Episode 3 Avoiding Power Struggles with Richard Tate
Outline
Adolescents often times have difficulties with transitions and change
Importance of adults maintaining their emotional composure with a difficult student
Power struggles and how to avoid them
It is important to make sure that needs are met without jeopardizing safety
Useful data is not always numerical
Use every intervention in the toolbox
The programs of Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee
Remember-positive healthy relationships are the basis for motivating students!
Links
Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee https://www.pcat.org/
Reclaiming Youth Seminars https://reclaimingyouthatrisk.org/reclaiming-youth-seminars/
Transcript
Scott Lee 0:00
Welcome friends and colleagues. Our guest today is Richard Tate, who will be discussing how adults sometimes get into power struggles with children and how to prevent these in the first place. Oftentimes, educators or any adult for that matter will find themselves dealing with a strong willed student, or worse yet dealing with a crisis situation. In the moment, it is not always easy to think clearly and strategically about how best to safely work towards a pro-social result that builds a positive relationship with the student. We'll talk about the nature of these negative conflicts and how they can be resolved positively. Richard currently is Regional Director for the nonprofit prevent child abuse, Tennessee, he has over 20 years of experience in various roles in mental health facilities for children and adolescents. These roles have included directing programs and facilitating staff training and development. He is also a musician. And we'll start out hearing how he made the switch from rock and roll to adolescent treatment. Richard Tate, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Richard Tate 1:09
Thank you glad to be here.
Scott Lee 1:10
So how does a musician end up in this type of work?
Richard Tate 1:14
I mean, throughout my whole life, I've worked in music retail for a really long time. I'm always interacting with folks, a lot of people I come from a large family, I guess it was probably when my daughter started school, I started getting involved doing some volunteer work around that time, I guess a couple years later, I got divorced. And I spent even more time working volunteer school and I became very interested in how events like a divorce affected children and started doing some volunteer work teaching art classes with kids as a means of expressing themselves emotionally. Not too long after that, I went to Dallas with a friend of mine, who was working at Cumberland Hall Psychiatric Hospital as a shift supervisor. And he knew that I was, I got to that point. And I was like, I want to do something more worthwhile than selling people music that I couldn't stand and then playing music for a living is that's a kind of a spotty sort of thing anyway, and haven't had, you know, having kids, it made it much harder for me just like been all that time traveling. So anyway, we were talking, he knew I was looking to do something else simple. And he goes, Well, you know, I said, Man, I think you'd probably really do well with this working with these teams out here at this hospital. And I said, Well, you know, I'll give it a try. I'd be I'd be interested in talking to us. So I went in to talk to the program director at the time. So during the course of the interview, you know, we were we were talking we talked back and forth. And he he knew about the whole music connection. And then he asked what makes you think that you're really cut out for this kind of work? And I said, Well, I've spent my entire life around musicians and working with musicians, and they're basically just overgrown adolescents. And he said, Well, you've got a point, he decided to give me a try. I started off as a as a mental health tech, you know, line staff. And I had a lot of I'd spent 20 years plus in management. And so I took on my first management position there, and then moved up from there into I started off as like a unit coordinator, and then ended up becoming the program manager. And doing as the principal trainer for the for the facility, I did seem to have kind of a knack. And really what I did was, for the most part, I just utilize what I thought were good parenting practices with the kids. So that's what they seem to need.
Scott Lee 3:34
Well, and just so everybody knows in mental health tech is somebody who assists the nurse right in a mental health facility with a lot of times now that would be a nursing assistant,
Richard Tate 3:44
the techs were the ones who spent probably the largest amount of time with the groups of kids, I mean, so you would, you know, you'd be in contact with the patients, they're pretty much throughout your entire shift, you're just kind of there sort of just kind of keeping things sort of supervising, you know, the groups of kids and making sure they're going from one place to the next. Some of the more
Scott Lee 4:02
difficult pieces are though Yeah, position times moving from one place to another. And that in times where a lot of the challenging issues come from.
Richard Tate 4:09
That's true period, transitions, transitions are difficult. And I think that's true for all of us really changing from one thing to the next. But for kids, and especially kids who have not had very stable or well structured environments, transitions can be very unsettling and very scary. But my experience is that humans in general just don't do well with sudden change.
Scott Lee 4:32
And it's interesting, I think you almost have answered to make sure we talk about, you know, you've spent much of your career training people to work with troubled or difficult children and adolescents about to ask you, what are some things that you've learned? Obviously, transition is probably difficult, but are there other things?
