Behaviour.

I want to do a post on children's behaviour and how events in their life can affect their behaviour. Also, what we try and do to help them. I should point out I have never had any education in child psychology or behaviour or anything like that, everything I say comes from experience.

On Tuesday, one of my girls (9 years old) had to go to court. I don't know why or what happened to her, I assume it's got something to do with the reason for why she's in the Home. This girl, lets call her Alice, can be a particularly difficult child. Her mood swings so much, I find it hard to keep up. Sometimes she hates me, then an hour later she's really friendly and wants me to read her a story. The days before she had to go to court were very hard for her I think. She seemed particularly angry at everything and everyone, the littlest thing would set her off into a screaming tantrum which was also unusual behaviour for her. Usually she would lash out at the other children or retreat to be on her own, but the few days before the court day, Alice's anger and frustrations seemed to be more directed towards herself. One particular incident occurred on Monday night. All the children shower every day after outside time (about 5/5.30) and in the younger houses, the volunteers stay in the bathroom with the kids to make sure the room is tidied, the kids don't take too long in the shower and that they actually wash. With soap. I'd hit the jackpot of showering the girls (there's only 5 girls and they shower relatively quickly with little input from me, whereas there are 7 boys who you basically have to wash yourself or resort to major bribery to make anything happen) and the first 4 went with no trouble. Alice had been fairly well behaved that day which I was slightly surprised about, the child-care worker on duty had warned me that morning about the court date so we had been expecting worse.

Alice didn't want to get into the shower, she wanted to carry on playing with one of the other girls who was already done. I persuaded her to hop in and wash really quickly, and the quicker she showered, the quicker she could carry on playing. I also explained to her, we had to be quick anyway because the shower was broken, the water wasn't going down the plug properly, so if she took too long she would flood the bathroom. She showered quickly, but decided she wanted to stand under the hot water for a little longer. I told her she was about to flood the bathroom and I asked her to turn off the water, and the tantrum we had been waiting for all day exploded. She jumped and kicked the water making it splash everywhere and left the water on so it was pouring out of the shower, over the towels I had laid down (just in case of spillages), through the bathroom and out of the door. In hindsight, I should have just taken my shoes off, rolled up my trousers and hopped in the shower and turned the water off myself. In the moment, this didn't occur to me and I didn't want to get wet. I ran down the corridor to get more towels to try and hold back the river streaming out the door. By the time I got back to the bathroom Alice was out of the shower and curled up in a towel, on the floor at the other end of the room, sobbing uncontrollably.

Only now, did the brilliant idea of actually doing something productive occur to me, so I flicked my shoes off and turned the shower off. I had been pretty angry and Alice that she hadn't listened to me and turned the shower off, but she looked so vulnerable all of a sudden, I just felt sorry for her. There seems to be two main ways of reacting to the kids when something like this happens. You can get stressed and shout at them, tell them off and make them clean the mess/fix the mistake on their own, or you can reassure the child, that they're not in huge amounts of trouble and help them clean/fix. When I write this, and probably when you read this, it is obvious you should do the second. But in the heat of the moment I'm sure everybody does the first sometimes. Especially when you've got 12 kids! This time, I had the sense to do the second. I started trying to push most of the water back into the bathroom with several sodden towels while she got dressed, then I went downstairs to tell the CCW what had happened and get the mop. I was told to make Alice clean it up. I had Alice mop the floor and soak up as much water as possible while I wrung all the towels out.

The next day, I was expecting really bad behaviour. I was expecting tears, tantrums and fights. What I got was the total opposite! She was really nice and beautifully behaved all day. She let me help her with her homework (something she has refused since the holidays 3 weeks ago) and she even put up with my halting Afrikaans and my need to stop every now and then to go and get a translation. We started a new card system in the house that day (green card for good behaviour, blue for disrupting routine means no playing outside and red for disrespect means early bedtime and yellow-I can't remember what for but it results in a removal or privileges) and she was one of the only children with a green card. She was so proud of herself, and I was so proud of her. When I said goodnight to her that evening, she wanted her usual hug but she also wanted a kiss, the first time since she arrived and I told her how proud of her I was and how magnificent her behaviour had been. I've never seen a bigger smile on anyone's face!