PROBLEM CHILD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 382, 18 October 1946, Page 22

PROBLEM CHILD

ALLAN J. NIXON, who has written this article for "The Listener" is Senior Teacher at the Auckland Institute for Remedial Education. Though he writes from personal experience, the names of young people mentioned in the article are, of course, fictitious and their characters are masked.

ROBLEM child! Visions spring up of cherubic infants slicing the axminster with pen-knives, or perhaps of somewhat older children clubbing their baby brothers in a spirit of detached enquiry. But are there really children like that? There are, . When Mother’s nerves finally give out, the decision is made, without regret, to jettison the child. Of recent years, the splendid Greek custom of exposing children in jars has fallen into disuse, so. that the little unwanted one is consigned instead to the-Institution. That institution is me, and some other people with robust constitutions and presumably no nerves. Of course you’ve read A. S. Neill, and you know what a "free-school" is. Children, so the theory runs, are universally repressed. Just abandon restraint, therefore, and after a brief’riotous period the essentially good nature gf the "natural child" will assert itself. Laugh, if you like, but that’s the story! The technique of our institution is based on it: we offer to reform children by this means. Mostly Boys And so in their dozens they come: this one because he is destructive; that one, for a precocious sex-interest; the next, because he is uncontrollable, or unteachable or incurably truant, or perhaps a sneak-thief. Inexplicably, almost all the problems are boys; the few girls ‘are unhappy little compulsive thieves, who stop being problem children, for the time being, if you give them a morsel of affection. * "Lawless" is the most descriptive word for our children in the mass. The free-school atmosphere admittedly doesn’t make for slavish obedience, but even so the most Spartan of disciplinarians couldn’t reduce these kids to the state of saying "sir," or of obeying any

comiaand within five minutes of its pronouncement. This aggressive indifference to the wishes of the world is a healthy thing in children-it is the pre-neurotic child who is over-concerned with the welfare of others-but teaching school (my job) is rather hectic under the circumstances. A Morning at School You will remember your own school-days--even rows of desks, complete silence, 50 children working to a timetable. Nothing like that for us. A mere five pupils. comprise a _ class, which sounds good--but three of mine have been "dumped" by other class-teachers as unteachable, and the remaining pair as uncontrollable and truant. A morning’s school-programme may run thus: By deceit, you’ve lured them all into the school-room before 9.15, To-day, you feel, some work will be done. And perhaps you do contrive to fit in an hour’s teaching for the bribe of cocoa at 10.30 is powerful this weather. Some time round 11, you assemble them again for singing -- and you ask yourself why music has so compelling a power over these bitter little desperadoes. For they will not play together at any game we can devise, yet they will sing together for an hour at a time. Change of Attitude Experience with such children makes you hate-them intensely as a group, and binds them individually to you with stronger bonds than normal children can weave. After a time, you no longer define your charges as children who are problems; instead, you think of them as children who have problems. You realise that their "crazy" behaviour is never quite crazy. It is always aimed at the solution of their problems, though sometimes the aim is. erratic, because they are only kids. The pathos enters because, so frequently, their problems have no solution.

A case in point. Freddie is eight, and passionately attached to his mother, who in fact has earned his devotion. But Freddie’s father has taken a new wife, and they have an idolised tiny daughter. Freddie is not allowed to see his true mother noWadays, because of her pro-fession-this is not our only case where a "professional lady" has shown herself a psychologically good mother. But so little of this can be explained to Freddie (in ten years he will understand, but it may be too late then) and so inconsolably, without enjoying it, without knowing clearly why he does it, Freddie reaches out towards his lost love, towards the warmth and attention which no one can spare him. He is called a problem child and indeed is a bad case, because he was only six when all this misery started, and in some dim way he realised then that people would at least take notice of him if he poured ink into the carpet, and used the kitchen hammer on wash-basins and mirrors. Freddie had found some solution to his problem. The Thieves ; Freddie is the type of problem child we mostly have to deal with, though not all are as intelligent and affectionate as he is. Most pitiful and unpleasant are the thieves, because their unhappiness has a bitter, in-turned quality, and eats at them like a canker; when the loneliness of the world becomes too much for them they can’t, like the rebels, find relief in "bashing" someone; instead they sneak off in their misery and stéal some little object (cigarettes, lipsticks, nail files-rarely money), and hide it. Tax them directly and they will deny the theft, but stay talking with them for a while and they will come closer to a confession. Oddly, what they confess is often not the literal truth, but the fantasy . which they themselves accept, of having been given the object. Alice is a girl-thief in her ’teens with a most faithful "boy friend" wl.o showers her with gifts which have included many gee-gaws originally mine! In an imaginative essay recently, Alice lit up the tragedy of her case with the light of unconscious humour: when "Jack" und she breakfasted on their "honeymoon" the meal was served to them by Alice’s (more attractive) young sister-the very person who, in displacing Alice so entirely from her father’s affection, has thereby made her a thief.

By now you will see more clearly what we mean by problem child. You may want to know, "What can be done for these children?" The answer is not very hopeful. We do what we can, and indeed the casual visitor is frequently impressed by our patience. Yet I myself am not a patient man, and the persistent loving-kindness which so impresses the outsider is just something which can be wrung from anyone in the continued presence of pain. We do what we can, and for some we can do nothing (the girl-thief mentioned above will probably die in an institution, because she lacks the intelligence to make a final solution of her own problem, and no man could give her such consistent love as to "keep her straight"). For most we can do a little, if only because we provide them with a trouble-free home; to some few we have given a chance to work out their own salvation, and they have achieved it. I will not speak in detail of these cases because they include personal friends. But I can say this, that a boy who has been a rebel, and who has been won over by friendship without being broken in spirit, makes a better man than does the white-haired boy. The Case of Len In speaking thus, I’m thinking of boys like Len. Len was sent to us because he was too tough even for the schoolmasters of the West Coast. To-day, he is at work and voluntarily boards with us because the institution is home to him. Len and I put the gloves on sometimes, and though I’m his old teacher, the symbol of authority, he joyfully gives me every last ounce of punishment — readers who are themselves teachers will recognise the freedom of spirit which that implies. On the other hand, the same lad has felt free to forgo, surreptitiously, a favourite pudding, when muddled serving had left me without a dessert. It needs no child-psycho-logist to infer from such a pair of incidents, many times duplicated, that here we have the makings of a man. Same Old Story The key to understanding the problem child is this: the life-history of wayward children, delinquents, criminals, neurotics, and anti-social folk generally is,

with exceptions, the same story told again and again. So vital to the child is the need for a strong and stable affection, that any failure to meet this need compels the child to extort adult attention in some way. The rare gifted child may achieve this through scholastic success; for most however anti-social behaviour is the only way. You think a moral is creeping in? It is. If you can’t spare much affection for your child, choke him. It’s kinder, that way.