#56: Reclaimed Belonging, with Richard Rollinson

A child disappears into the underside of a foam settee, furious when the adults cannot find her. Another child “loses” Super Ted again and again, and what looks like chaos turns into a quiet test: will you come looking, will you bring me back, will I still belong?

I sit down for the second instalment of my recent conversation with Richard Rollinson, much-loved elder of the Mulberry Bush therapeutic community, to unpack what belonging really means in out-of-home care and therapeutic residential care. We talk about how the stories we tell children about their parents can either stabilise them or split them apart, and why it matters to honour birth family without denying harm. Richard shares a practical reframe for the child who says “my mother doesn’t love me”, and we tease out the difference between making a necessary judgement and being judgemental.

From Kryptonite and the fear of being human to Santa versus Satan and the trap of perfection, we explore how young people get stuck in all-or-nothing thinking, and how adults can offer a “common garden” alternative: ordinary, mixed, and survivable. We also tackle a bigger question in residential care policy: the drift towards one-or-two child homes and what we risk losing when we move away from therapeutic communities and the power of the group.

If you care about trauma-informed practice, belonging, life story meaning, and better care for children and young people, press play. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Richard’s Bio

Richard has a long association with Residential Therapeutic Communities, having worked at the Mulberry Bush School for well over 20 years and where, from 1991 to 2001, he was its Director. He was also Director, Children and Young People, at the Peper Harow Foundation, from 2001 to 2005. 

Richard qualified as a Social Worker with an MSc from Oxford University in 1983, following the then Part 1 training in Child Psychotherapy at the Tavistock Centre. In 2005 he completed the Ashridge MA and training in Organisational Consulting. He has been Chairman of the Charterhouse Group of Therapeutic Communities and for many years the Chairman of the Care Leavers’ Foundation. In 2014 he became Chair of Trustees at the Mulberry Bush School, only recently stepping down from that position, while remaining a Trustee with a special brief for the links and development of the contacts with and participation of former pupils. He has published numerous articles and continues to lecture widely across the UK and Europe.

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Disclaimer:

Disclaimer: Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce. Finally, all references to case examples are anonymised to the extent that the actual case could not be identified, or are fictional but based on real-life examples for illustrative purposes, or have client consent to talk about in an educative context.

Transcript

Lost And Reclaimed, A Theme

Richard 0:00

It was our family story of a child being lost and reclaimed. Reclaimed. The lived experience of many children and young people who have gone through all that was feeling lost and never being reclaimed. It took hard work sometimes to remember what might be going on when children are doing things that seem crazy. One of the abilities that the Marberry Bush has developed and maintained over the years is bringing child and families back together. And on those occasions where it can't be the natural family, it is a supportive integration with a substitute family that has meaning and that doesn't disavow the birth parent, doesn't disavow it. But it is a judgment that we're seeking, not to be judgmental. A judgment. It's about what brings us to this point and how can we manage a transition to, if you would, a safer haven, without the denigration. And I think actually community living can incorporate not family but familial dimensions to it. And and they work.

Welcome And Country Acknowledgement

Colby 1:36

Hello and welcome to the Secure Start podcast and the second instalment of my conversation with much-loved Mulberry Bush elder Richard Rollinson. Before we get into the conversation, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands I come to you from, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture, and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. I do hope you'll enjoy watching and listening to this conversation as much as I did having it.

Super Ted And The Work Of Finding

Richard 2:24

Okay. This is a trio. Stupid Ted. This is a set T. I don't know where the softbit has gone to it. But I'll start here with police officer Maurice Liebowitz, who oh sorry.

Colby 2:42

Yeah.

