PARENTING:Gem Kids, set up by teacher and psychotherapist Caitríona Henry, offers therapeutic and educational programmes aimed at troubled children, writes SHEILA WAYMAN
BRAT; hyper kid; weirdo; clown; freak. They are all labels assigned to children by peers, teachers and parents, often in jest, sometimes in annoyance.
The problem is, stick labels on children and they tend to grow into that label, whether the branding is a result of personality, behaviour or some condition.
Often parents talk about the relief they felt when their child was diagnosed with a condition, because suddenly the inexplicable had a name. But the challenge is to make sure that everybody, including the child, sees beyond the label.
On a more superficial level, most parents catch themselves drawing attention to the very behaviour they want to minimise. Tell a child enough times that he is a “grouch”, the “class clown” or “a slob”, and it reinforces the behaviour as he or she lives up to your expectations.
Teacher and psychotherapist Caitríona Henry (36) is passionate about helping children who carry the burden of a label and bringing out the best in them. She has started a new venture called Gem Kids, based in Rathgar, Dublin, offering therapeutic and educational programmes aimed at troubled children.
It is important to draw the distinction between children who are labelled with a condition and those who are labelled because of their misbehaviour, she stresses. But she works with both kinds, to boost their self-esteem and help them reach their full potential.
There is a tendency for people to feel safer if a problem child has a label, she suggests, “then we know what’s wrong with that kid and can put him into a box”.
“The danger is he will be kept in that box, never to come out of it and reach his true potential as a human being.
“When I am working with kids I look beyond their condition. I still work with it but I look beyond it. I am teaching them how to cope better in school; how to form relationships; how to improve their social skills.
“I help them take charge of their behaviour, take responsibility for their behaviour and make choices around that.”
Take the child who keeps misbehaving in the classroom, looking for attention. He or she is hoping for positive attention but is going about it the wrong way and simply attracting negative attention.
Such children need to learn to separate themselves from their behaviour and see they are not a “bad kid” who is destined to act like this; they can change their behaviour.
“It is to catch that moment when they can stop and say ‘I can make a better choice’, instead of just acting out.”
Henry advises parents who are having difficulties with their child’s behaviour to focus on the positive, while pointing out what is acceptable and what’s not in a respectful way.
“Try to empathise with the child and see where he/she is coming from, rather than roaring and shouting. There is always a reason a child is troubled and it is important to look at that reason.
“Is it something in the home? Is it in school? Bullying? Something that is going on with teachers or peers? Go with your gut on it.
“Sometimes when we give a label to a child, it can take the focus off what else is happening in the child’s environment,” she points out.
“If a child is being really honest with you and telling you what they think, do we label that child as being cheeky or as inappropriate? We may not want to admit it but there could be some truth in it.”
Henry started out in her career teaching Irish and German in a private secondary school but soon felt there was too much focus on the academic side of things.
“They weren’t encompassing the whole child and they would strive to the standards of the brighter kids I was teaching.”
After she switched to working as a resource teacher in a primary school, St Joseph’s Boys National School in Terenure, the idea of Gem Kids began to grow. “It was through my work as a resource and learning support teacher that I held that there is a gem in these kids and sometimes that gets covered over.”
When working with children who had dyslexia or autism or general learning disabilities, she felt her job was not only to bring on their academic work, but also to bring out the best in all aspects of them.
She went on to study for a diploma in psychotherapy at Dublin City University. Now working as a learning support teacher at Coláiste Éanna Ballyroan in Rathfarnham, she brings both her teaching experience and psychotherapy skills to Gem Kids.
She works with children aged four to 18, either on a one-to-one basis or in group sessions, such as school workshops. For the younger children, who are often unable to explain why they are troubled, the work is done through play, using a wide range of materials for art, stories and games, such as sand boxes and modelling clay.
“For one kid who hated homework, I made the clay into Mr Homework and the kid spoke directly to Mr Homework and we ended up making a book based on Mr Homework. That is their way of working through that, what I like about homework, what I hate about doing homework.”
She would encourage parents and teachers who find themselves labelling a child because of behaviour to ask themselves why they are doing that. She admits that in her early days of teaching, it is a trap she would have fallen into.
“For me, it is important to catch myself if I go to label somebody. Why am I doing this? What is that child triggering in me? What is it in that child that I dislike?
“Because quite often when we make a judgment, it is a judgment we are making about ourselves.” She believes this is quite a “challenging concept” for teachers to take on board.
Her work in planning and establishing Gem Kids has brought Henry back to her own childhood. “I identify with some of the labels, maybe being the outsider and the weirdo, even though I was quite quiet and quite shy.”
She would have absolutely loved, she adds, to have had somebody doing this sort of programme with her when she was a child.
And, in turn, she’s been like a “big kid myself” setting up the venture.
- For more information on Gem Kids, tel 086 6075209 or see www.dublin.ie/websites/gemkids