Intensive I Preview

0:02 i'd like to welcome you to uh this intensive uh for the next five days together and uh hope that it very much meets your expectations the questions that you come here with and that you're able to to take something back home with you i'll i'll start with the title of the course working with stuck kids uh always a challenge is to get the kind of

0:32 course title that captures what it is that you want to capture and i played with this for some time do i try to name the paradigm that i'm speaking from it's i found it very difficult to name this paradigm it's a an attachment based integrated developmental model that just doesn't work uh it just doesn't work so i i try to uh you know to to

1:04 to find some way to get to the essence of the material and as uh as i put the pieces together and trying to get to the very heart of what the developmental approach was uh it uh it became clear and clear to me that if development is about the realization of our human potentials then the greatest difficulty we have as humans is a failure to realize that

1:35 developmental potential and hence the concept of stuckness and stuckness is a is an intuitive term uh and i wanted something intuitive because to bring it to parents to bring it to teachers to bring it back into the common uh language and uh is very very important to use a word like developmental arrest is is too technical it's too professional and it doesn't have the intuitive feel to it you don't find parents saying oh you're in developmental arrest you

2:07 know it it doesn't work that way and so i've uh i gradually moved to this title and to the construct of stuckness as being core to the developmental approach and i'll i'll describe this more as we go along the alternate title uh and which i have used in fact i just finished a week intensive in vancouver the alternate title

2:38 that i've used is more to the idea of insight is that what distinguishes this particular approach from other approaches is that you're trying to make sense of kids from inside out this is so much different than the medical approach or the behavioral approach a medical approach which looks at symptoms and the behavioral approach which focuses on behavior

3:08 both are essentially black box kind of approaches in which you're not looking for what's going on inside the child the developmental approach is an insight approach and so you're looking to get beyond the behavior to what what is going on underneath and it very it corresponds with contemporary science a whole lot more for instance we now know that the greatest determiner of what we do is what we see

3:42 not what we have learned not our skills but it's what we see uh and so our our doing then if we're going to change our doing it's it's basically because we see differently it doesn't matter how well you know how to ski if you don't see the tree on the slope you're in trouble right and if you see a tree that's not there

4:13 you will make a detour which can only be explained not by your level or lack of skill but by the fact of what you saw and so again it's it's it's what we see determines our behavior now if let's say a child is is hitting a a a a boy is hitting his sister what do you see do you see an inappropriate child well that's how you'd respond that's

4:44 inappropriate that's unacceptable do you see a disobedient child i told you not to hit why are you doing this do we see a violent child how can you be so mean why are you so rude uh and so will respond accordingly do we see a child who lacks sensitivity look at how you hurt your sister you you know it will determine what comes out of our mouth what we do will determine how we

5:14 see now uh for those of you that were at the aggression course you'll know that in terms of reading aggression the most important thing to read there and we'll we'll go through this as we go in this material is that we should see a very frustrated child if we actually see a child as frustrated our whole response changes uh to the degree that we care for the child to perceive them as frustrated will lead to a certain

5:46 interactions but it all comes from the eyes so it's not telling parents what to do it's not telling parents uh you know or teachers what to do uh and this is almost all approaches these days are prescriptive they're giving you things of what to do and that's where the questions are what do i do when and the answer is not in that the answer is what do you see when what is it

6:17 what is it that you see and the developmental approach is an insight approach it's to make sense from inside out learning to read children very troubled children children with trouble troubles learning and behaving but it's learning to read children uh the one of the root words of counselor actually comes from the ancient word seer to see one who sees and that the council comes from the seeing

6:48 and this is the same thing here the the issue here is that we do not get blinded by behavior but rather we the the the issue is on being able to see and so uh what i'd like you to do is suspend the questions if if you can suspend the questions of what to do and uh rather bring your uh bring your objective within the uh agenda of the course which has more to

7:21 do with what do i see and and again the the actions will flow from that automatically as well as that if i could uh recommend anything for you to take this material to benefit most from it it would be to think of of two or three children that you care about that are in your care that you are involved with in some way two or three children and and as we go

7:52 through this material let that material inform you of of them and in other words the question is does this make sense of their behavior can i understand them from the inside out can i do i have more of a feel of what is happening for them that insight that you will glean uh about an actual child uh uh won't leave you if you try to hang on to all the details of the material the

8:23 theory you'll you'll feel overwhelmed you simply won't be able to hang on to it especially by day four it will feel a bit much if you stay with letting it inform you about a child once you've got an insight a glimpse it won't lead you it won't leave you rather and as you go away from it it will actually build on it you'll find it's the place where the material will come together and integrate so it has a live body

8:50 flesh and blood so to speak so if you could align that so it's a different question that not trying to understand the theory but try to understand the children in your care and the theory will speak for itself it will come together so uh if you can remember as you walk along uh you know just just let it inform you uh about the children and uh you'll make the the uh benefit most uh from this particular

9:17 uh course uh one more thing uh on making sense of kids is that this is also our most significant intervention you're here from different venues many of you in different settings many of you will be involved in consulting with parents in one way or another formally or informally as educators you're continually doing this uh in in in many ways parents will be

9:48 asking or at least will be open to to hearing you talk even if a parent is resistant to you telling him what to do the greatest intervention is not in telling a parent what to do but rather in introducing their child to them and so when you think of it as and most of my work actually is you know i get always asked that question what to do most of my work my intervention is

10:19 happening without a parent or teacher ever knowing or even a therapist that i'm intervening i am simply introducing them to their child i'm taking what they tell me reading that and introducing them back to their child oh he must be very very sensitive it's having difficulty he's there's a vulnerability there that's too much to bear he's having difficulty holding holding on to you when apart from you and as i introduce the child to the parent or

10:51 teacher as their insight changes again the dance changes you can see the interaction changing so again this is taking some time with this but it's so important to understand uh that this that the essence of a developmental approach is to make sense of kids from inside out and everything else flows from that it's not that there aren't prescriptions it's not that there aren't things to do but actually those are only as good as

11:23 we've made sense of a child from inside out if we proceed too quickly if we proceed blindly like as a therapist i am very cautious on giving suggestions and very cautious and giving prescriptions until i have a sense of that child from inside out and so my whole yearning goes to this place because if i go ahead of myself if i proceed blindly i can i can suggest things and prescribe things that can make things worse

11:53 uh in the developmental approach there's not a one size fits all