Richard Tate 4:50
Oh, yeah, I think the first thing is you have to just to work hard to remain objective and not to get caught up and take things personally. Kids are having crisis moment or they're in a crisis or when anybody's in a crisis, it's really about what's going on with them. It's not about you, even though you may be the target, because you're convenient, you know, you're there. If you're especially if you're in a position of authority, then you make yourself an even bigger target, because they're going to kind of gravitate towards that. I think that having empathy and trying to develop a sense of empathy is crucial. I believe that it's particularly important to stay calm. I can't overemphasize that enough. I mean, what been a lot of time trying to convince other adults that when working with kids, and the kids start become, you know, started getting agitated, do they start approaching a crisis moment, if you start getting agitated, too, then there's nobody there to kind of be in control. And I don't mean that like, you know, in charge so much as it's easy for things to get out of hand. Because the typical pattern for adults and teenagers in conflict with each other or adults in children is it becomes an issue about who's in charge and who's in control.
Scott Lee 5:59
And that's one of the things that I wanted to be sure and talk about. Most of the people who are listening to this podcast are teachers or people who work in schools, I saw something in an article just a few weeks ago, about avoiding and dealing with power struggles, right? You are the first person I thought of because you spent a lot of time working with people, all levels, helping them to understand how to avoid power struggles, and how to get out of power struggles. Can you tell us a little bit about what a power struggle looks like? And then we'll talk about how to avoid them or how to extricate them? Well,
Richard Tate 6:37
I mean, the typical power struggle kind of basically revolves around Oh, yes, you will. Oh, no, I won't, oh, yes, you will. No, I won't, I don't have to, Yes, you do. That kind of thing. It's often done. It's not like a malicious thing. But it's it done, because it's kind of what they've seen modeled for themselves. It's that thing about I'm older than you. So naturally, you should bend to my will, you should do what I tell you to do. They've told me I'm in charge, they've told me I'm in charge, I don't want you I don't want to get in trouble. I'm trying to follow the rules and stuff like that. So kind of basically comes down to there's the letter of the law, there's the spirit of the law. And I think the spirit of the law is always about achieving some sort of justice. And so that's not always done by black and white to the letter. So when somebody is in conflict, when they're in crisis, it's an emotional sort of state, here's a good way to get into one is somebody who's in a very highly emotional state. So what you're going to do is you're going to step in, and you start trying to be very logical, and very cold and very calculating, and not really going to speak to somebody who's in a highly emotional state. I think that the key for me, was it very early on, I decided that the best way for me to help the kids was to really kind of think of myself as being in service to them. The most important part was not to get them everything they wanted, but to help them get the things that they needed. My line was an I tried to get others to kind of follow this lead, which is when somebody was starting to approach, you know, that point where they were kind of coming unglued, or things were really the voices are starting to get raised. It's like okay, I hear
Scott Lee 8:13
you're talking about the adult in the situation. Oh,
Richard Tate 8:15
yeah, yeah. Yeah, adult, yeah, it's just, you know, I hear you and I can tell that something is bothering you. And I can see that you're troubled by something, what do you need from me? How can I help you? What can I do to help the adult approaching a child, you have to kind of put that I'm in charge thing kind of way. Because there might be extreme cases where if someone is posing a real physical threat to someone else, that you know, you might have to step into more, a more restrictive manner,
Scott Lee 8:44
and you're talking about a crisis situation, which might lead to a physical restraint. And oftentimes, that's not necessary. And that should be the very
Richard Tate 8:54
Most often that's not necessary. I taught people how to do them. But I also advocated for doing them only in the rarest of cases, while I was probably witness to more restraints than anybody else in the facility, because I would often get called to come in observe to make sure things would be done. I probably did view or initiated viewer than anybody else, because I think there's always one more thing you can try before we put our hands on somebody because that is the most restrictive and the most, that's when things can really get dangerous. Just trying to step back and listen and observe. And I say step back. And that's another thing is to you know, is to keep your distance when a child is upset. Now you don't know where they came from, and you don't know what circumstances they live in. And you don't know whether there's physical abuse or sexual abuse or what else may be going on at
Scott Lee 9:42
home. And they're probably a lot of the time you're already bigger than they are.
