I emphasized in my last post just how important it is to create one-on-one relationships with individual campers as a way to make them feel special and important to the group, and I still stand by this. Being a camp counselor puts you in a unique position because you essentially get paid to be friends with kids all day (and, you know, supervise them, of course.) With that said, however, there is a super fine line that shouldn’t be crossed when it comes to working with children, and it is extremely important that camp counselors—and anyone working with children for that matter—know where that line is. Children love to try to push boundaries, so knowing where the line is can help keep adult and child relationships appropriate, making sure that the child feels comfortable. After all, ensuring a child feels comfortable around you is part of ensuring their emotional safety, which I covered in the last post.
So, what does an appropriate counselor/camper relationship look like? I like to think of it more as a big sibling/little sibling relationship. In this sense, the big sibling has more life experience and can serve as a mentor for the little sibling, but also, there’s a point where the big sibling has to kick out the little sibling to hang out with people their own age. The little sibling probably doesn’t like that, but it’s for their own good; they’ll get over it. Obviously, it works a little differently with a counselor/camper relationship because the counselor can’t—and definitely shouldn’t—just kick the camper out if they feel like the camper is overstepping boundaries. Depending on the way a child crosses a boundary, a counselor’s reaction can vary. Let’s start with a child crossing a physical boundary: a camper tries to pull down your pants. (I really don’t know why they think that’s a good idea, but it seems to happen a lot.) The first defense is always to stop the behavior before it escalates. I think it’s a good idea to use I-statements. (That was me using an I-statement.) I-statements are statements that begin with “I” as the subject of the sentence, such as “I’d prefer,” “I don’t like,” “I’m not sure.” Using I-statements makes whatever follows them seem less harsh. In the case of a camper pulling down your pants, saying “I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that again” is a lot nicer than “Don’t do that again.” and it seems to take the blame away from the child and focuses it more on you, which is important because it allows them to understand that it upset you, which they probably never intended. A child crossing a social boundary works in a similar manner: a camper asks “Do you have a girlfriend?” Campers LOVE this question for some weird reason. It’s a little less alarming when a child oversteps a social boundary, so the primary response can definitely be a little more lighthearted. Something like, “Uh, no! Girls are gross! I spend all my free time watching Netflix” can make them laugh and divert their attention away from the original question, which is important for keeping a conversation going. If responding in a joking manner doesn’t seem to take the camper’s attention away from the subject, then it’s time to bring out the I-statement: “I’d like it better if we didn’t talk about that.” That being said, sometimes a camper will come to you with a very serious question or concern—something that they are only trusting you with. If this is the case, the first thing to do is thank them for being honest and open with you. It will make them feel more comfortable about opening up, and it will once again make them feel special and important. After that, it is important to remind them that anything they tell you will not be shared with anyone else. However, this is where it gets a little tricky because if they tell you something in which they threaten to hurt themselves, someone else, or they are somehow being hurt by someone else, it must be reported that they or someone else is clearly in danger, and not reporting it would be ignoring their physical or emotional safety in this sense. (I will touch more on this a little later.) If there is no threat of danger, then it is extremely important to be honest with the child because it took a lot of courage for them to decide to come to you, and they deserve an honest answer from you. (Of course, if the subject is not age-appropriate, it is important to respond in a way that they would understand.) Now, back to the part about reporting any signs of a child being hurt or abused by an adult. Any person who works directly with children is required under Maryland state law to “report both orally and in writing any suspected child abuse or neglect,” according to Maryland’s Department of Human Resources. The report must include the following information, if known:
This law is intended to keep children safe, which as I continually emphasize, is a counselor’s number one priority. It may be difficult to report any suspected abuse, especially if the child asks you not to, but it is important that the child know that the people who you are reporting the abuse to only want to help the child and that they will be safe. On one final note, when a child does come to you with something severe, it is important that you show them that you care by telling them, and also sometimes by physically reassuring them. It’s always a good idea to read the situation and to know the child, but if they are comfortable and you feel like it would help them to have some sort of physical reassurance, four safe places to touch a child reassuringly are on the head, upper back, shoulder, and upper arm. Doing so will show the child you are there for them and that you can help comfort them if they need it. As with my last post, this was a lot of information, so I’ll summarize the points I made in bullets below:
Logan *P.S. I am learning so much from these posts, and I’m really having a great time writing them! I am in the process of conducting interviews to write a post about how to work with children with Asperger’s Syndrome, and I am very excited, so stay tuned!*
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Logan DechterUniversity of Maryland student by fall and spring, camp counselor by summer. Archives
February 2018
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