Be Aware of Your Language

When Sylvia Duncan presented her story of a partnership that had an 83% success rate with helping children who were considered ‘impossible to place’, after a series of placement breakdowns, develop to a point where they were able to put into a longterm family placement, she brought up an important point. She mentioned that they made a point of not promising the children that they would be able to stay with a family longterm after the programme or that they would get a ‘forever family’ (as adoption families are often referred to). They only made them a promise that they knew was within their ability to keep: that there would be no more sudden placement changes without preparation.

This is something that I have been mentioning in training, and even in my books, various times over the years. It seems like such a small thing, but it really is not.

Children who have been institutionalised, who have a traumatic background, or who have experienced a lot of placement breakdowns have essentially learned from experience that it is not a good idea to trust adults. Their experience is that if you do trust an adult, you will be lied to, disappointed and even abandoned. So, in short, it is just not worth it and it is too painful.

To be able to help these children, whether you are there as their counsellor, as their caseworker, as their caregiver or as their guardian, you have to gain their trust. Without their trust, you will have nothing to work with. You will not be able to get the information you need, you will not be able to find out what the child’s needs really are, so that you can meet them, and it will be as if there is a solid wall between you and the child.

Earning the trust from a child who has learned from experience that trusting someone is a bad idea, is something that is very hard to do. It will require a lot of time and patience. And it will require you to really prove yourself as being trustworthy. That’s a difficult thing to do in a situation where you are considered guilty until proven innocent. Whenever you do anything that even very slightly undermines your claim that you can be trusted – this can be something as simple as showing up 15 minutes later than agreed, or postponing an activity with the child that had been planned – it confirms to the child that you are just like the other adults in his life. And the assumption will be that this small slip is just the start of the road, which will end in your giving up on the child, just like everyone else has done.

This means that in order to have some kind of chance of gaining the child’s trust, you have to be completely honest with him, and never, ever, make a promise that you are not 100% certain that you can keep. It means that you need to be very aware of the exact wording that you are using, to make sure that your meaning is clear to the child and that the child is prepared for possible disappointment, in cases where you cannot be completely sure that things will go as you hope they will.

So, for example, instead of saying ‘I will see you tomorrow at 10.30’, you could say ‘I will do my best to be here at 10.30 tomorrow, but sometimes traffic is bad and it takes a little longer.’ or you could say ‘I hope to see you at 10.30 tomorrow, but if the meeting before that runs later than I expect it to, I will call you to let you know at what time I will arrive.’ It does not take a lot of extra effort. Yet, managing expectations this way, can go a very long way towards helping the child and you to build up trust.

So, think carefully about what you want to say and how you can best say it to make sure that the child is aware of the possibility of changes in the plans. The exact language you use can make a big difference.

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