we have reconfirmed to them that this will always happen. This is why working with vulnerable children can be so emotionally and physically exhausting. We always have to be the adult, the bigger person and the more resilient one. We have to try and teach them that their instincts are wrong. Convince them that some adults will stick with them and have their back, however much they try and push us away. Foster Carers and adoptive parents can also experience the same issues, and that can be so heart-breaking to witness and of course experience. What these children most need when they are pushing us away, is for us to refuse to move, for us to continue to be there for them, and to offer them some kindness and compassion. So easy to say, extremely hard to do. Especially when sometimes you have to do it repeatedly to get that breakthrough. 

I fully understand why this can be difficult for schools, they have many children to meet the needs of, not just this one. When you can though, and when I have seen this in action, the rewards are incredible. Schools also often worry about how this looks to other children. If they see this one child ‘getting away’ with this behaviour, then they will all start to push those boundaries and see what they can get away with. For me this can depend on what it is they are seeing. I am also not suggesting that children are allowed to ‘get away’ with behaviour that is risky or dangerous, they actually need the boundaries reinforcing not removing. It is how you do it that is important. If from the outset we are viewing the behaviour through the lens of all behaviour being communication, we consider not just how to stop the behaviour but what the behaviour is trying to tell us. We also start to move away from punishment being the only, and probably least effective, method to change behaviour. If a child feels like they belong, have some positive relationships with the adults around them, and have people who can help them regulate their emotions, we can positively influence behaviour by teaching the child alternatives, rather than just taking away the only method they currently have to cope. So maybe if other children are seeing this, what they see is that this is a school where the adults get us, we all belong however difficult we may make that to be true, and if I am in a really bad place, rather than rejecting me this school will help me through that. An African proverb captures this perfectly:
“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

So, there will definitely be children and young people who test your kindness, your attempts to build relationships and your empathy, to the limits. You will face rejection and you will get your hard work thrown back in your face… Where do I sign up, I hear you ask!! However, the children that do this the most, are absolutely the children who need you the most. They just don’t know it yet. Coming back to that biology, their brain architecture hasn’t had the benefit of lots of positive attachments, providing them with the neural pathways that help them deal with these new emotions. We need to provide that repetition so that more effective pathways can build and develop, which in time replace the not so great ones. These children remind me of Will and Marcus in one of my favourite books by Nick Hornby, and the subsequent film ‘About a Boy’, hence the title of this blog:

“No man is an island.”
(John Donne, 1624) 
(not actually Hugh Grant or Jon Bon Jovi as he claims in the film)

This is a story where all the key characters are trying to survive life without the need for other people, yet all discover that actually it is all much easier, safer and more pleasant if we are not alone. Surprise, surprise – I love a story that shows us that relationships are key to everything, and that showing this to a child in distress is so important. Many vulnerable children have learnt that the only person that they can depend on is themselves. They fear getting close to anyone and someone has to show them that relationships are a good thing. If we don’t then what is to stop them growing up to be adults not dissimilar to Will. Whilst Will is somewhat charming in his dysfunctionality as an adult, maybe because he has the luxury of money, unfortunately, this dysfunctionality is much more of a concern in real life. This inability to have positive relationships, can lead children to become young people at risk, or adults that struggle in society. We need to break that cycle with as always, empathy and kindness.

#justbekind #relationships #nomanisanisland 

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