Building Relationships with Troubled Children:
Insights from Torey Hayden
By Michael J. Marlowe
Professor Michael Marlowe teaches at the
Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, United States of America
Building Relationships with Troubled Children:
Insights from Torey Hayden
Torey Hayden, a teacher of children with
emotional and behavioural difficulties, has authored eight books chronicling
her day to day work in special education and child psychology. Hayden’s first
book was One Child (1980), the story of Sheila, a silent troubled girl, who had
tied a three year old boy to a tree and critically burned him. One Child was
followed by Somebody Else’s Kids (1982), Murphy’s Boy (1983), Just Another Kid
(1986), Ghost Girl (1992), The Tiger’s Child (1995), the sequel to One Child,
Beautiful Child (2002), and Twilight Children (2006).
Hayden’s teacher stories are remarkable for
their emphasis on relationships (Marlowe 2006, 2011). They stress the
interpersonal dynamics and emotional connections involved in working with hard
to reach children. Her stories give special voice to the power of relationship
skills, intuition, and the social milieu in changing behaviour, and they
emphasize the synergistic power of relationships between a teacher and her students.
In her prologue to The Tiger’s Child, Hayden noted this reciprocal effect in
her relationship with Sheila: “This little girl had a profound effect on me.
Her courage, her resilience, and her inadvertent ability to express that great
gaping need to be loved that we all feel – in short, her humanness brought me
into contact with my own.” (Hayden, 1995, p. 8)
While Hayden is open about the fact that she follows no specific model, I have
distilled from her stories an approach to educating children with emotional and
behavioural difficulties which could be termed the relationship-driven
classroom (Marlowe and Hayden, 2013). The cornerstone of this
relationship-driven approach is commitment. It is the unequivocal commitment of
one individual to another, of Hayden to the child she is working with, that
evokes positive change. Troubled children have to have this type of
relationship if they are going to move forward. They need the esteem that comes
only from knowing others care about you, others value you sufficiently to
commit to you. They need to know that while significant others may have been
unable to provide this type of commitment, it does not mean they are unworthy
of it. As Urie Bronfenbrenner (2005) proclaimed, every child needs at least one
special adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her, for only then can the
child develop to full potential.
Relationship Skills
Whether you are a teacher, a child and youth care provider, or a foster parent,
there are certain skills and concepts that underpin relationships as a means of
change. Four skills are fundamental to the success of using relationships with
troubled children or youth. Of all available social skills, these are the ones
that are most crucial in order to create the strong and healthy bonds necessary
for effectively using relationships as a medium of change (Marlowe and Hayden,
2013).
Self-awareness
The key quality of self-awareness is the ability to step back from one’s
emotions and cognitive activity sufficiently to be able to discern what one is
feeling and thinking. The other key quality is to have a reasonable
understanding of why one does the things one does and how one’s feelings and
thoughts influence one’s actions. Those skilled in self-awareness are able to
maintain this awareness as they are thinking and feeling and to make use of the
small space between antecedent action and their behavior to actively choose how
they will respond.
This crucial skill ensures that we can maintain our own behaviour as a
conscious action and respond rather than react to what the child is doing. This
allows us to monitor and make the almost continuous small adjustments to our
own behaviour necessary to discourage inappropriate behaviour and encourage
appropriate.
It is the fundamental skill upon which all other skills and, ultimately, all
personal change are based. Self-awareness must always be present. Without
awareness of what we are doing, it is impossible to make any kind of
significant or lasting change.
Objectivity
Objectivity refers to the ability to let go of the self-oriented point of view
and see things from either the perspective of another person or from a general
perspective external to ourselves. In cultivating objectivity, we recognize
three things: a) that our own perspective is limited; b) that the other person
also has a limited perspective which will be unique to them and different to
ours because they have had different life experiences and circumstances; and c)
that there is always a “bigger picture” which is both outside these individual
subjective perspectives and inclusive of them.
When self-awareness and objectivity work in tandem, they allow us to see our
own perspective is our own, to step back from it sufficiently to discern others
have different points of view that will feel as internally valid to them as
ours does to us, and to be able to step outside both to view the “bigger
picture.”
Acceptance
There is a duality present within the relationship-driven approach. On one
level it is all about self-awareness and objectivity, which means recognizing
that what we think, feel and experience affects our actions, but that we each
think, feel, and experience differently. On another level, however, it is about
recognizing that we are all, in fact, alike. Our differences are superficial. At
our core, we ALL much more alike than different.
