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Step 13Trouble!
What did we do when kids didn't follow our rules?
Since we didn't have many, camp had the aura of being a very relaxed and co-operative place. That said, there were still times when the rules needed some follow-up.
We decided not to punish kids in traditional ways, and so that leaves the open question of what do you do when there's trouble?
My first strategy when kids are fighting (verbally or physically) is the conflict resolution tool that I like to call the "long, slow discussion." You sit down with the kids (together or one by one, depending on the situation), and you start talking to the kids about what happened. Kids often have a freak-out response to talking to adults when in trouble, a sort of hysterical, gibbering "I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it!" defense mechanism. The goal is to first get past to this by stating clearly that the goal isn't punishment for what just happened, but rather to figure out what we're going to do so that this doesn't happen again.
Usually, once you introduce the idea of thinking forward (figuring out what rule to put in place so that we don't have the same problem again), kids will slow down. You can then ask them to relate what happened step by step, and it's important to hear everyone on this. Many times, the situation will turn from murky (a la the great mystery of "Who started it?") to crystal clear. When it does, you can ask the kids to agree on a rule -- usually temporary and low-key -- in order to prevent the situation from repeating itself.
This isn't fool-proof, but it's an excellent way of disarming the hysterics that are often a child's first line of defense to being in trouble, and actually figuring out what happened and what to do.
It's also helpful to switch off with another counselor when you're getting frustrated by the kids you're working with. Ultimately, the big punishment we had was that if a kid was being unsafe at camp and we couldn't work things out, they'd have to go home for the day or stop coming to camp. This was something we hardly ever had to use or even mention, but this was the thing giving our rules weight.
For cleaning, we had a clean-up time at the end of every day. This was our one requirement of our kids, and we generally required the place get put back to as clean as it was in the morning. This is helped by us asking that all projects get cleaned up when they're done, but it's really clean-up time that makes this work. Our control here was making clean-up time shorter or longer, depending on how productive (chaotic) the day had been. On an average day clean-up time was 20 minutes long. We've at times used job charts to make the quell the "I don't know what to do!" complaints, though this hasn't been perfect (kids would be confused that they had to keep cleaning for the duration of 20 minutes when they'd done their assigned job.) With great freedom comes great responsibility!
Since we didn't have many, camp had the aura of being a very relaxed and co-operative place. That said, there were still times when the rules needed some follow-up.
We decided not to punish kids in traditional ways, and so that leaves the open question of what do you do when there's trouble?
My first strategy when kids are fighting (verbally or physically) is the conflict resolution tool that I like to call the "long, slow discussion." You sit down with the kids (together or one by one, depending on the situation), and you start talking to the kids about what happened. Kids often have a freak-out response to talking to adults when in trouble, a sort of hysterical, gibbering "I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it!" defense mechanism. The goal is to first get past to this by stating clearly that the goal isn't punishment for what just happened, but rather to figure out what we're going to do so that this doesn't happen again.
Usually, once you introduce the idea of thinking forward (figuring out what rule to put in place so that we don't have the same problem again), kids will slow down. You can then ask them to relate what happened step by step, and it's important to hear everyone on this. Many times, the situation will turn from murky (a la the great mystery of "Who started it?") to crystal clear. When it does, you can ask the kids to agree on a rule -- usually temporary and low-key -- in order to prevent the situation from repeating itself.
This isn't fool-proof, but it's an excellent way of disarming the hysterics that are often a child's first line of defense to being in trouble, and actually figuring out what happened and what to do.
It's also helpful to switch off with another counselor when you're getting frustrated by the kids you're working with. Ultimately, the big punishment we had was that if a kid was being unsafe at camp and we couldn't work things out, they'd have to go home for the day or stop coming to camp. This was something we hardly ever had to use or even mention, but this was the thing giving our rules weight.
For cleaning, we had a clean-up time at the end of every day. This was our one requirement of our kids, and we generally required the place get put back to as clean as it was in the morning. This is helped by us asking that all projects get cleaned up when they're done, but it's really clean-up time that makes this work. Our control here was making clean-up time shorter or longer, depending on how productive (chaotic) the day had been. On an average day clean-up time was 20 minutes long. We've at times used job charts to make the quell the "I don't know what to do!" complaints, though this hasn't been perfect (kids would be confused that they had to keep cleaning for the duration of 20 minutes when they'd done their assigned job.) With great freedom comes great responsibility!
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