Not now, but when?

Books written for young children can be dark, brutally honest and revealing of adult weaknesses. David McKee’s Not Now Bernard is an excellent example of that. Young Bernard attempts to talk with his parents only to be constantly fobbed off with “not now Bernard”. A monster in the garden gobbles up Bernard and then is treated to the exact same response and ends up bemused and confused in bed having being tucked in by adults who fail to see that their child is in fact a monster. If only they had paid more attention and listened.

The Children’s Society is an organisation that seeks to meet the needs of young people by being relevant and responsive to the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged young people. Being relevant and responsive means we need to be listening to young people but listening to young people has been hard to do in 2020. Although perhaps it’s more a case that we have a lot more to ask of young people and our attention is centred around what we want to know. In the last six months we have had a lot to ask of young people. How they cope in lockdown, how they are maintaining friendships, how well they think we are doing in responding to them, whether they are more anxious or fearful and what their hopes are for the future. They are all legitimate things to ask of young people and the motivation is to understand and shape our responses according to their needs.

But the pandemic restrictions we all face means that the approaches to young people have become more focused and pressured. The contact with young people has been limited in the main to on line conversations, phone calls and surveys. Those interactions feel constrained by the necessity of making appointments and having the slightly unnerving experience of staring at each other on screens. Face to face contact and group meetings have been rare and managed by risk assessments and a need for it being vital or absolutely necessary.

What we have lost are the casual and informal opportunities to listen. An interview gathers insight as a result of presenting questions and capturing the answers and it is nothing like the revelation that is offered up while on a car journey or sitting in a coffee shop. Choosing the right moment to say something is lost to young people when that opportunity is confined to a pre arranged on line call. Sometimes young people will reveal something of significance to them in the middle of mundane and ordinary activity and yet the ordinary has been altered. We are all compelled to establish a social distance between ourselves and to reduce the kind of interactions that bring us closer together and provide the spaces to listen to each other. Even worse, that kind of social interaction and moments spent with each other carry the risk of censure, criticism or even illness.

We have found ways of asking young people questions and seeking out their views during the restrictions imposed by a pandemic. We have adapted to less face to face contact and worked hard to maintain contact with those young people we aim to support. But the moments to just be together and to listen rather than ask questions is something that has been drastically reduced. How we create those moments and rediscover the art of listening is going to be something we will need to dedicate ourselves to. In the months ahead we will need to place a greater value on listening rather than asking. We will need to legitimise the casual and informal interactions with young people and invest in spaces and moments where we can be with young people and ask nothing, expect nothing and just be ready to listen.

Investing in nothing seems nonsensical. But some years ago I was part of a study with young people in rural areas that explored how their grouping together and meeting up with each other was perceived by adults. What gave young people their sense of belonging, identity and purpose was the time they spent with each other. That was something adults struggled to appreciate and value. The young people titled the study “Busy doing nothing”.

I suspect we are all impatient to be back in a place where we can more easily meet with the young people we want to support and hear from. As that happens we will need to give young people even more space and time, more opportunities and more control over what they share with us and what they reveal about their hopes, needs and wants. If we rush in, act impatiently and with all our built up expectations, it could be monstrous.

—

Jim Davis is Head of Youth Engagement at The Children’s Society.