The Care Perspective

After thinking about the Heinz dilemma and what we discussed in class.  One line that really stood out to me was, “Whose rights carry the day?”

Then I got thinking about Carol Gilligan and the Care Perspective.

An ideal world of justice and care for each other, I picture this like a ripple effect starting with individual then onto spouse, children, family, neighbours and continuing on outward until everyone in the whole world was included.  A giant world of compassion, that sounds wonderful! Actually it kind of reminds me of a classroom that is operating in full inclusion and differentiated learning, where no one is left out or behind.

Now let’s try this in a real life situation.  Right now at work I am struggling with a parent that is always late and insists on dropping her children off at the wrong door to come in.  This doesn’t bother me though.  She has four children and is a single mother.  If this makes her life easier I say go for it.  I’ll help her out.  Recently we have had a change in the schools morning routine.  The whole school gathers at the front foyer in the morning and we sing a worship song and say the Lord’s Prayer all together for some fellowship each day.  The mother has reacted to this because now no one is standing at the door and she would have to come to the front door where everyone is standing and they will see that she is late.  She was embarrassed about this and reacted with a couple of outbursts in the hall and verbally attacking myself and other staff members saying we weren’t full filling our jobs and we are neglecting the students. She was also asking if there was any evidence that we were treating her children poorly because they were late.  I had told her before that I would wait at the door until she got to the school and then I would take the children in and get them settled for the day.  I waited for two weeks at the door and she purposely didn’t come until after we were well into the first period of the day.  Then she would come in and disrupt the class.  This story goes even deeper, but my question is…

What does a person do when you are trying to help out another person but they are in trauma?  They can’t see beyond their pain.  Sometimes like in the case of the mother with the four children she had thought that we weren’t being compassionate or acting justly.  How can we as a community support someone who doesn’t see that we are there for them because they can’t see through the difficulties they are going through?  I think that we have to have patience and wait it out until they come around.  That is sometimes easier said than done.

I know by looking at body language, tone, and by how put together this mom is that something else is going on.  When people are in panic mode or think that others can see that they are hiding something they tend to lash out.  Now I am not her, and I can never understand what it is like to be her. (Same planet, different worlds)  As humans sometimes we get worn down when someone else is taking their hurt out on us for an extended period of time.  Then we end up making rash decisions because we end up being hurt as well, instead of being calm and carrying on.  Oh how I wish we lived on the same Carol Gilligan planet and world!   

Image from www.bucketfillers101.com

Well let’s take a step in the right direction.  Let’s start filling each other’s bucket.  What does this mean?  I’ll share with you how I found out about this!  The other day the school Counsellor, who also happens to be my friend, came around to each classroom and taught the students about what it means to fill someone’s bucket. Here's the link to the site that she got the information from. http://www.bucketfillers101.com/index.php    We talked about happiness, being kind to one another, and what some nice words were that we could say to each other and our families.  She also talked about how we all have invisible buckets that need to be filled and how we need to make a conscious effort to not just receive but to also fill.  It was a nice way to let the students know that everyone has this need. I liked this because it was a lesson in what the students can do instead of preaching to them about how to not treat people.