Changing Expectations Essay

Expectations

Teachers are well trained in ‘having high expectations for their children’ and there is nothing wrong with this but the expectations referred to in the model are what the child believes will happen in any given set of circumstances. When they are face to face with an angry male they ‘expect’ to be beaten. When set a test by the teacher they ‘expect’ to fail.

This long-suffering way of ‘expectation’ is underpinned by the child’s sense of toxic shame. A shame not of what they have done but what they believe they are.

Changing expectations is changing beliefs and that only occurs when we can get the child to experience success through their actions. We need to set tasks they can achieve gradually increasing the effort required

These children require strong connections to their teachers/carers and they are ill equipped to form appropriate relationships in the early stages of intervention.

The children come to new relationships with multi-faceted problems. On the one hand they are extremely needy yet they are extremely suspicious of those who offer friendship. They will be reluctant to trust anyone because of their history of being let down or rejected. However their fundamental need to form attachments will drive them into unhealthy coalitions with inappropriate peers or exploitative adults whose method of relating is at least familiar.

The teachers and/or carers will also struggle with relationships. Not many people get to adulthood unscathed by their history and will bring to their work some proportion of baggage that makes them vulnerable. The behaviour or the history of the child they are working with may trigger some old account they carry. They become empathetic with the child.

Empathy is often cited as a positive characteristic for people working in this field. I would hesitate to agree with this. Empathy infers you know how they feel and for some they equate the child’s history with parts of their own. This is an unhealthy situation for