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
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