My first job out of college (not counting a few highly-forgettable temping nightmares--definitely another blog post) was at a wonderful, progressive child welfare agency in Chicago. The agency was a pioneer in an approach that's now common in social services called wraparound. As the name implies, wraparound grew out of the idea that kids and families (and foster families) could make it through a crisis with the aid of intensive, comprehensive supports--traditional supports like psychotherapy and home visits, but also respite breaks for parents and foster parents, and 24 hour on-call support.
I was eager to give that help. The thing was, these kids needed so much HELP! Just reading their case files was exhausting: abuse, neglect, psychiatric hospitalizations, endless moves from one home to another. I needed to make every moment count. Or so I thought.
About 6 months into the job I picked up Lawrence from school (not his real name, of course) and we headed to the park to play catch. Catch was good, I thought: he can get some exercise and some fresh air; we'll have a chance to work on social skills, like taking turns and sharing; and I'll be able to talk to him about his behavior in school and the difficulties he's been having in his foster home.
And so I did. I praised him for not hogging the ball (like he often did). I talked about school. I talked about home. And before long, we were hardly playing catch anymore.
"Matt? Can we just play catch?" he said, in a voice that seemed beyond his 9 years.
"Um, sure," I said, swallowing my speech about the phone call I received from his teacher the day before.
And then we played catch. He laughed when I missed the football and it bopped me in the head. I shouted with excitement when he made a miraculous one-handed snatch of a particularly wobbly toss from me.
We played a terrific game of catch.
Help
I suspect I'll never get over the desire to help. As a therapist, well, I can't help it. Parents are committed to a fair amount of helping, as are bosses and neighbors and friends and spouses.
But when we try to package every moment into a value-packed opportunity, and get hyper-focused on helping, the relationship gets forgotten. With Lawrence, I was so invested in making every moment count, that I nearly ruined a perfectly good game of catch.
Catch, like relationships, is sacred in my book.