Richard Tate 9:45
Oh, yeah, yeah. And so you've got a lot of kids who are having someone strike them or strike at them is not that rare, and so they're kind of ready and so they go into what we would all do with the gun defend themselves. I found that Whenever there were physical altercations, and I think the research backs me up about 70 75% of the time, it's because of something that person who's trying to intervene that they do wrong. It's not about the kid, it's somebody goes in and in effect basically throws gasoline on the fire. Instead of calming things down, they just help it flare up.
Scott Lee 10:19
What are some tips? I know one thing, not only I've heard you say over the time, but I've heard a lot of people in similar situations say is as the adult, the first thing you need to do is lower your voice, oh, yeah, quieter, can you talk a little bit about that, or a couple of other
Richard Tate 10:37
ideas that go in, in the situation, like we're talking about, I mean, I would advocate, you know, the first thing you do is you step back a little bit, you make sure you're out of arm's reach, if you can't touch them, they can't touch you, if you don't want to get kicked or hit or whatever, then the easiest thing to do is just stay out far enough away where you can't be stay out of their personal space, again, because you have no idea what's going on in this kid or in their lives at home. So they may be proud to re for that. So you maintain distance, and lower your voice, lower your tone, lower your volume, it's basically if you've got somebody and you're yelling at Yeah, and you just instead of trying to match their volume, which is what we normally do, or getting louder than they do. Well, if that's the case, then pretty soon everybody is screaming, and nobody can hear anything, the best thing to do is to start lowering the volume, every voice, because they're gonna see your see your mouth moving. They want to know what it is you're saying. If they're going to do that, then what do they have to do? They have to lower their volume. So I think the whole situation, what you're trying to do is you're kind of trying to reduce the temperature, trying to bring things down a little bit, and then staying calm. And you have to be very careful about your facial expressions, because kids read stuff
Scott Lee 11:44
in misread stuff.
Richard Tate 11:45
Oh, and misread stuff. Well, yeah, yeah. So this is a kid who's been in situations before where people are threatening or actually violent towards them, or whatever. I mean, you know, they've seen the mean face, they've seen the Mad face, they've seen the angry face. And so if they see that on you, then that's a big red flag, I would always tell people, and sometimes I have to explain to them what I meant by poker face, which is just try not to register shock or dismay, or, or anything like that. And yes, you know, I'm here, I'm here to listen to you tell me, and I'm not judging what you got. And that's another big thing, which is not to challenge them when they're telling you what happened. And you may know, in the back of your mind, okay, well, this may not be fact, for fact, exactly what happened. But they're telling you what they saw. They're telling you what they heard, they're telling you what they felt, you're getting their perspective, and that's their truth. And that's where you have to, that's where you have to go. That's where you have to start from,
Scott Lee 12:34
you know, because it is much easier on down the line, right? When they're calm, right to say, Okay, I know, this is what you said, and what you may have perceived. And I think probably the truth is something else.
Richard Tate 12:48
It's somewhere in between, I mean, I you know, I would always tell three sides to every story. There's yours, there's mine, and there's the cold, hard truth. That's where things frequently fall is somewhere in between. And so you would get some body who they felt like okay, Mister Mister so and so he said something to me. And he was insulting me. Well, what do you know, what exactly did they say? Okay, well, maybe I don't hear the insult. But that doesn't mean that the child doesn't, you know, and that they took it as an insult, or they took it as inflammatory in some way. So you just have to go with, again, with empathy, which I can see where that might be a problem. You know, I hear you, I hear you that it bothered you. Let's talk more about that is that whatever the issue that was being talked about was, it was not at all what the issue actually was. I think anybody who has a child of their own or especially a teenager knows, has has experienced that themselves come in, and you can tell they're not, you know, not in a great mood, something wrong. No, everything's okay. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. And then later on, you've got the meltdown. And then it's the meltdown because you buttered my toast on the wrong side, or I don't like that kind of peanut butter. I mean, anything. And as adults, we still do that. Oh, yeah,
Scott Lee 13:55
the difference is, most of the time most of us have learned when to catch ourselves doing it. And okay, you know, we don't realize that adolescents and children especially still have to learn that skill. Yeah, we just take for granted.
