Lessons In 'Paying Attention'
Jo Stockdale
Nurturing young people from the inside out... Insights you wished someone had told you before!
I’ve had a persistent drip of water coming through my kitchen ceiling for weeks. After much investigation and repairs from my plumber and my plasterer, it seemed to be fixed. You’ll know why I’m sharing this in a minute…
A couple of weeks ago I trained a group of foster carers in one of my sessions ‘The Brain Behind the Behaviour’; one of the important aspects covered is that behaviours which often look 'explosive' or that ‘go from 0-10’ are rarely as sudden as they appear.
More often they’re just the endpoint of accumulative frustrations, worries or other triggers that aren’t apparent on the outside.
So, the following evening I was washing the dishes, when a ripping noise above my head was followed by the kitchen ceiling imploding. The bath was fixed but, it turned out, a different pipe had been slowly - and invisibly - seeping into the plaster boards for months.
I’m not specifically relating the event to behaviour, but it was like my ceiling was proving a point... There are consequences to trying to sustain too much pressure for too long.
We all know the mantras around ‘be kind to yourself’, but it doesn’t resonate much with many of us (myself included), and the busyness of life often means that 'self-care' is way down on our list of priorities. However, this isn’t just a reminder about about needing to unburden ourselves or let things go.
Whether it’s a young or adult version, there is a human equivalent to what happened to my kitchen ceiling; the way things appear on the exterior isn’t always an accurate reflection of reality, and this is increasingly true for the children we work - and maybe live - with as well.
It’s easy to look back on our own childhoods and think today's young people have it easy, and in some ways they do. But they’re generally force-fed huge amounts of ‘learning’ in school which has little foundation for how their brains are designed to develop and learn, driven by the continual expectation for them to push themselves, prove themselves and ‘achieve’.
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And the relentless pressure that the world of social media and 'self-other comparison' entails is a different story entirely; one many of us are immensely grateful didn’t feature in our own youth.
It’s the sharp end of the stick, of course, but in another of my recent sessions week, I was working with a group of adolescents with such acute anxiety that they were no longer in mainstream school. It was a stark reminder about the price that some children pay for being loaded with too much to carry.
Sometimes, things look fine and feel fine, and so when those kids tell us they’re fine, they probably are. Probably.
But the truth is that when I was atop of my ladder, duly painting the freshly plastered ceiling post-assumed repair, I had noticed a couple of new cracks on the surface.
And I dismissed them; I – or, accurately, my plumber, and then my plasterer - had fixed the problem after all, so I chose to ignore them.
If I had been paying closer attention, I might have noticed things weren’t quite right, before my kitchen ceiling fell down.
What might you need to pay closer attention to?
PS) If you want more info about 'The Brain Behind the Behaviour', or any other CPD session, just reply MORE and I'll get in touch.
Seasoned play therapist who helps child/adolescent therapists by training them how to confidently integrate play therapy & expressive arts into clinical practice and take their play therapy skills to the next level
9moGreat article! Thanks for sharing it. 🤓
Owner, Eddie Deen and Company
9moJo Stockdale How far inside do you go with talking about the brain behind the behavior? Are you just stopping at the brain? At what point does someone stop paying attention? When does the photometer, the instrument that measures light frequency stops? You were not talking about water dropping from the ceiling, I’m not talking about light in a room, I’m talking about awareness and how systems are influencing the flow of energy constantly being directed by consciousness. 75% of the brain is water, 75% of the universe is black matter. 25% of the brain is circuits of neurons. 25% of the universe is physical stuff. Einstein said all physical stuff is energy. Scientist does not deal directly with the physical stuff, scientists have to deal with the neurological representations of the physical stuff. Yes, who is paying attention to the mental health of our students? The way I see it, the universe is screaming at humanity, stop the pedagogical nonsense of educating children. Stop the pedagogical madness in how we train in the military and police officers! Use heutagogy principles instead, dissolve educare, replace with educere! It is life changing when a foster child can see the water that they are drowning in!