While we each have our own subjective realities and we need to be aware of
this, we must also remember that we all share the same basic humanity, no
matter how different we may appear from the outside. We all experience fear,
joy, pleasure, anger, discouragement. We all experience pain, tiredness,
arousal, hunger, illness.
An understanding of this commonality allows tolerance and acceptance to develop
because it enables us to let go of fear about the other person’s differences.
We are hard wired to be afraid of things we do not understand. The ablity to
perceive common traits allows us to understand the other person, however,
different, bad, repugnant, et cetera, is at the heart really just like us, and
so we don’t need to fear them. . It helps us realize that however bizarre,
incomprehensible or misguided their actions, they are acting in an effort to
feel better or avoid pain, just like we do. This helps us accept the child is
not a “beast” or “inhuman” or “unreachable” and that within him or her there
will be feelings, sensations, perceptions and experiences like our own and if
we can connect with this common ground we have a chance of bringing about
change.
Friendliness
It isn’t necessary to be an extrovert to make relationships work as a
methodology, but it is necessary be sincerely interested in other people and to
find a natural enjoyment in interacting with them. External methodologies where
focus is solely on the maladjusted behaviour and controlling it are not
dependent on personality characteristics of the teacher, residential
counsellor, or foster parent. In order for relationships to work as a means of
behavioural change, however, the adult needs a certain level of natural
friendliness in order to be at ease forming relationships.
These four skills are fundamental to relationships in general. As well as these
necessary skills, there are seven philosophical principles which underpin and
inform all action taken in a relationship-driven milieu (Marlowe and Hayden,
2013).
Relationships are a process, not a goal
There are two different approaches whether it is working with troubled children
or whether it is towards life in general – goal orientated or process
orientated Both orientations are a normal part of human behaviour. In goal
orientation you do what you do for the ultimate outcome. With a troubled child,
for example, you work with him because you have expectations of making him
better and more capable of living a fulfilling life. You have expectations of
an outcome from the time you undertake what you are doing. Fulfillment comes
when you reach the goal.
In process orientation you do what you do for the process of doing it. With a
troubled child you don’t have any expectations of what’s going to happen because
you are not looking at the future. You work with the child because you enjoy
the act of being with the child. This means you focus on the process, the doing
of something, rather than the outcome. Consequences or outcome of the
experience may reinforce the behaviour but they are not at the heart of this
orientation. Fulfilment comes instead from awareness and appreciation of having
the experience while it is happening.
Relationships are, by their very nature, process oriented. They are ongoing and
now. The relationship-driven model is present oriented because relationships
only exist in the present. Thus in order to use relationships as a way of
changing behaviour, one must be oriented to the present process as opposed to
towards a future goal. In other words, the relationship the adult has with the
child now is used to change behaviour as opposed to its being a reward or an
outcome of the change. The adult is working with the environment, modifying
what is happening “right now” by means of relationship skills, intuition and
social milieu, all of which exist only in the present.
Hayden works with children because she thoroughly enjoys the process itself.
She loves the act of being with the children. While she is open to the fact
that improvement for her children is desirable, this is not what guides her
work. Her pay-off, her fulfilment in working with children comes during the
time spent together, during the interactions, during the moment itself.
There is a difference between the person and
the person’s actions
In order to relate in a warm and tolerant manner, we must accept that each
person is ultimately separate from his/her actions and thus has the potential
to control and change his/her behaviour. It is crucial to understand this
distinction between what we do and who we are. We cannot change who we are. We
can change what we do. Actions belong to us and in that way they are part of us
and we are responsible for them, but they are only one part of a greater whole.
They are not the whole itself. This is one of the most basic tenants of the
relationship-driven approach. It is the concept that powers the confidence that
change can take place, no matter how appalling the current circumstances.
Self-esteem can be rebuilt; motivation can be re-instilled; new lives can take
form as long as there is the hope that this is possible. And this hope resides
in the understanding that what we do is not who we are.
No one chooses to be unhappy
Hayden believes we all want to be happy. Everything we do, no matter how odd or
misguided, is done because we think consciously or unconsciously that it will
lead to our feeling happier. This is simply another way of saying “Everyone is
doing the best they can.” Children engaging in difficult or destructive
behaviour do so in erroneous belief that this will relieve their unhappiness.
