Kid Kaos
This is the work
Socio-political Frames for Creative Care Work
A Working Mindset
On Trauma and behavior

 

Kid Kaos
So when you begin your project, do not be surprised if you find a chaotic, hectic and loud situation. You may find that kid’s behavioral age seems to radically vary in context. A six year old may be a mature parent to their three year old sibling and then suddenly withdraw into tears. A twelve year old may act out like a rambunctious seven year old and then demand to be given access to teenage facilities. There may be a lot of arguments that you just can’t understand. Things might go from smooth to chaotic in a matter of seconds. This is often the space for your meaningful work. Do not be surprised to be working within sub-par housing. Also, don’t be surprised if the building is kinda nice.Run-down or renovated, many settlement houses have creativity and play rooms set aside for your project. Don’t be surprised if you are working there, in a room full of art supplies that you may have access to.

Parallel with our experiences and confirmed in multiple interviews, creative plans that would work in school settings often do not work as expected in settlement houses. Informants have articulated that children may approach mark making (drawing and painting), project construction (sculpting, crafting), or performance (dance and theatre) in surprising ways. They may not seem to be paying much attention to what they are making as they burn through stacks of paper and clay very quickly. You may have endowed the creative work  with a very important meaning, but don’t be surprised if the children do not appreciate the lesson or value the creative  work in ways you expect them too.

This is the work
You may find that your paper, paint, clay, string, etc… is consumed at an incredible rate. The children’s ability to quickly transform your plans and the material may exhaust you, surprise you, frustrate you, confound you. The atmosphere may be hectic or focused- but at any time, surprising outbreaks may punctuate the calm or chaos. The kids nerves may be frayed in ways you do not understand. Try to remain calm, not for the sake of the project but for the sake of the kids. This is the work.

Provide them with calm. Provide them with boundaries where you can. Be creative and open in play. Think of creative work as play, and play as creative work. And if you can work with caregivers who know the children better then you, they can help by structuring the creative situation better. When done with love and care, tender boundary work is important and can be as resonant as creative play work.

You are a visitor to their home, however unstable this home is. You can understand your task as facilitating the balance between creative expression, vulnerability and your limits. You are a creative worker, you open up the emotional space between the expectations of their families and traditions on one hand and the demands, pressures, expectations and possibilities of this new place. So, have fun.

As discussed under “best practices”, you can think about your work via an idea of resiliency– providing situations where the children can appreciate their own ability to positively grow and explore regardless of whatever adversity they may have or may be facing. You maybe help them develop a place of belonging.  At best, yours is a process of collaborative research.

Just like any child, the children may be very curious about you and ask you a lot of questions. Express yourself in relation with the kids. Seek and strive to maintain resonance (1) with the kids,  where resonance is understood as being in relation with.

Socio-political Frames for Creative Care Work
When we think of doing caring cultural work with vulnerable populations, we imagine it happening within transparent, legible or graspable institutions. This is likely not the case here. If you are the project grant-writer, you will know an employee in this house, otherwise, you are likely working in context that reaches quickly from these kids national policies and international NGO’s.

In our experience, refugee settlement houses in Saxony are not community-supported institutions. While they may take food, toy and money donations, they are a reflective of bureaucratic state effort to manage populations and international relations It is important to remember this when entering these small spaces  where you work with thesesweet kids.(2)

A Working Mindset
Stay calm and observant. Don’t get overexcited when you don’t need to.
Learn how to keep cool, but emotionally available to be active when necessary– when see that interactions will be useful. This active coolness is a useful mode to engage when you enter work.

On Trauma and behavior
You might assume based on their behavior that some of the children you are working with are traumatized. Or you might think that they are just kids. As refugee children, they or their parents have been definitionally exposed to traumatizing situations, even though as as asylum seekers rather then German residents they have limited access to mental health facilities. Even if they have access, there is not even enough therapists working in Germany to meet the need.

Remember that you are not a therapist, and even if you knew the kids were definitionally traumatized, what would you be able to do with this knowledge that was different from how you should treat them now? You wouldn’t be able to make much of a difference besides by doing what is the best to do anyway- treat the children with care, attentiveness, and calm.

If you know permanent staff at settlement homes, you might be able to discuss how to best support particular children. Otherwise, care is probably the best you can do… which is a lot.

 

1. In Mijic & Parzer 2022, they quote the theorist Hartmut Rosa on resonance, “describes a mode of being-in-the-world, i.e. a specific way in which subject and world come into relation with each other […] that two entities in relation […] mutually affect each other in such a way that they can be understood as responding to each other, at the same time each is speaking with its own voice.” Mijic, Ana & Parzer, Michael. “The Art of Arriving: A New Methodological Approach to Reframing ‘Refugee Integration’ “. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Volume 21: 1–9, 2022.
   
2. Quoting the theorist Joan Tronto, Manuela Zechner say, “Where patriarchal and capitalist divisions of care remain naturalized, most reproductive work remains invisible and undervalued, as feminist economists have pointed out for decades.” Zechner, Manuela.”Childcare commons: Of feminist subversions of community and communie in Barcelona”, Ephemera Journal 22(2), 2022.

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