Working with Children

I believe I am beginning a significant new chapter in my life. I will be conducting therapy with children again. I have essentially been doing brief therapy/crisis intervention with them for sometime now. However, this week I have begun my role as primary therapist again, with a company I worked for before. This role is not one I take on lightly, and consider it with much gravity and significance. To hold such a  responsibility to children and their families is all at once overwhelming and an honor. I was called by God years ago, to serve children. I have been blessed to have always held a job working with them.  I write now, because I cannot escape thoughts of God's desire to heal the broken and hurting. Thinking back to so many years ago, I never imagined all that God had in store for me in this work. I believe it is near impossible to work with children in any significant way, unless you are able and willing to face their pain straight on. Unless you meet them within it. Shoulder it with them. I consider it a privilege to be entrusted with their sufferings.

I have recalled various quotes by C.S. Lewis lately that I have held dear for years now.
C.S. Lewis was no stranger to pain as a child. His mother died of cancer and he was left with a distant father. Years later he reflects on his childhood and says, "Children suffer not, I think, less than their elders, but differently...We lost her gradually as she was gradually withdrawn from our life into the hands of nurses and delirium and morphia. And our whole existence changed into something alien and menacing, as the house became full of strange smells and midnight noises and sinister, whispered conversations. With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security." When children suffer in any way, their world changes from what it was before, into something...other. Most of us can recall childhood pain and see how it resulted in a shift in how we organized and understood the world around us. In many ways, I feel that the suffering of a child is simultaneously complex and powerfully simple.

 Many have asked me over the years, how people like myself can do the work we do. For myself I would say that I believe that a child's perspective on the world is often the most accurate and clear. Conversations with children of nearly any kind can teach an adult to view things properly. C.S. Lewis speaks often of the dangers of forgetting how to relate to children, or what it is to be like a child. God himself says that we are to be like little children. I believe one of the best ways to work with children (especially if you plan to for a long time) is to consider them to be superior to yourself. It does not take much skill to see a child in this manner, but you must be willing to believe that the child has the capacity to be more excellent than yourself. You must be willing to see that there are times that a child is right, and you are wrong. We should not despise them because they are young. They are just as capable of wisdom and knowledge. This principal also helps stave against ideas that they are fragile and weak. I have worked with many children that have navigated a vast domain of pain, with astounding success. They can have a resiliency that puts many of us adults to shame. It is important to note here a distinction between what I am saying and what some may understand me to say. Therefore, (at the risk of offending) I will clarify that if you enjoy working with children because they meet your emotional needs (validation, affirmation, love, etc.), you should not work with children. I could speak for hours on all of the possible outcomes of this dangerous and unhealthy approach to serving children. Those of us in this profession have regrettably encountered those that have operated in this manner.

Lewis says, "Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work." When asked to discuss his approach to writing children's books he said,"Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage." I believe Lewis was also a hero to many children, himself. He used to write letters to children that wrote him, even though he had a condition that caused him pain to do so.

There is a portion of Lewis's The Great Divorce (which is an allegory of Heaven),  where Lewis describes a woman that is seen walking through Heaven:
"And who are all these young men and women on each side?"
"They are her sons and daughters."
"She must have had a very large family, Sir."
"Every young man or boy that met her became her son-even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter."
"Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?"
"No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more."

I long to be like this woman. I am not married and have no children, but I am not excluded from serving and loving children. I am honored to know so many giants that do great work in the lives of children every day. I pray I continue to learn how to serve children better. Thank you for your examples and all you do!