Richard 2:43

Who who was the traffic patrolman in our city back in New York? Who went to school with my dad and knew him, and Moish, his name was. It's the Americanization of the Yiddish Musha, but uh and we called them Mush instead. And um day when I was at most three, we went to a picnic with a group that my father and uh Mush were there, you know, were there together, and I wandered off. And I was wandering. And now the important thing is I remember this very, very clearly. Mush turns up on his beautiful, beautiful motorcycle, and he says, with a face like that, you can only belong to one person. Climb up here. And he put me on the front of his motorcycle and sort of peddled me across to my dad and said, Jackie, I think this one's yours. And you know, they they thanked him. Then they would tell me, Oh, you got yourself lost, you got yourself lost. You know, you I thought even at that age, I was thinking, I didn't get lost, you lost me. And the reason I remember the story is not because I have a clear memory of it actually happening, it was our family story of a child being lost and reclaimed. Reclaimed. And it was told, you know, quite, you know, not every week or every you know, uh every six, eight months, something would come up. And I can remember it because the family memory was of being lost and being reclaimed. And that's quite important because I think again, the link to our work, as I'll say, with these things, is the lived experience of many children and young people who have gone through all that was feeling lost and never being reclaimed. So super Ted. This was uh we often would find an object for Mowbray Bush children that had a significance to them. And there were these super Ted stories before there were cartoons, and I would read them to Luke and he really, really liked them. And I saw this Super Ted somewhere and I got it for him, you know, early in the 1980s. And um he had it all his time and he left. He came back to visit quite some years later, and he brought this and he said, Richard, I want you to have it. You gave this to me, and I want you to have it now. And um what he did after I gave it to him was I had to spend a lot of time finding it because Luke would lose it. Super Ted was lost. And you know, sometimes it was easy to find it. There was one occasion where I looked everywhere, up and down, inside, outside, late into the night, because I I had to give it to him at bedtime. And I said, Look, Luke, I I just I just can't find it. I'm really sorry. Uh and I know you always have it. I said, Look, the only thing I'm gonna do is here, take my watch, have it in bed with you overnight, and then I'll come at around six o'clock in the morning, and we'll go downstairs tiptoe and look for it, which is what we did. And he gave me my watch back and we went looking around, and I I was just about to give up. But I think he rather steered me in a direction. I suddenly thought, ah, above this cupboard we have a a space where we put the suitcases for the children, you know, in between times of going home and stuff. I said, Oh, I think I'll just look up here. And I sort of in those days I could sort of jump up and pull myself up. And I went off, and right at the very back was Super Ted. You know, Luke's looking, how did it get there? Oh but so so I I brought it back to him. But there was this thing about something important being lost and having to be found and reclaimed, reaffirmed belonging. And actually, I think that was the last time he ever threw it away, but it was my job. He didn't get rid of it, it was lost, and I had to find it, reclaim it for him, and reunite it with him, and it and it's just so significant. And then a number of years later, sorry, this is the object, it's a settee. And uh Sherry was someone who would hide herself and one of the grown-ups, Marguerite, always had to go look for her. And uh she would hide herself, she was really good at it, round the site, inside, outside somewhere, and she was a child who wouldn't run off, she was much too frightened, but within the safe space of the bush environment, she hide herself, and uh you know, Margaret would find her. But on this one occasion, she came to me at around ten in the morning, and she said, Richard, I I have been looking for Shireen since oh sorry, Sherry, since 8 30 this morning and I can't find her. And in those days, if a child was missing from care for an hour, you ought to report it to the police. Don't worry, I took care of that. But um anyway, I said, well, God, she can't be and we're we're standing, we're standing in one of the common rooms of the of the houses or and uh we're talking about it, and she says, I just don't know where we're looking for. I I I've tried everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Suddenly, erupting up from a settee which was wasn't wooden, Tom Sherry, you fucking bass, you didn't f you was furious that Marguerite couldn't find her. And you know what she'd done? She must have taken days and days. It was one of those foam setteees. She hollowed out the whole bottom of it. I don't know what she did with the bits, so she could hide under it with the cushions on top of her. I mean, you know, it took a real lot of work. No wonder Margaret couldn't find her. And but she was furious that Marguerite hadn't been able to find her. She should have known that she'd do that. Look, she calmed her and you know, they they they they were reconciled after about five minutes, but it was this intense fury of not being reclaimed when lost. Because it wasn't the child, it wasn't her fault she was lost. It was a fault, it was the responsibility of the adult and then the fault of the adult if they weren't found and reclaimed. So you know, you have these very powerful, powerful dynamics going on where at the base of it is not feeling found, reclaimed, owned, if you would, in that healthy sense of the word. And you know, we it took hard work sometimes to remember what might be going on when children are doing things that seem crazy.

Belonging Without Erasing Birth Family

Colby 11:24

Yeah. So belonging is is very much a part of the conversation, isn't it? Um more and more so, I think. Um again, um, I'm aware of some people who talk a lot about the role of belonging, and some of my guests have have spoken about including in uh in residential in a residential care environment, therapeutic residential care environment, talk about the importance of belonging to a service, if you like. Not in a you know, in the sense of this the these are my people. This is this is where I'm where I belong for this time and for in this part of my life, and but also of course they belong to their birth families, and and I think belonging is the belonging to birth families, the ne and the need to honour that, honour the importance of of uh of supporting and and and where appropriate, promoting and that enduring sense of belonging to birth families, because the one of the tragedies of social care is is the children who transition from care at 18 and without a sense of belonging to anyone.