They are not actively trying to be unhappy. Instead, they are actively trying
to be happy but going about it in an unproductive way, because – for whatever
reason – they are simply not able to do differently at this point in time. A
misbehaving child isn’t wilfully choosing to be unhappy. He/she genuinely
hasn’t come up with a more effective way of being happy.
Misbehaviour is a teaching opportunity
If everyone wants happiness and no one wants unhappiness, yet there is
misbehaviour that results in unhappiness, then we can assume the person does
not know how to do differently. If he/she did, he/she would be doing it,
because unhappiness makes one feel dismal. If, on the other hand, someone
doesn’t know how to do differently, then the appropriate response from those
who do is to teach him or her how.
A gigantic amount of misbehaviour occurs because the child simply does not know
how to behave differently, because he has misconceptions about how he should behave,
or because he has misconceptions about himself. These situations are not
corrective occasions. They are teaching opportunities.
In a relationship-driven methodology, functional behaviour is taught actively
via the adult-child relationship in order to give children experience of the
appropriate behaviours they are expected to use. Some aspects of appropriate
behaviour are taught by the adult through active modelling and others are
taught to the child directly, such as how a functional person manages his/her
emotions, how a functional person relates appropriately to others, and how a
functional person handles negative situations. So discipline in a
relationship-driven milieu can be summed up as: never pass up an opportunity to
teach.
Everyone can change
Hayden believes that everyone regardless of who they are and what they have
done, can change. This belief is the foundation upon which all the rest of the
relationship-driven model is built.
Everybody can change is just a practical attitude. Pollyanna says, “Everyone
will change.” This statement is just as black-and-white as “He’ll never
change.” What Hayden wants to cultivate is the ability to stay positive about
the possibility of change, and the recognition that we are not omniscient. It’s
easy to fall into using black-and-white terms like “always” or “never” in
regards to difficult behaviour, but in doing so we are implying that the
children and situations we are dealing with are fixed, and discreet, and
therefore entirely predictable, when they are, in fact, constantly changing and
connected to and affected by an infinite number of other things that we have no
knowledge of, insight into, or control over.
Because we may not be able to see how change will take place doesn’t mean there
is no chance for change. We need to promote personal change as doable, and in
the process, distinguish in our own minds the difference between “I can’t do
any more to help this child” and “No one can help this child.”
Personal change is very difficult
In Hayden’s experience changing ingrained personal behaviour is very hard to
do. There are many reasons for this: genetic make-up, environmental
circumstances, motivation, and consequences all factor in. As a result, it is
normal for the individual who is trying to change to make many approximations
before managing the right behaviour. It is also normal to slip up or fail many
times before eventually achieving the behaviour. It is normal for the
increments of change to be very, very small and the more entrenched the
behaviour, the smaller they usually have to be for success to be maintained.
Because of this, it is necessary and, indeed, crucial to reward approximations
of the desired behaviour as one goes along. It is also important for both adult
and child to be aware from the onset that it is entirely normal to have to make
such small steps and that the person making the change should be encouraged to
be positive about any movement in the right direction, however minute the
increments.
Change can be slow, subtle and difficult and very often happens in a manner
much different to what we had planned or envisioned, so it is important
children be aware of this and be aware that this is normal. We want to help
children shift away from the goal-oriented judgmental perspective that “I tried.
I failed. I can’t do it. I give up” to the process-oriented “I tried. It didn’t
happen this time. I’ll try again.”
The world is complex
Black-and-white thinking – the tendency to perceive things as all-or-nothing
and thus able to be put into discernible, discreet and permanent categories –
seems to be a hard-wired trait for humans. We categorize and generalize by
nature.
From the perspective of a relationship-driven approach, two of the most
important reasons for avoiding black-and-white thinking are: 1) almost all
behaviours are on a spectrum and not at the two (black or white) extremes. For
example, we are virtually never entirely happy or entirely sad. Happy is one
end of the spectrum, sad is at the opposite end and we normally tend to fall
somewhere in between. Recognizing the spectrum nature of behaviour makes it
much easier to accept approximations of appropriate behaviour and to see
positive movement towards the wanted behaviour because we can see what is being
done is further up the spectrum than the previous behaviour. In contrast,
black-and-white thinking allows us only two outcomes: success or failure. And
2) black-and-white thinking tends to ignore time and the fact that all things
change over time. We are not at all static creatures. We are never really the
same twice. Recognizing this continual process of change allows us to recognize
the potential for things to be different than they are right now. In contrast,
black-and-white thinking assumes permanence and looks for opportunities to
reinforce that. The black-and-white thinker looks only for evidence that
reinforces categorization and ignores evidence of change. Once a bully, always
a bully, for example.
