What Do We Bring Into The Relationship?

Why understanding our own responses may be just as important as understanding those of the young person in front of us.

When something isn't working for a child or young person, our attention quite naturally turns towards them. What's happening? Why are they responding like this? What are they feeling? What does their behaviour mean? What support might they need?

These are important questions. Curiosity about a young person's experience should sit at the heart of good relational practice. But there is another question that perhaps receives less attention: What am I bringing into this relationship?

Whether we're a parent, carer, teacher, support worker, therapist or another significant adult, we don't enter our interactions with children and young people as neutral observers. We bring ourselves: our experiences, expectations, values, pressures, assumptions and emotional responses. Sometimes we even bring what happened five minutes before we walked into the room. All of those things have the potential to influence what happens next.

Imagine a young person who becomes quiet and refuses to answer. One adult might interpret that silence as disrespect. Another might see defiance. Someone else might wonder whether the young person feels overwhelmed, while another may consider whether enough trust has developed for them to feel able to speak.

The behaviour hasn't changed. The adult interpretation has.

And interpretation matters, because what we believe is happening can shape how we respond. If I believe a young person is deliberately challenging me, I may become firmer or more directive. If I'm curious about whether they're overwhelmed, frightened or uncertain, I may respond very differently.

Neither interpretation is automatically correct. That's the point. There is often a space between what happens and what we decide it means, and curiosity allows us to stay in that space for a little longer.

We talk frequently about emotional regulation in children and young people. We encourage them to recognise feelings, understand triggers, communicate needs, manage responses and reflect on behaviour. These are all useful developmental skills. But adults have emotional responses too.

We become tired. We experience stress. Certain behaviours irritate us more than others. Some situations make us anxious. We have histories that influence how we interpret relationships, authority, conflict, success, failure and behaviour. And our capacity isn't identical every day. Something we respond to calmly on Tuesday may test every ounce of our patience on Friday afternoon.

That doesn't make us poor parents or ineffective professionals. It makes us human. But recognising our own emotional state matters because our internal experience enters the relationship whether we acknowledge it or not.

The same is true of communication. It's tempting to think about communication difficulties as belonging to one person: They won't talk. They don't listen. They shut down. They become defensive.

But communication doesn't happen in isolation. It happens between people.

The questions we ask, our tone, timing, expression, body language and expectations all become part of the interaction. Consider the difference between “Why did you do that?” and “Can you help me understand what happened?” Both might be attempts to discover exactly the same information, but they don't necessarily feel the same to the person being asked.

A young person who anticipates judgement, criticism or consequences may protect themselves before the conversation has really begun. That doesn't mean adults need to carefully script every interaction or avoid necessary boundaries and difficult conversations. It simply means recognising that how we approach a conversation can influence what becomes possible within it.

Stress also doesn't remain neatly outside our relationships. When life feels manageable, we may have more room for patience, curiosity and perspective. When we're stretched ourselves, that room can become considerably smaller.

And those pressures aren't simply personal. A parent may be balancing work, finances, relationships, caring responsibilities and exhaustion. A teacher may be managing an entire classroom alongside workload and organisational demands. A practitioner may be carrying a significant caseload while navigating systems that leave too little time for meaningful relational work.

Context matters for adults just as much as it matters for young people.

Perhaps that's particularly important when we talk about relational practice. We can't continually ask adults to respond calmly, patiently and thoughtfully without also recognising the environments in which we're asking them to do so.

There is, however, a risk when talking about adult influence that reflection becomes another form of blame, particularly for parents. If only I had responded differently. Perhaps I've caused this. I should have handled that better.

That's not what reflective relational practice means to me.

We aren't responsible for every emotion, behaviour or outcome experienced by another person. Reflection shouldn't require us to scrutinise every interaction searching for what we did wrong. Perhaps the more useful question isn't “What am I doing wrong?” but “What might I be influencing here?”

That creates a very different starting point.

Influence gives us somewhere to work. We may not be able to change the situation. We cannot control another person's response. We can't undo what has already happened. But sometimes we can change what we bring to the next interaction.

And perhaps this is ultimately what I've come to understand differently over the years.

Supporting children and young people isn't only about becoming skilled at understanding them. It's also about continuing to understand ourselves in relationship with them.

What happens to my curiosity when I'm stressed? Which behaviours provoke a particularly strong response in me? What assumptions do I make quickly? Am I listening to understand, or listening while preparing my answer? What happens inside me when a young person disagrees? Can I recognise when my approach isn't working? And can I change it without experiencing that as a loss of authority or expertise?

Those aren't questions we answer once. They're part of remaining reflective throughout our relationships and professional practice.

Every interaction contains more than one perspective, more than one emotional state and more than one set of experiences. A child or young person brings their world into the relationship.

And so do we.

Perhaps understanding that is one of the most important places relational practice can begin.

Karen Smith
The Shift Space