Teacher needing help

Hi,

Everyday after school, a student does not want to go to the After School
Program which is a babysitting service provided by a local NGO. He was
very upset and exhibited behaviours where he withdrew within himself. He
hid from me and other kids and cried in isolation. I asked what was going
on.

We spoke for a few minutes and I help him make sense of his own internal
world. All was going well until he said, "I want to have friends at the
After School Program. All I do is be by myself." I asked some more
questions to see if he was simply missing information and practice but
that's not it.

It's as if the output signals are not creting the perception necessary to
reduce the error within him. He knows what he wants, he knows how to get
what he wants, he knows what he is choosing to do is not getting him what
he wants, but he just doesn't seem to want to do it.

What am I missing? (Can someone help me reduce my error?)

[from Tracy B. Harms (2008-09-21 18:17 Pacific)]

Hi, Jason.

As I understand it, the basic problem is that this person is getting
pushed around. He's being told what to do, told that he has no choice
to do it, and told that he is a bad person if he does not do it.

This sort of manipulation of his life at a large scale is presumably
pervasive to his experience. While he apparently crosses a threshold
of being able to cope with this when it comes to this "babysitting
service", I'd bet that he is in fact also experiencing conflict with
school and who knows how many other required activities.

As for recommendations, I recommend the following combination. Listen
to him with genuine interest in his feelings and what it is that he
wishes his experience would be. In combination with this, do not be
among those who require performance from him. If you can't qualify in
this manner, or even if he cannot trust that you do, I recommend that
you assist in arranging for such attention from somebody who truly has
no agenda for what this boy does or does not do. Otherwise, trust must
be undermined.

If you want to go further and help this guy in a more full-fledged
way, the most straightforward method will be to help him have a life
where such impositions do not occur.

Tracy

ยทยทยท

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Jason Perrino <jason.perrino@yk1.nt.ca> wrote:

Hi,

Everyday after school, a student does not want to go to the After School
Program which is a babysitting service provided by a local NGO. He was
very upset and exhibited behaviours where he withdrew within himself. He
hid from me and other kids and cried in isolation. I asked what was going
on.

We spoke for a few minutes and I help him make sense of his own internal
world. All was going well until he said, "I want to have friends at the
After School Program. All I do is be by myself." I asked some more
questions to see if he was simply missing information and practice but
that's not it.

It's as if the output signals are not creting the perception necessary to
reduce the error within him. He knows what he wants, he knows how to get
what he wants, he knows what he is choosing to do is not getting him what
he wants, but he just doesn't seem to want to do it.

What am I missing? (Can someone help me reduce my error?)

[From Bill Powers (2008.09.22.0756)] --

Tracy B. Harms (2008-09-21 18:17 Pacific) --

I confess that I deleted the "Teacher needing help" post without reading it, thinking it was spam or worse, since I didn't recognize the sender's name. I had just deleted a post with the message "[somebody] has won $12 million in the lottery and needs your help claiming the prize ...". There were some bad moments, wondering what I had just let into my computer, before I could delete it.

I think that dealing with this student requires a lot more fact-finding. What does the student want? What happens when he tries to make friends? Is he afraid to try? Did he try and fail? Why does he want to have friends? If he had friends, what would it be like -- what would he do with them? Does anyone like him? Does he like anyone else?

Making guesses based on sparse evidence or "shrewd guesses" is not going to help -- if you think the MOL approach is appropriate here. "Being pushed around" is an interpretation based on the interviewer's own experiences and preferences, and may not have anything to do with the main problem bothering the student, even if the student is in fact being pushed around. There are worse things that can bother students. Ed Ford tells the story of a "frequent flyer" in his program who was always disrupting and going to the RTC. Taking that as evidence of some unknown problem, the school investigated and the RTC teacher got the kid to talk, and it turned out that after school the older brother was selling the kid's services as a boy prostitute.

I don't mean that the teacher should suspect the worst, but just that it's better not to jump to conclusions and do too much analyzing. I think any analyzing is too much, come to think of it. If you just patiently ask questions, taking nothing for granted and always looking for what is behind the current foreground topic, the student will eventually discover what is wrong, and start reorganizing in the right places. New ideas will pop up and the student will start showing different behavior. It doesn't matter if the teacher never finds out what the problem was. Even the student may not know exactly what did the trick, or what changed.

Any time we think we can spot what another person's problem is, it would be a good idea to step back and wonder "Why does that seem like a problem to me?" The client is not the only one who has to go up a level during MOL sessions.

Best,

Bill P.