‘Nancy, you’ve
been home from school
for three days now. Why don’t you clean
up you room?’
‘We don’t have to clean up our rooms
at col lege, Mother.’
‘That’s very nice, Nancy, and I’m happy
you’re going to such a free wheel ing in sti -
tu tion. But while you’re in the house, your
fa ther and I would like you to clean up
your room.’
‘What dif fer ence does it make? It’s my
room.’
‘I know, dear, and it re ally does n’t mean
that much to me. But your fa ther has a
great fear of the plague. He said this
morn ing that if it’s going to start any where
in this coun try, it’s going to start in your
room.’
‘Mother, you peo ple aren’t in ter ested
in any thing that’s rel e vant. Do you real ise
how the major cor po ra tions are pol lut ing
our en vi ron ment?’
‘Your fa ther and I are wor ried about it.
But right now we’re more con cerned
about the pol lu tion in your bed room. You
have n’t made your bed since you came
home.’
‘I never make it up at the dorm.’
‘Of course you don’t, and I’m sure the
time you save goes to wards your ed u ca -
tion. But we still have these old-fash ioned
ideas about mak ing beds in the morn ing,
and we can’t shake them. Since you’re
home for such a short time, why don’t you
do it to hu mour us?’
‘For heaven’s sake Mother, I’m grown
up now. Why do you have to treat me like
a child?’
‘We’re not treat ing you like a child. But
it’s very hard for us to real ise you’re an
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humour
Clean
your
room
Art Buchwald
You don’t re ally feel the gen er a tion gap until
a son or daugh ter comes home from a term
at col lege. Then it strikes you how out of it
you re ally are. Art Buchwald re flects on an
ex pe ri ence which child and youth care
work ers know only too well. This di a logue
would prob a bly feel at home any where in the
world.
adult when you throw all your clothes on
the floor.’
‘I have n’t thrown all my clothes on the
floor. Those are just the clothes I wore
yes ter day.’
‘For give me. I ex ag ger ated. Well, how
about the dirty dishes and the soft-drink
cans on your desk? Are you col lect ing
them for a sci ence pro ject?’
‘Mother, you don’t un der stand us. You
peo ple were brought up to have clean
rooms. But our gen er a tion does n’t care
about things like that. It’s what you have in
your head that counts.’
‘No one re spects ed u ca tion more than
your fa ther and I do, par tic u larly at the
prices they’re charg ing. But we can’t see
how liv ing in squa lor can im prove your
mind.’
‘That’s be cause of your pri or i ties. You
would rather have me make up my bed
and pick up my clothes than be come a
free spirit who thinks for my self.’
‘We’re not try ing to sti fle your free
spirit. It’s just that our med i cal in sur ance
has run out, and we have no pro tec tion in
case any body in the fam ily catches ty -
phoid.’
‘All right, I’ll clean up my room if it
means that much to you. But I want you
to know you’ve ru ined my va ca tion. ‘
‘It was a cal cu lated risk I had to take.
Oh, by the way, I know this is a ter ri ble
thing to ask of you, but would you mind
help ing me to wash the din ner dishes?’
‘Wash dishes? No body washes dishes at
school.’
‘Your fa ther and I were afraid of that.’
From Hu mor ous Sto ries, Oc to pus Books
Lim ited
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CYC-Online July 2011 / Issue 149
“If you tell folks you’re a col lege stu dent, folks
are so im pressed. You can be a stu dent in any thing
and not have to know any thing. Just say tox i col ogy
or ma rine biokinesis, and the per son you’re talk ing
to will change the sub ject to him self. If this does n’t
work, men tion the neu ral syn ap ses of em bry onic
pi geons.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
I
n the as sess ment of chil dren we con -
sider a myr iad of in flu ences and fac tors
con trib ut ing to what we con sider “the
prob lem” in order to find some so lu tion
or strat egy to solve the prob lem, al le vi ate
the men tal pain of the chil dren and
strengthen their in nate po ten tial for nor -
mal de vel op ment. Very often how ever,
as sess ment fails to be ef fec tive in its pur -
pose be cause we omit a
very im por tant tar get for
as sess ment: our selves.
In as sess ment we usu ally
con sider de vel op men tal life
stages, tasks and needs,
fam ily of or i gin his tory and
dy nam ics, so cial learn ing,
emo tional and cog ni tive fac -
tors, be hav iour pat terns, to
name but a few. We gen er -
ally fol low a very eclec tic
ap proach to as sess ment,
some times with a stron ger
focus on psychodynamic
fac tors, some times so cial fac tors, some -
times en vi ron men tal fac tors, and
of ten times a com bi na tion of all of these.
An eco log i cal sys tems per spec tive sup -
ports such an ap proach, with an em pha sis
on under- stand ing the de gree of fit be -
tween the in di vid ual and the en vi ron ment.
From an eco sys tems per spec tive we look
both at the forest and the trees, to use
this met a phor. We con sider con trib ut ing
fac tors from psy cho log i cal, phys i o log i cal
and so cial per spec tives, but then we also
“zoom out” and con sider the ges talt of
the sit u a tion, the child in en vi ron ment, a
ho lis tic view.
In doing so we tend to con sider our -
selves as ob jec tive ob serv ers, ex perts who
ex am ine the child in in ter ac tion with his or
her en vi ron ment, and who then de vise a
so lu tion for some kind of
prob lem. We don’t often
con sider our selves as part of
the tar get for as sess ment –
part of the en vi ron ment of
the child’s world, part of the
interactional forces, that
both in flu ence and are in flu -
enced by the child as we
ac tively par tic i pate in the
child’s world. We can not be
ob jec tive ob serv ers who as -
sess, only par tic i pant
ob serv ers at best. Al though
this is a term we have be -
come used to, es pe cially in re search
cir cles, it is a bit of a con tra dic tion when
you think about it. How can you re ally be
an ob server when you are a par tic i pant?
Of course there are many ways in which
re search meth od ol ogy ad dresses this di -
lemma, es pe cially the qual i ta tive par a digm,
but it all comes down to the re searcher
(or par tic i pant ob server) at tempt ing to
“step back” and through some pro cess of
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The Assessment of Children
Werner van der Westhuizen