Richard 12:58

Yeah, yes, yes, yes. I I I mean a couple of things come to my mind. I remember David one time uh you know given what had happened, and uh just mother with mental health problems, doing a couple of dangerous things in their presence, not to them, but in their presence, and they were removed into state care, and he was quite lost. He said, My mother doesn't love me. I said, Is that is that how you feel, David? Yeah, she doesn't love me, she I said, okay, hang on now. Let me suggest to you that actually your mother loves you very much. The problem is because of her own difficulties, as you know, she can't show that love just now in reliable care for you and your younger brother and sister. But she fully supported that you were taken into care and you're here at the Marbury Bush too. But you know, I I think it wouldn't be fair to your mother, and I don't think it'd be fair to you, if you really thought your mother didn't love you. Because I think she loved you enough to make sure you would be well looked after at a time where she couldn't look after you. And that's what happened. And you know, it wasn't one of those occasions where he dropped down on his knees and says, Oh, so insightful, Richard. But it it was something about we were talking about putting a container around something that could perhaps make some sense of it rather than to feel bereft and lost and chopped away.

Colby 14:55

The the the the language that is often used around children in used around and with children in um out-of-home care is that their parents um didn't love them, the in fact that they hurt them, that they neglected them, that they um they did bad things, they weren't that their parents were lacking in some ways, they were deficient, um which the children find difficult to to make sense of and and ultimately land on there was something inadequate about me that meant that um my parents weren't better for me, um that that um my parents um didn't try harder, I guess, for me, that and that reflects something deficient about me. And I I think I think that's a beautiful way of thinking about and it's very much is aligned with the conversations I often have with children that that um even if the parents are not supportive of the child coming into care, as is often the case, yes, they they it is important I think that's often important information the children for children to have at some point that their parents fought for them, fought to have them, and also that their parent and and their parents did love them. I I've I've met in I mean you've had a longer career than me, but it my career spans 31 years, and um I think the va my my exposure to uh birth parents w leads me to believe that um they love their children in their own way very much.

Richard 16:58

Yes. I I I would say that in my long professional career, there are at most three or four occasions when I had very serious concern and acted on a willful intent to harm child. But only three or four out of you know, many hundreds. And and and they were they they were so clear. All the others, you know, the the neglect and things, there there was love at source, but the inability for other circumstances, personal and family and social, that prevented that from being reliably delivered. And and I think one of the abilities that the Marbury Bush has developed and maintained over the years, is bringing child and families back together. And on those occasions where it can't be the natural family, it is a supportive integration with a substitute family that has meaning and that doesn't disavow the the the birth parent, doesn't disavow it.

Colby 18:13

Yeah. The way I uh a way of thinking about it that's come to me as we're talking about this is that the issue is not so much that the parent doesn't love the child, it's that the parent perhaps doesn't love themselves enough.

Richard 18:29

That that's that's certainly a feature in a number of them. Yeah, uh yeah. And and and perhaps it's that way because they themselves didn't didn't have the good enough start. Um and I think there are there are there are certain decisions that professionals have to make based on the information, but it is a judgment that we're seeking, not to be judgmental. A judgment, and a judgment needs to be made but it won't help if it's judgmental. They're no good, they're not good enough, they're yeah. It's about what brings us to this point and how can we manage a transition to, if you would, a safer haven without the denigration of others in service to it, because it won't work. And for the reasons you began with, about the longing of the child for the natural family. Not that they not some not that some of them might ever be able to live there, but they can still be supported to recognize that it's there, and it often helps them settle down in the location where they have been placed.

Colby 20:02

This conversation has reminded me of of a conversation I had on the podcast with Richard Rose earlier this year. And one of the things that I like about Richard Rose's therapeutic life story work approach is that it incorporates the parent story into the the the child's child's narrative or the narrative that the child that is developed with the child with through the process. That so it's not just you're in care because your parent did a bad thing or did bad things. Parents are afforded the opportunity to tell their story and for that to be integrated into the child's understanding, I guess.

Richard 20:54

Yes. Yeah.

Colby 20:56

And there should be more of that.

