Now and then, I run across an old client, someone I worked
with years before. I’ve spent most of my working life in social services, and
much of that with youth ranging from 13 to 20 or so. And because youth grow so
quickly, when I meet one I haven’t seen in awhile, the change can be
remarkable.
My work has been in schools, where I focused on drop-out
prevention, in group homes for runaways and throwaways, and sometimes in
detention centers or halfway houses for those ending periods of incarceration.
So they’ve mostly been young men (occasionally women) whose lives have been
full of hurt, failure and disappointment.
Youth have the reputation of being difficult to work with,
because they have so much energy and emotion and they haven’t developed the
skills to manage or even understand them. But these are some of the reasons why
those of us who’ve focused on youth work find it so rewarding. All that energy
and emotion is the mark of a person in movement, going through change. And it’s
easier to help a moving, growing person find direction, than it is to generate
motion in an older person whose direction is set or who perhaps hasn’t moved at
all in years.
Social workers can be as judgmental as anyone, though we try
not to be. And, especially in my early years, it wasn’t unusual for me and my
colleagues to decide who was on a positive course and who wasn’t. This one, we’d
say, was hopeless, but that one was going to make it. This one never listened
and didn’t want to do better, but that one had a good heart and just needed a
chance. And these are just the kinds of
lazy judgements that my occasional encounters with former clients have helped
me to stop making. At least to try and stop making. I don’t know that the human
tendency to judge and predict is ever put to rest.
I have two, glaring examples. Two young men whom I worked
with in the same group home at different times, both alienated from families
that lacked the wherewithal to provide the basics of a secure and loving home,
both high-school aged and Black. I’ll call them Kevin and Eric.
Eric was a hell-raiser. He was very angry. He blamed
everything that happened to him on someone else. He was so entitled and
impatient that even positive interactions quickly went downhill as soon as he
had to wait for anything, or if the slightest obstacle presented itself. It was
as though he was always looking for a fight. You couldn’t criticize him, or
even advise him, because he interpreted anything like that as an attack. And he
was very intelligent, and had comebacks for almost anything said to him. He
exhausted everyone who worked with him and alienated anyone who tried to do something
for him. It seemed that he was always on the verge of exploding and he
constantly got into fights and arguments with the other kids, who mostly feared
and avoided him. We all expected, even predicted, that Eric had a hard road ahead.
His anger and his selfish motivations seemed to foreshadow problems with the law.
It was hard to imagine him ever succeeding in work or in school.
Kevin was the opposite. He was quiet and even-tempered and
easy to engage. Not only did he respond well to counselling, actually testing
suggestions made to him and digging down into the feedback he received. He
actually sought out staff when he had problems. He was very self-aware, and
took responsibility for where he was, the mistakes he’s made, and what he’d
suffered, even to the point of sometimes down-playing the unmet
responsibilities of others. He actively discussed his options and the future he’d
like for himself and didn’t seem to hold any unrealistic expectations. And, he
was empathetic, often sharing and showing concern for the other youth he lived
with. All of us who worked with Kevin though very highly of him. It seemed that
he was primed to flourish, as soon as he was able to find himself in a stable,
nurturing environment.
From my preamble, you’ll already guess that things didn’t
turn out as expected. Some 4-5 years later, I encountered both Kevin and Eric,
in situations I would never have predicted.
On one occasion, I was volunteering with a group that made
visits to a state penitentiary, to give readings and talk about literacy and
culture. As the inmates come into the meeting room, I saw Kevin. We instantly
recognized one another and got to speak privately for a few minutes during the
program. He was a couple of years into serving a sentence for assault and
kidnapping. He’d made some bad choices, which he acknowledged as readily as he
ever had. He had a ways to go before he’d be eligible for parole. He was trying
to make the best of it, he said.
A few months later, I was at a community meeting of directors
of several programs who were seeking to develop some youth leadership programming.
One of them came in with a young man he introduced as a protégé, who turned out
to be Eric. Eric was in his second year of university, where he’d established
himself as a leader. He was involved in community work and had plans for his
future. We got to speak briefly, during which time he remained somewhat aloof
and unsmiling – not surprising. But I did not detect the anger that had always
been so palpable.
Who can say how much their group home experiences, under the
care of myself and others who wrongly predicted their futures, ultimately
affected Eric and Kevin? Even if I’d have cared to say so in the past, I wouldn’t
dare now. Not only do I not know how I impacted them, I don’t know anything, really,
about the ultimate outcomes. These two meetings may be as mis-leading as they
are revealing. Did Kevin make parole? And what happened then? Did Eric graduate
and make contributions to his community? And whatever became of all that anger.
I’ll probably never know.
As I write this, I fault myself for not having further
contact with either of these young men. It was a transitional time in my own
life, and the group home where I’d encountered them had depleted me. I think I
just didn’t feel I had the resources to do so. But I sure did learn from those
encounters, and they made me a better worker, and I’ve shared this anecdote
with dozens of colleagues since then.
We err when we think we know another person’s future, what
they have in them, or how they are impacted by their experiences. If we make
judgements, and if we allow these judgements to limit the kind or degree of
support we offer (which is almost inevitable if we believe our judgements) we
do a disservice.
These are only two of the encounters I’ve have with former
clients. Quite a few others have revealed to me that when I thought I wasn’t
being heard, I was actually having a substantial impact. Where I thought an
interaction was negligible, it’s sometimes planted a seed that grew over the
years. I’ve had former clients recount conversations and interventions I had
totally forgotten. And these interactions have not always been positive and to
my credit. I’m very grateful and relieved that many of them have been.
These chance meetings have reminded me of things that my
parents, teachers and other adults said or did with me that have stuck with me
through all my life, that have motivated me in both positive and negative ways.
It’s made me more careful about what I say and do, and about how I say and do
it. Sometimes, it’s a matter of explaining what my motivation or intent is. At
other times, it leads to an admission that an action or decision isn’t arising out
of certainty. And most of all, it’s taught me to ask more questions of clients,
and to listen more, and sometimes, just to pause. Because we never can know the
full ramifications of the judgements we make about others. And we’ll never be
fully aware of the seeds we’re planting and how they will grow.
