A QUESTION OF SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 320, 10 August 1945, Page 24

A QUESTION OF SOCIAL

ADJUSTMENT

More Problem Children at Briar Knight's Hostel

WO issues ago we gave an account of an interesting experiment being made in Auckland to deal with problem children. There are, of course, other institutions similar to the one described, but this is one that has come under our notice. Here are some further observations by our representative.

"T south. is one child from Westland in Brian Knight’s hostel, another from north of Whangarei; but these are exceptions. Most of the children come from nearer at hand, from places within the Auckland Province and even from the city itself. What sort of. homes do_ these children come from, I wanted to know. "Well, suppose there’s been a divorce, the child is being brought up by one parent," Mr. Knight said. "For some reason, or for a whole lot of reasonswho is to say whether it’s plain lack of authority or not so plain presence of stress-the child becomes unmanageable or difficult in some way or other. Or say one parent dies and the other struggles along in a lop-sided household. Or maybe there are two parents but the child suffers from some perhaps sudden and obscure mental or emotional disturbance." "But, on the whole, you don’t find these children in normal homes?" "What is a normal home?" Mr. Knight retaliated. "I don’t want that to sound too cynical. I mean: can the outsider tell what is the real emotional stability of any home? I’ve had a child from a home in which you could see everything that money could buy and a seemingly smooth and happy atmosphere-yet the child was mysteriously awry. There was something very much askew in that seemingly perfect home. But still, it is true that most of these cases come from homes in which there is quite obvious strain. The children need treatment, but ‘what about getting at the cause? What about finding out what can be done to prevent all this wholesale divorce and separation and breaking up of homes?" "All right, what about it?" I said. "Does it come your way?" "Certainly it does. For every child I have to study there are two parents who must be studied too. Unless, of course, there’s just the one parent. It’s simple enough, dealing with the children here at the hostel, but that’s not the end of it by a long way." a a we E were in Mr. Knight’s study at the hostel talking. about the children ‘with the house-mother and the secretary. I wasn’t prying, but I couldn’t help ‘noticing the card on the desk which said in very large letters CABBAGES!

"Excuse me, but what is cabbages exclamation mark?" I asked. The secretary explained that it was her way of reminding herself to remind Mr. Knight to call for the vegetables after the trustees’ meeting to-morrow. "Where do you get them?" "At the market." "Does someone go and bid for them?" "No. We've got one firm that looks after us. An auctioneering firm. They buy the right stuff for us at the right price and they make sure that we get our share if anything is going short." "Is this a special contract?" "No. It’s their goodwill. They look after us very well and we get good vegetables." In the garden I had noticed some rows of silver beet, onions, and carrots. The children had begun gardening where the rocks were cleared; but so far they had had only a few exciting nibbles of their own produce. Only a_ beginning, but there is qa plan... Mairangi Bay. The 1 name is magic in the hostel. Every February the children, with teachers, house-mother and cook, remove to Mairangi Bay to live in the Presbyterian Girls’ Camp there for a fortnight. "There isn’t another thing that happens in the year to compare with it," said Mr. Knight. "That fortnight sets them up. You wouldn’t know them after it. They bathe and career about and build things and gather things and have whole paddocks to run wild in-of course it’s the only sensible thing. It’s the only sensible way to have them living. We ought to be in the country all the time. That’s my ideal-to get a place in the country, four or five acres, let them learn to grow flowers, be self-supporting, grow their own vegetables, keep a few hens and ducks. A fortnight a year is only a nibble-but we'll get there yet. It may be years, but we’ll get there." * * * HERE was a knock on the door. It was Michael to ask for a pin to complete his windmill. No, not two pins, just the one. With extreme politeness he accepted the pin and withdrew. Ten seconds later he was tearing up and down the lawn, for all the world to see, demonstrating his magnicent windmillone thih stick pinned across another thin stick,

Michael is not alone in his ingenuity in finding himself playthings. We went into the boys’ dormitory and found signs of inventive characters on the tables beside the beds-a book on handwork and carpentry, a small weaving frame, a stamp album, a crystal set; and in the balcony cubicles where the older bodys sleep we found a couple of strangelystocked workshops. Terry had a very old radio set rigged with a highly complicated and mysterieus wiring system, Dutch to me, involving such items as a rusty bike lamp, two or three rubber bands, a set of earphones, the keyboard from a morse set, three cotton reels, an electric light switch without its wall . . » For all I know it could be a whole broadcasting station complete with its notice PRIVATE NO ADMITTANCE of which we took no notice. | * * * "THE girls’ dormitory had no such ‘" elaborate gear. On the surface, at least, it appeared that the boys were hoarders and the girls were not. Two girls of 12 and 13 years were in the dormitory when we called, one sitting on her bed sewing-coloured embroidery on stamped linen, she said she did a lot of it-and the other lying face downwards writing a letter home. Both were pretty and both were shy and both seemed to me quite ordinary mortals. When we left I asked Mr. Knight about them. "Well, Neaire is all richt now. that’s

the one who was sewing. She had a compulsion when she came here-kept on washing her hands. She’d lock herself in the bathroom and go into a coma. Now she does a normal amount of handwashing and is pretty well right. If she gets a_ fright or is worried about

anything she'll still show signs of the trouble, but she hasn’t gone into a coma for a long time." "And the other one?" "Oh, Myra. Hum. Myra’s trouble is thieving. We found her with a packet of cigarettes yesterday. It took a long time to find out where they came from. She’s clever too. Pick your pocket and you'd mever know. Her mother told me she used to take her mother’s handkerchiefs and hide them in her pilchers when she was four months old." I looked my disbelief. "No, really. That’s what her mother told me and her mother’s a Christian woman. It’s hard to believe-but still, she must have had a lét of practice to be as nimble as she is now." He admitted that it was going to be quite a problem dealing with Myra. * a ok HEY’VE had a few adventures at the ‘hostel, one way and another. But they’ve never had any accidents, Mr. Knight says. "Although there was the day I was’ standing at the ‘phone in the study talking. to the insurance agent about employees’ insurance," Mr. Knight recalled. "He had just asked me if we ever had any..accidents and I had just told him that no we didn’t ever have any accidents when something whizzed

past my head and over the balcony. The insurance. agent and I said goodbye politely and I rushed as calmly as possible outside. Look-a seven-foot drop to the terrace, then those three concrete steps on to the lawn, then the width of the lawn; over there by the hedge Sparks was just picking himself up. It was Sparks that whizzed past my head through the french doors. Why didn’t he break his neck? Well, the only thing that saved him was that he was a sailor before he came hete as housemaster. He must have ‘rolled himself up like a hedgehog. Who pushed? We had a young person here named Hazel, strong as a calf. Something irked her and she made a rush at him and butted him through the french doors and over the balcony with a final kick. A nice child, when she wasn’t irked." "Perhaps we're all nice people when we're not irked?" "Yes, that’s about the answer to the whole thing. That’s our job in a nut-shell-to help these children to adjust themselves to be nice people whatever the circumstances. Social adjustment. Sounds just a small job in a nutshell,

doesn’t it?"

J.