Richard 20:58

Yeah, yeah. And and and you know, children can understand or be cross and upset and angry about these things, but if they're feelings and there's a space to put them into context, you know we can say, of course you're cross and you're angry, that's understandable. But let's broaden it out a bit about what that's done, you know. Not to make not to make excuses, but really just to understand.

Colby 21:31

Yes. And I think sometimes people struggle to get their head around the that understanding is not permissiveness or not permitting.

Richard 21:41

Yeah.

Colby 21:42

It is j it is just understanding, acknowledging. We need to move on to another object.

Richard 21:54

Oh,

Kryptonite And The Fear Of Being Human

Richard 21:55

okay. Um, okay. The first one. You know who and what is it that super Superman is most fearful of? Kryptonite Kryptonite. I have to keep it in this box because I have to protect him. And what is he fearful about? What is he fearful about with Kryptonite?

Colby 22:34

Oh, now you're testing me. It diminishes him, doesn't it? He loses his power.

Richard 22:42

Yeah. So some people think he dies, but of course he doesn't. He loses his superpowers, which leaves him being human. He's no longer Superman. He's human. And he's frightened of being human. Because being human is a huge challenge that makes us vulnerable. And I think, you know, in a way, it's a great story. I love the Superman comics and all the things. But I think it's also helpful for us to remember about how hard and scary it is to be human. Because being human means we are open to all the wonderful things and the slings and arrows of life and everything and relationships and the like. And I expect many of us will encounter occasions when it's going really hard where which we wish we were supermen or women. But instead we're just the mensch, the man. And we we have to find another way of dealing with it rather than being the man of steel and getting out. And and and I think sometimes people, again, under under pressure, can try to steal themselves against it. I don't know if I said the last time, you know, you can edit it out if I did, but I remember uh James one time up at the Mulberry Bush in the front field, and you know, Nikki called him in to have lunch. And you know, he and he throws his arms in the air and he says, I hate human beings. And I was walking across the field and I sort of did my I said, Oh actually, James, Nikki's just asking you to go in to have a nice lunch. She's not gonna stick your head down the toilet bowl. It's it's not about that. But afterwards, can you come and find me? Because I've had a thought I want to share with you. And you know, he'd give you the look. I said, No, just have lunch and come and find me. So off he went, and an hour or so later, after we'd had lunch and then played, he came to me and said, Oh Rich, Rich, what do you want? What do you want? I said, you know, when you were upset earlier and you you screamed out, I hate human beings. It did make me think that sometimes you hate being human. Because you have a lot of feelings and some of them are really, really hard to have and to manage. And I think But we are human beings. And you've had a really good lunch and a good playtime, and that's part of being human as well. So let's just remember that it can be fun being human and it can be difficult at times. And here is a place where we can help you when the things are difficult and allow you to have the good parts of being human. But being human, it's got a lot of good things about it. And of course, he looks at me, he said, Yeah. And it's just one of those things where you know the child takes it and thinks, what the hell's he on about? But you know, it was it w it was some way of doing it. And uh I'm trying to think, where is that uh there's an associated object.

Perfection Traps And The Common Garden

Richard 26:40

Oh, I know. This is this is associated to that. So we've had Superman, now we have is it's uh in Britain they call him Father Christmas. I'm used to calling him Santa Claus.

Colby 26:55

Oh, okay. Yeah, the light's getting a bit dull there, Richard.

Richard 26:59

There he is. Yeah, there he is. There he is. Yeah, and uh and you know, the the other thing about Santa is in my you know, I I have too much time to think sometimes, you just turn the you turn the word the letters around and it's Satan. Santa, Satan.

Colby 27:16

Yeah, yeah. Goodness gracious.