Richard Tate 14:08
One of the first things I learned in my mental health career, and this was working in groups with kids, you know, every day you'd go in, and you'd start off the day. And you'd ask them, What space are you in, and when it was red, yellow, and green, green, man, everything's cool. I feel great. I'm alright, I'm ready to go. Yellow is my roommates getting on my nerves. I'm not in the best space, but I can function. But there is something kind of going on. And then the last was one, I'm going to read space, which means I'm already angry, I'm mad. I'm primed and ready to go. And it was frequently frustrating, because I would I would get these reports where the staff would take notes, and they would record this on each kid. Well, you've got two kids were in red, they're sitting next to each other. And later on, people are asking, Well, how can these kids got into a fight? Well, my question would be, why were they together in the first place? I mean, they told you they were in a bad space. So why would you ignore that? I think Think that kids often give us warning signs that may not be as clear as that. But they do. Especially if you're working in a classroom, I have six teachers in my immediate family. So I'm very familiar with the life of a teacher, you know, you got 20-25 kids in the room, and you've got all this stuff going on normal for people to go watch. I'll deal with this later. And that's a terrible mistake. Because when you put stuff off, all it does is it grows, it gets bigger. Now you're getting closer and closer, just kind of edge and up to the point where somebody's going to explode. And it's so much easier to deal with it at the beginning. Seems like something's bothering you. Or seems like you're maybe upset about something you want to talk to me about you and tell me about it. Or even better yet, and this is something I still work doing asis trainings for different schools and teachers and administrators are really advocate the practice of being in your door at the beginning of every day and saying hello to everybody as they come in and calling them by their name and looking them in their eye. And if you're dealing with small children, then you sit in a short chair, or you sit on the ground or whatever, where they're looking at you and not having to look up at you. But you're just kind of acknowledging them.
Scott Lee 16:08
I see you and that is teacher language that is data collection, and very important data where there may not be a number associated with it, knowing what's going on right now. Yeah, important data to collect. You're not just doing it to be nice. Oh, yeah, you are. But it's data collection. Yeah, yeah. It's saying the red, green and
Richard Tate 16:27
yellow spaces. Yeah. Well, when I became acquainted with the Reclaiming International, and the Circle of Courage that we use as a basis for our programming, eventually there, which was a much more kid friendly, it all focused on relationships, building relationships, because that's the only way you're going to be able to reach them or to have any real influence is they have to care what you think in the first place. And you're not going to get that by trying to be an authoritarian sheriff being the marshal or whatever you can. So that's it. But that's a simple way that greeting, that's a simple, I see you, I acknowledge you, and you're somebody important enough for me to say hello to I mean, you've seen you know, these these videos about where teachers have, they've come up with a different handshake for every kid or some something, you know, a nickname, whatever it may be making it more making a personal connection. And then when they're making what they referred to as bids for your attention, trying to get your attention, acknowledge it, that may be the most common mistake is trying to ignore something that's going on, because I just don't have time for that right now. And I've got other more important things, well, your other more important things are become a lot less important. When you've got somebody having a total meltdown,
Scott Lee 17:37
oftentimes, even saying something quick, I see that you need x, I have to do why I will get to x in 10 minutes, but that quick acknowledgement fast and go
Richard Tate 17:49
as long as you follow as long as because that's the thing is you adults, or have a bad habit of saying I'll do this, or I'll do that I'll take kids, and then it just kind of slips your mind or it's not as important or they'll think well, they'll the kids will forget or whatever. Now they don't get you know, they're listening to you. You know, I always tried to stress to the folks that I've worked with and the people I've trained is that kids that we would see at the hospital, they'd already had a lifetime of having people lie to them, adults lying to them or not being honest with them. So the last thing we need to do is to provide them with more adult role models in that particular vein, if I say I want to do something, I want to do it if I don't think I can do it, I want to have to tell him I don't think I can do that. You know and there were a lot of times when we would have someone there might be a child who was already in crisis, very agitated, and you ask him the question, okay, so I can see you're very upset, what is it you need you want however you frame it, and then they give you an answer. And my answer would usually be okay, well, I want to help you get that and I will help you do this. If it you know, as long as it was something within reason or some seem legitimate but didn't tell him Okay, I'm going to help you. But before I can do that, a primary duty is to make sure that you and everybody else around you is safe. What I'm going to need for you to do is to help me get to that point count to 10 Count 20 you know, whatever it might work, how can I help you walk this off whatever to de escalate to a point where Okay, now I can leave you here with somebody else and I can go when I can ask the nurse Can you have this can you have it whatever so you know you make them part of the process. So you're putting in some accountability and you have the power here you know I'm going to help you with this but I can't help you with this as long as I have to sit here to watch you to make sure you're not going to hurt yourself or somebody else or you're not going to disrupt the entire classroom or whatever maybe so you but you have to follow through you have to say what you mean mean what you say and then do and then do it and then do it. Yeah.