So it is important when working with a relationship-based methodology that one
have a clear understanding that the world is complex, that we can’t reduce it
to clear-cut, comprehensible certainties. This kind of open-ended acceptance is
one of the most crucial attributes for success in the dynamic realm of
relationships.
Final Thoughts on Relationship-Driven Practice
Hayden has developed a philosophy of attachment and loss in forming
relationships which threads through her books. For her forming relationships is
central to teaching, but it inevitably implies eventual loss, just the way
birth inevitably contains within it the guarantee of eventual death. One of her
favorite quotes is: “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships
were built for.” In other words, the only certain way to stay safe from loss is
never having attachment, but research in psychology and sociobiology shows that
we are a social species and are primed biologically to have relationships from
birth (Szalavitz & Perry, 2010). That Hayden formed attachments which she
knew ultimately would end simply meant she was able to keep an objective eye on
what was going on in her teacher-student relationships – I’m a teacher; my
ending comes in June – not that she was any better at loss than her students or
that it hurt her any less. Part of what she teaches in forming an attachment,
is how to cope with loss, and loss comes to all of us.
Hayden’s goal in forming relationships with her children as stated various
times through her books is to help more than she hurts. She states that’s all
any of us can aim for, as the perfect person or perfect relationship does not
exist. She remains committed to the idea that we all do need to know in a very
real way that we matter to someone, someplace, even if we cannot be together.
And real love, for whatever time it lasts, is never wasted.
References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (2005). Making human beings human: Bioecological
perspectives
on human development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Hayden, T.L. (1980). One child. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (1982). Somebody else’s kids. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (1983). Murphy’s boy. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (1986). Just another kid. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (1992). Ghost girl. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (1995). The tiger’s child. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (2002). Beautiful child. New York: Avon Press.
Hayden, T.L. (2006). Twilight children. New York: Avon Press.
Marlowe, M. (2011). The relationship-driven classroom: The stories of Torey
Hayden. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 20(1), 24-29.
Marlowe, M.J., & Hayden, T. (2013). Teaching children who are hard to
reach:
Relationship-driven classroom practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Szalavitz, M., & Perry, B. (2010). Born for love: Why empathy is
essential—and
endangered. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Drug companies started to focus their marketing campaigns on kids when the adult market was saturated. Children make perfect customers- get them used to psycho-active pills when they are young and they may continue to use them for life.
Doctors have swallowed the misleading sales pitch that typical kiddie problems are really underdiagnosed and undertreated 'mental disorders'- very easy to diagnose and very easy to treat with a pill. Just the opposite is true. Children change so much in response to environment and development that their diagnosis and treatment always require the greatest care, patience, and time. I can't picture ever starting a child on meds after a brief evaluation, but this is often done.
Parents far too readily follow doctors' advice about medication for their kids. I recommend always becoming a fully informed consumer and getting second and third opinions before allowing your child to take any psychiatric medicine. This is an important decision that requires careful deliberation and full parental input.
Overwhelmed teachers often recommend that parents take their kids to doctors for medicine when the problem may be more in the classroom than in the kid.
Dave Traxson, a Child and Educational Psychologist in the United Kingdom, has come up with a terrific suggestion to help contain the epidemic of careless medication in kids. He has developed a Checklist of questions doctors should think about before prescribing psycho-active drugs to kids. Dave writes:
"There has been an unchecked, exponential growth in the use of psycho-stimulants, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotic drugs in kids- often harming more than helping them.
I have devised a Checklist to help clinicians think through the necessary steps that should be part of every careful prescription of medication for children.
& perhaps the most telling question
We simply don't know what will be the long term impact of bathing a child's immaturebrain with powerful chemicals. We are now conducting an uncontrolled experiment without informed consent with unknown consequences for millions of our kids.
There are childhood problems that certainly do require medication, but this should only be a last resort after careful consideration of less invasive interventions. Medication should never be, as it now too often is, a first and careless reflex. Dave Traxson's Checklist is an excellent guide to more responsible practice.
And parents must be mindful of the need to protect their kids from excessive medication use. There is not a pill for every child-rearing problems. Never accept a prescription if it has been written after a quick evaluation without a full exploration of alternatives.