Sixteen years ago I had a keyworker meeting with a new young person who had moved into the residential home I was working in at the time. He was 16, non-engaged in education, had committed arson, stole, was occasionally violent, had countless diagnosis’s and had been in 26 foster families and two other residential homes before.
He sat slouched down in the chair looking bored before we had even started. In honesty, I probably felt the same. I set about our standard introduction laid out in our policies. I told him the house rules, I showed him around the home, I introduced him to other staff and young people and filled in the necessary paperwork.
Then we got to the more personalised bit. The part where I was tell him that I knew all about his behaviour to date, that as his keyworker I had access to his files and knew what it was that had led him to live with us. Then I performed my standard party trick – I got out a blank piece of paper and told him that this was his new file, that he could chose from now on who he was and how he was going to behave.
Other young people had lapped this up. This young person slouched down further in his seat and rolled his eyes.
And you know what? He was right to.
In the years since, as my practice and understanding has grown, I’ve come to see what that young man already knew:
My wife and I stopped using them seven years ago with our foster-adopt children. Here’s some of the reasons why:
10 Reasons Fresh Starts Don’t Work.
Here goes……
1. They Make Love Conditional.
So, my first meeting with that young person was essentially me telling him that he needed to change. Not exactly unconditional love, eh? What I do now is tell young people that I know what their behaviours are and I’m choosing to work with them anyway. In other words, I’m accepting them as they are now so that I might build a relationship to support them more in the future.
2. They Set Young People Up To Fail.
Did I really think that a little speech offering him a clean slate was going to completely change this young person? At the time I probably did. I probably was arrogant enough to think that it was this simple and I would succeed where so many other professionals and parents had failed. The thing is that he knew it wouldn’t work. I’m mean seriously, what was the chances of him going to bed that night and waking up the next morning a totally different teenager? I couldn’t change everything overnight, could you?
3. They’re A Wish Not A Plan.
I’m sure that every young person I have worked with exhibiting challenging behaviour has wished to be different. The idea of a fresh start is a lovely one but it’s wishful thinking if there isn’t a clear plan in place to support the young person.
4. They’re Over-Used.
I think my son collected fresh starts. At school he seemed to receive them everyday! Even young children know that 50 fresh starts aren’t really real. Use them too many times and they become completely meaningless.
5. They Focus On The Negative Behaviour.
Sometimes we can become so focused on stopping poor behaviour that we forget to focus on the good stuff. When we talk a lot about what a young person is doing badly at we reinforce the idea they often hold of themselves as bad people. Increased shame only ever leads to more poor behaviour in the long run.
6. We Don’t Forget Poor Behaviour.
Offer my son a fresh start for his stealing behaviour never made me want to stop locking my purse away! So I never really trusted that when he took the fresh start he was actually going to stick to it. And when he did steal again it was very clear to him that I hadn’t forgotten all the times he did so before he had his fresh start. We never really wipe the slate clean so we shouldn’t tell young people we do.
7. They Don’t Address the Underlying Cause.
Behaviour is just how we show the world what is going on inside us. Behaviours only truly change when young people learn to feel safer and more lovable. Fresh starts aren’t going to magically achieve this. At the best their current behaviour might stop but I can guarantee another one will take its place. Behaviour is how we express our inner world to the outside world. Until that inner world changes, behaviour is likely to always be an issue.
8. We Expect Too Much.
Have you ever tried to change a behaviour. It’s not easy, huh? How do you respond to someone else telling you what behaviour you need to change? Most of us don’t like it, and neither do our children. Often fresh starts are a form of perfectionism. If the young person ever engages in that behaviour again, they have failed. Most children who are or have been in the care system already see themselves as failures, we don’t need to make this worse.
9. We Create Anxiety.
We develop behaviours that allow us to cope with the world we have experienced. Whatever your child’s behaviour is, it is serving a purpose. The young person is getting something from it or else they wouldn’t keep doing it. Poor behaviours still enable young people to cope with feelings of anxiety and shame. Not allowing them these coping strategies increases their anxiety and thus increases the desire to behave in this way. Lowering anxiety and supporting them with more positive coping strategies is a much better way to go.
10. They Don’t Encourage Repair.
This for me is the biggest one. If we give young people fresh starts we don’t allow them the chance to repair. It’s like we are trying to move them away from what they have done by saying ‘it’s in the past now and tomorrow is a new day’. It is much better to explore what has happened, allow chance for healing, allow them to see that we all mess up at time, allow them to see that things are ‘fixable’ and to move into the next day as their whole self – not just pretending that parts of them don’t exist.
So, those are my reason for not giving young people fresh starts.
But I’d love to hear your opinions so please pop a comment below.
Fi
p.s if you want ideas of what does work when dealing with difficult behaviour, check out my book ‘I Can’t Do This – When Fostering and Adoption Feels Too Hard‘.
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