Trust

We've been doing a bit of thinking about trust since having the boys with us. We noticed that there was a lot of frustration between the boys, and with one of the boys he would say "I don't want to" instead of telling us he didn't know how to do something. What we started thinking was that perhaps this had more to do with trust than anything. So rather than going to an adult to resolve something between them they would get frustrated with one another and take things out on one another. I guess if the adults in your life aren't always the same people, or haven't been trustworthy, this is what you're likely to do. So we started talking about trust with the boys. Asking them outright if they would trust us to resolve issues with them if one has done the wrong thing. The result was a whole lot of dobbing about absolutely everything, but this is completely ok. For them to learn they can bring their concerns to us and we'll help to sort them out, or give them advice on how to deal with them, it'll take time. To learn that if they can't do something, they can trust us to ask and we'll help them, that'll take time.

They were only with us for such a short time, but it did give us a bit of a picture of some of the smaller issues we're likely to face, like this one. We wouldn't expect to see the bigger issues in such a short time. It certainly got us looking for what other behaviours might be related to trust rather than something else.