Your experiences with authorities are a treasure.
Negative authorities
When it comes to authorities, everybody caries various experiences:
- Moments of approval, empowerment, and even praise
- Situations of being ignored, receiving dismissive response to our needs
- Being condescended
Why are they so negative?
As surprising as it sounds, but: your negative experiences with authorities are a treasure.
These disappointing experiences are frequent because even the best parents, teachers or other people with authority can’t always fulfil the wishes of every child.
What good could come out of this?
From negative experiences, we might learn:
- what disappointment felt like (what we really did not like)
- what kind of support would have helped us as a child (how the situation would have been easier for us)
- how we could handle the simple truth: “You can’t always have it your way”.
Positive authorities
On the other hand, all of us had at least some positive experiences with other people in power.
And surely, your positive experiences with authorities are a treasure.
Everybody occasionally meets adults:
- who care about children
- who see their needs
- who provide a nourishing interaction.
Even though we, as children, often take these positive interactions for granted and are less appreciative of them than we should be.
My personal background
When I was four, my family relocated inside of Germany. At the new place, the people spoke German differently from me. I hated it. I hated that I had to leave my friends behind. The new place was grey and wet and boring and … Then came the day when my mother brought me to the new nursery. Of course, I was scared and held mum’s hand all the way. Inside the building, the nursery schoolteacher approached us, crunched down at my eye level, looked at me and asked me “How are you?”
The impact
That greeting blew me away.
The mere fact that she made the effort to see me, coming down to my world and spoke to me amazed me. From that moment on, I trusted and loved her.
This experience is one important signpost on my personal path to discover a way to connect with children as patients.
At that moment, I needed to be seen and that was precisely what she did.
Her attitude became a role model for my approach towards children.
Here you see, how my positive experience with this authority became a treasure.
What are the consequences?
We all have our own stories with authorities. Good ones and bad ones.
The bad ones work as warnings, about what to avoid. They give us a clear indication about how not to act towards children.
The good ones could guide you as a role model. They indicate a way how we, as authorities, could approach children.
Your experiences with authorities are a treasure.
The implementation
You can utilize the experiences in several ways:
- Use the experiences you have, to flip the perspective, to place yourself in their shoes.
- Feel with your “inner child” how the child in front of you will perceive your actions.
- Adjust your actions, to accommodate as much support as possible.
With this treasure of experience, the way is open to perform the three steps that lead to an improved relationship: Connect – Respect – Engage!
The following posts will explore how these three steps can be implemented.
In a nutshell:
- Your experiences with authorities are a treasure.
- Remember how the world felt when you were a child.
- Use your experiences as a child (either good or bad) as clues what to copy and what to avoid in the interaction with paediatric patients.
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