Sometimes children we meet with are having a difficult time at school. They might be disengaged, get into trouble, or be involved in violent conflicts with peers or teachers. It can be hard for parents to understand where this behavior is coming from, and difficult to interpret what teachers and professionals in the school are recommending as a solution.
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School can be a difficult experience for a child. It can be hard, if not impossible, for children to understand the rules that they encounter. One kind of behavior might be expected at home, or with certain teachers, while other kinds of behavior might be expected at friends' or relatives' houses, or with other teachers. At the same time, as children get older the implicit social codes become more complex and more difficult to navigate. What a person is supposed to do with others, is allowed to say to others, changes. These are not choices the individual makes, but a new social reality that imposes itself. A child has to find a way to manage all these situations. And in all these rule governed spaces it is not clear what space a child will have for themself, where they can explore their own interests and experience. Our perspective is that if a child does not have sufficient outlets for energies that are looking for creative expression, the child will encounter school and other rule governed situations as the site of a more or less violent conflict.
The approach we take to these problems might initially seem counterintuitive. Rather than enforce the norms that the child is having a hard time navigating, or focusing on the demands that the child is avoiding or rebelling against, we work to give your child a space for the experiences and interests that have no space in school. If a child has a space that sustains interests that go beyond what is possible in school, behavioral issues can become more manageable or even disappear.
This could mean engaging in creative imaginative play, entering into shared storytelling, learning a musical instrument, working on animations of video games, or exploring the physics of sound in and through different applications and synthisizers.
To talk more about this, or to see what might be possible, please contact us.