Richard 27:22

Exactly. See, but but see see the thing is Santa is perfectly good, and Satan is perfectly awful. And this this object of Santa reminds me of of Ricky, who when he came to the Marbury Birch and and he said to his mother, so what what what would you like us to be able to do with him and for him? She says, I just want him to be good and you know she couldn't break that down into things, you know, just to be good. But in her view, he'd ought to be perfectly good or he had to be perfectly awful. And um that's a hard task for a child. And so Ricky focused on being perfect. And he was either perfectly good or perfectly awful with us, and used to dr you know, which was his job, I suppose, to drive us because the rapid swings sometimes too. And one time uh uh Christine was with him trying to and I thought, okay, let me give you a break. You've had him since you know 7 30 this morning. So hey Ricky, come with me. Where are we going? Where are we going? I said, we're just gonna go for a walk. And I took him out into the children's gardens which were you know lovely, if rather sad kind of things. And I said, Look, Ricky, this is what the people in England call a common garden. It's not perfectly good. Look at all those weeds over here. And it's not perfectly awful. Because look, oh, there's a nice butterfly, and look, there's a and you know, there in the pond is a is a newt, we can see. Yeah, and I I said, you know, really, yeah, it's a common garden. You don't have to be perfectly good or perfectly awful either. Just you know, just be like the garden. About ten years or more afterwards, after he left, he comes in about six foot two tall. So I'm rather glad I didn't pick on him or anything. And you know, he had a lovely visit. He said, Rich, do you remember that time you took me into the garden? I said, Yeah, I remember this. He he he said, I have no idea what you were saying or what you meant. I just knew it was important. I've never forgotten it. You know, so again, my my profundity didn't lodge in his mind and his heart, but it was having been encountered, caught in this terrible, terrible predicament, and somebody said, Look, there's a way out. And he seemed to be doing very well, and he and my marion were were fine. So it it was just something you could say, look, all right, you don't really have to understand it, but there's a way of looking at it that can you know take you out of this rapid swing of the counsels of perfection.

Colby 31:08

Yes,

Sport, Status, And Moments Of Glory

Colby 31:09

yes, yes. I'm in mind of uh it puts me in mind of young people who strive for perfection in in different ways. Um sporting, for example, they take up a sport and they wanna and they want to be perfect in in that sport. And uh let's say, for example, it's basketball. Everyone wants to be like the best the best player that that in in the NBA at a at a given time. Yeah, I want to be like Michael Jordan or I want to be like um I can't picturing him, but I can't think of his name, who uh has also been you know for a long time according to the status of being the best player in the NBA. But uh he's now fella. That's right.

Richard 32:08

He's a really tall fella.

Colby 32:11

Yes, I'll come to me. But um I have a similar conversation in a sense where I'll I'll we'll talk about um you want you want to be like this this person, this best player in the NBA, and I'll and uh and when you like that you'll have you'll have truly made it made it. And and then I will then we'll move the conversation to on to well I guess that wherever we're in any pursuit, in any activity, there is always going to be someone who's the best at it, yeah. But all those other players, all those, you know, your Kevin Durants and you you know this person and that all the how you know would you like to play basketball as well as any of them? And of course they would, yeah, but they're not the best. No, the it the there are plenty in the the NBA is full of players who are not the best, there's no need for that to be the best. That's right, there's no need to be the best, yeah.

Richard 33:28

Playing it for uh love. Um mind you, it's rather nice to have a moment of glory, yes. But uh so uh growing up in in high school in New York City, the New York Knicks played. And anyway, what they did was before the professional match, they'd have a high school match. And uh so we're there, high school. Uh it was you know, cathedral against Spelman, and we're down there. And you know, at that match, you there's there's about maybe 200, 150, 200 people there, family and friends and things. But by the third quarter or into the fourth quarter, there's about 16,000 people there because well, they're gathering for the next game. Yes, and they watch that game just like everybody else. Whoa, whoa. So you you know, suddenly you have 14 to 16,000 people cheering things, and I was someone who I was like the enforcer. I played because I was the one who'd, you know, take one for the team or something, and I was otherwise useless. But I have a photo because the Knicks photographer would also take photos of the high school match as well. And I've got this photo in my bedroom of me going in for a layup in Madison Square Garden. It looks perfect form. It must be one of only three layups I ever converted. I was gonna say, did you miss or did No, I it went in that time, but it's one of the very few times, and it's that moment is captured on the Madison Square Garden court. And I I've got, I think, ah, yeah. I mean, it was totally I would have been nowhere near the NBA. I mean, in fact, in in university, they wouldn't have even let me sweep out the changing rooms. So when I came to England, I could play basketball.

Colby 35:35

Yeah, yeah.

Richard 35:36

And and I I used to book all of our matches with the U.S. Air Force bases because we'd go to them, we'd play, they'd, you know, we'd be biting their kneecaps because they had six, nine, six eleven guys. But the hospitality afterwards was great. Barbecues, Hershey chocolate bars, you know, Rheingold beer. That was kind of but it's it's that kind of in my swallow small way, I I had that, but I always knew. Yeah, it was by default I was a basketball player. Yeah, but I know what you mean about just that moment, yeah.