Scott Lee 19:37
So tell us a little bit about your work here at Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee.
Richard Tate 19:42
Okay, well, we have two different programs. One of them is Healthy Families Tennessee, which is a program where we have what we call home visitors that act really as parent coaches can start with the working with the family. As soon as mom finds out she's pregnant, we would send someone to visit every couple of weeks. Until the baby is born, then for the first six months, they would go to the home once a week, we work on a broad range of different development pieces, brain development in particular, especially in the early years physical development, character development, relationship communications, and we really focus in on the parents for the benefit of the children. So we're trying to train them to have better parenting skills, and also to make sure that the parents have the resources and the support that they need, because families who are in real stress with adults that are very stressed, so we try to help them with resource linkage in those cases, because we feel like if, you know, we know that a lot of the parents that we work with, there's a lot of folks out there with a scores, adverse childhood experiences, and we know that a lot of the people that come to us have those and have higher than average scores. So that means that maybe they didn't have the best childhood themselves didn't have the best role models, regardless of
Scott Lee 20:51
long term health problems of people. Oh, yeah, a scores is huge. Oh, yeah.
Richard Tate 20:56
So we're trying to help parents create a safe, stable and nurturing environment for the child, I've got four kids my own, I've known a lot of parents worked with a lot of parents who want to do the right thing, but don't always have the best idea of how to go about doing them. And we talked about mistakes you can make, and I still make those mistakes. Sometimes, I mean, I've been doing this for a long time, and it's parenting is never going to be an easy proposition. And when you think about just how fragile someone's personality, psyche, whatever you want to call it can be you have to be really mindful of what you're doing. And that means for one thing, when you miss teachers, or anybody, when you make a mistake, you really need to be able to apologize for it, you need to be able to tell the child, your child, anybody's child, well, you know what I messed up, and I'm sorry, and I'm, we're gonna do what we can to fix this. And so to acknowledge your mistakes and role model that behavior for kids, so we, we have healthy families, Tennessee, and that's a program that can last from mom finds out she's pregnant calls, and we got somebody up two weeks later. So she times she's four months pregnant, five months pregnant, we might be working with him up until the child turns five or enters school atmosphere, which could be pre-K, generally, because we do rely a lot on you talked about data, we're an evidence based home visiting program to be evidence based, you have to have I think it's a minimum of three years of data across a broad range of areas. So we do a lot of observation home visitors go in, and they'll talk to mom and or dad about a particular concept. And then they just kind of sit back and watch how the parent carries that out. When it gives them feedback, how quickly do they respond to the child when it cries, how many parent-child interactions are happening, we get some great results. I mean, we really do it great to see the kids thriving. It's also great to see the parents sort of achieving things that they might have really struggled with or might not have been able to achieve otherwise teaching them how to set good goals for themselves and not goals that are so in such big chunk that they you know, there's really no way it becomes overwhelming, you got to break it down into steps. We have nurturing parenting, which is an eight week in home parenting class. So instead of a one size fits all sort of parenting group, we send someone in, they do a detailed assessment of what's going on with your family, and what you feel your needs are as far as your parenting skills are concerned. And then we work with you on those specific it could be communication skills, or it could be relationships, or it could be positive disciplinary procedures, different things like that. So also operate the statewide domestic violence hotline. So we're involved in education, support for families, we're involved in trying to advocate for kids. And then we do a lot of aces education. In particular. That's that's one thing I do a lot of which is go around to different organizations and different groups and like, say have the basics of aces education. I'm part of the early matters coalition. And then we have a workgroup and I'm the co-lead of called ACES workshop planning workgroup. That's our particular thing is trying to make sure and the number one priority for us was trying to get to teachers because they spend so much time with our kids again, being related to six teachers had no I know it can be a struggle. I know it's hard. I admire anybody who enters that profession and so we want to give them whatever kind of support we can
Scott Lee 24:14
once again want thank you for your time today, Richard and Prevent Child Abuse. Tennessee is a nonprofit. We will have a link on our website for anybody who would like to find out more information or support your work once again. Thank you for your time.
Richard Tate 24:29
Thanks for having me.
Scott Lee 24:31
This has been episode number three. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee who retains copyright. We encourage diverse opinions, however, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer, partners or underwriters. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Transcripts are available in the week following the podcast publication at our website thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Underwriting and sponsorship opportunities or other inquiries may also be made at our website thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Please follow The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast on twitter @drrscottlee.
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