How group members care
for each other, including me
It is
strange how time flies past when my work with adults begins.
A
three-week block with children appears to me to last at least twice as long as
a three-week block with adults. I enjoy both but I wish that the work with
adults would last just a little bit longer. No sooner has the camaraderie
picked up again and it the time is over again for a while
I love
to work with my colleague with the little children who attend our sessions for
three weeks at a time, to meet the older children who attend sessions each
afternoon after school, and to help them with their lives in mainstream
schools, but my favourite work of all is with the adults. I especially enjoy the work with the stroke
group, although I now have another favourite string to my bow, with the new
group called Fit and Active at an Older-Age.
I
wonder whether it is because we do not see each other regularly each week that
this special camaraderie has developed. I expect that all group members, all in
their own special way and for very personal reasons, look forward as much as I
do to our intermittent blocks working together.
Taking responsibility
The
stroke group has been established since 2002 and has a hard core of members, with
one of them still with us from the very beginning. They are all active and it
is their active work that often attracts new members who they then encourage and
help integrate into the group. They all feel responsible for each other’s full
participation and the development of everybody’s skills, including social
skills.
A new group member, a
new colleague...
...well sort of
I am
really lucky to have a former colleague working with me once again after a five
year break in the adults’ groups. I just love having him there; he brings a
relaxed atmosphere in the group with him. We had worked together for years
previously and developed a wonderful working relationship. We do not really
have to discuss much as we work, we just know
what the other one is doing, and we both know what all the clients are doing
and need. We swap ideas and help each other, and the clients, carry them through
in action.
Our
clients love this atmosphere too as they know that things will run smoothly
throughout the sessions.
Personality traits
Of course
there are always clients who prefer to be with one conductor or another. We
will all have experienced that in our lives, and not only with children. Adults
often show preferences too. It could be a personality thing. It could be how we
help, how we touch people, how we speak to them or our actual physical strength.
The big
chap in the group feels safer when walking through the ladder in the middle of
the room with my male colleague beside him. I always put the ladder beside the
parallel bars when I work with him alone so he feels just as safe, he walks in
the direction so he can grab the bars if necessary.
Now that I have a colleague
again who is stronger than me we all prefer it that he walks alongside the
ladder with the clients.
One
lady may prefer the fine-tuned finger-tip help of a quiet experienced conductor,
while other clients might prefer the smiley personality of another, but perhaps
less experienced, conductor.
We switch
and swap so that no one gets too attached and everyone gains lots of
experience, conductors and clients alike.
I like
working with all these people, the conductors and the clients, and I love to
observe how we all learn and progress, and how it all comes together like cogs
in a well oiled piece of machinery.
Oiling cogs
Oiling
the cogs takes place at the hands of all members of the team and last week it
was one of the old-time clients who got on with some very necessary and quite
tricky oiling.
There
is a newish member in the group. He lives in a sheltered community, in a care
home, whereas the rest of the group live at home with their families. He has
lived in the care home for over ten years, since suffering a stroke when he was
in his late thirties. Two other group members
are in their sixties, one has children and lots of grand-children and has an
active social life, and the other enjoys travelling with her retired husband
and participating in musical and carnival events with him. A younger member of
the group has a young family, one of the children born since he suffered the
stroke. All these factors are important in the changes and transformations that
take place in these clients’ lives, in their personalities and relationships
with others, both before they took part in conductive living and since.
Their
ability to communicate and the expectations put upon them from others to
participate in life differ, and of course change as their various social and
physical skills develop.
It was
in this context that last week I experienced something that made me smile
inside.
One of
the group who ten years ago could not string more than two words together in
her native tongue (in English, a foreign language, it was a little bit easier)
mentioned to the newest group member, the one who lives in the care community,
that he did not smile very much in fact hardly at all. I remember her telling
me the story years ago about when the smile came back into her life, when she realised that it had been missing and decided to
live each day as it came, and to the full. She put a smile back in her soul
with help from her husband.
She
asked this man why he did not smile. He was forthright, explaining that he had consciously
given it up years before, directly after he had suffered a stroke, at the time
when the smile seemed to disappear from his life. The lady explained how
important it had been for her to be influenced by her husband’s philosophy in
life of finding a way to do their best, to put on a cheery smile as often as
possible, and to make the most of their new lifestyle. The rest of the group, those
with families at home, added their nods of agreement.
In the
event, during that day’s session they all received smiles on more than one
occasion from the younger man. He is the
one member of the group who does not live with his family and therefore does
not have people rooting for him in quite the same loving way as the others do.
He has no wife or children or grandchildren beside him, motivating and
encouraging him constantly to reach new goals or to smile. This conductive
group are his motivating force and it is they who got him to smile again.
During
the three hours twice weekly that this group is together they often interact
with each other like a family unit, each with their own jobs to do, their own
supporting roles to play, their own acts of encouragement, their own highs and
lows, just as it is within a family. And it usually all goes on without words,
without spoken agreements, in much the same way actually as the work with my
new-but-old colleague.
Finding the words in a
difficult situation
As the
session progressed on the day in question the older lady, who can now string
together long sentences and hold interesting conversations, explained her more
complicated thoughts about what she thought was happening in the group, and she
soon became much bolder in her observations. I was amazed at her ever developing
ability to express herself. She was able to translate her thoughts into words
and directed them towards the newer group member, with the rest of the group
spontaneously offering in turn their support to both of them. I was actually
quite shocked by what I heard – but at the same time very moved.
More than a client
It was
such a strange situation for me to be in. I was receiving the kind of support
from a client that I would normally expect from a fellow conductor.
‘Why do
you only complain about your aches and pains and your fears when Susie is
standing beside you, and not when a male conductor is there?’ asked the lady.
For
myself, I did not at first know what to say, but I soon pulled myself together
and thanked the lady for thinking about this and being brave enough to ask. I
had actually been struggling to find a balance between encouraging this client
to be active and try new things and actually moving away from him and giving
him a break when he became quite tetchy. The man who had been asked the
question took a bit longer to react, he too I think was shocked and needed time
to reflect on what was going on.
The other group members had time to pass their
own remarks before he eventually said that it is because I am small and he is
more fearful when I am there with him. The lady replied that there was also a
very tall and strong young man (not a conductor) who was helping him and that
she suspected it was nothing to do with that at all. We all agreed that she was
probably right and the atmosphere improved enormously.
Time to question the
word “client”
I have
happily used the word client for a long time, I do not like the word participate.
As my clients and their groups develop so do our relationships with each other
and the word client no longer seems enough.
The
members of the group are there alongside me not as fellow conductors but as
fellow human beings engaged upon common tasks.
I am no
spring chicken but I am younger and less worldly than some of my adult
“clients”.
As they
begin to master their motor disorders and the social disruptions that these
cause then these mature people emerge again in their own right and we really
begin to work as a “team” developing alongside each other, every one of us with
a contribution to make.
Acknowledgements
One of the clients who attends this group,
one of its founding members, has long since come to the conclusion that it is
time to question the words that we use to describe the people we work with.
She addressed this in the book that she
wrote, “It came like a bolt from the blue”,
a book in which she describes the establishment of her conductive lifestyle.
Having thanked several people for the roles
that they play in her life she wrote –
“I also wish to say thank
you to conductor Susie Mallett. With her I have learnt how to be happy again
and how to do things. In the conductive group I have become an active person
again (not seen as an object). Susie has become a very close friend to me.”
Notes
It came like a bolt from
the blue, A post-stroke story in words and pictures by Waltraud Heußinger – edited and published by Susie Mallett,
Conductor, Nürnberg