Colby 36:15

Richard, um I think I think we're gonna have to have a a fourth instalment to get uh to perhaps to get along to some more objects. I

Small Homes Versus Therapeutic Community

Colby 36:27

what I before before I let you go, and we'll wind up this this episode, and this is something of a question without notice, but um a colleague I I believe is known to you, he's he's very well very known to me. Patrick Tomlinson has been he and he has recently written about, and and we've had a conversation about the trend in the UK, which is probably mirrored in in jurisdictions around the Western world uh in particular, um, towards smaller scale residential homes, one and two children, yes, one or two children, and versus the therapeutic communities, which still exist, not in the same number as existed in the UK in the past, but but Mulberry Bush is still around, Emberle Care, there there are some others around, and and Patrick is um well amongst other things, it it's questioning this trajectory towards small, you know, smaller and smaller children's homes, one or two children, uh and and that you lose you lose something when you do that. You lose the the power of the group. I'm just interested because you were involved in a therapeutic community for as long so long, you still are, and what your thoughts are about this trend towards smaller and smaller homes, group homes, and versus the old, well, I shouldn't call it the old, but versus a therapeutic community with with a with a larger number of children and young people.

Richard 38:24

Yes. Um I'm sad that the default position, if you would, or the sought-after position, is for the one or two child, young person homes. It might work for some. I mean, there you know, there there is an assessment and matching thing, but I think that it is a tremendous loss for a number the opportunity to live not just in a group, but as a group. And the group really lives together and meets together and plays together and learns together. It's it's a shared experience that uh it can be so helpful. And so many people who experience it give in the end just as much or even more than they've taken from it. It is a lost opportunity. I think it's a function, as I'm sure Patrick will will have identified, about the way our society has gone increasingly from the 70s. And look, there were a lot of large size institutions that were really just warehousing, but that doesn't make every experience of large group, you know, 10 plus living no good. And it doesn't make every one child or two child environments a really good thing, because it doesn't replicate family life for reasons we spoke about before, and I'm sure Patrick identified others. It we are human beings, we are social creatures, and we need to find ways to recognize that and utilize it. To help people learn to live with themselves and with other people in a range of ways, rather in very tiny set piece ways.

Colby 40:41

It

Wider Family, Children’s Voice, Shared Risk

Colby 40:42

reminds me when I when I was growing up, we were close. I was the eldest grandchild on both sides of my family because my parents were the eldest child on each side. Um I had more to do with my father's my the father's side of the family, my father's side of the family in terms of cousins, involvement with cousins and so on, but um than than on my mother's side of my family. But my grandparents were very involved with us growing up, very, very involved. And I spent most school holidays with uh with my grandparents, but also um we had a lot to do with our aunts and uncles, particular on my dad's side and and cousins. So this the so this idea, and Patrick talks about the well, Patrick and I had a conversation about this only very recently. This this idea of a family being like two adults and two children or or something of that ilk is is not representative perhaps of what we knew of uh as a family only a generation ago, you know, a generation or two ago, where my family was the five people who lived under my roof, my grandparents who had separate houses, but we spent time living and and eating and staying under theirs, and then the the the uncles and aunts and the cousins as well. So that my sense of family was not that five, it was uh it was a much larger group, and and there were dynamics in that family that contributed to my growth and development as a person. And I think when I hear when I listened to you talk about the mulberry bush, and we've touched on it even a little bit here in this conversation, how the the that when I was talking about that contagion or that that spread of influence that that that includes the children influencing the children, and and Pat Patrick often will remind has often reminded me that the idea of it takes a village to raise the children as it was originally conceived of included other children.

Richard 43:08

Yes, yes. And and it's giving them voice. I mean, just just to affirm that and how they do it, um every once in a while the in the uh in the community, you get a delegation of children three, four, five coming to the grown-ups and saying, Why can't what one of the examples that came, uh the children were suddenly being told not to run from school, the school area to to the houses. And they came and said, Why can't we do that? It's not fair. We're not being dangerous, we're just running. Why why do we suddenly have to and it's this kind you know, the creeping thing that you have a check and they delegation saying this. I said, Well, who's oh well so and so said so okay, look, leave we'll actually it wasn't me, it was somebody that said, Look, we'll look into it and and get back to it. And of course it was a well intentioned, somewhat newer member staff who I think was anxious about losing control rather than just being present and in charge. We had to say, okay, look, I think the children aren't causing any harm to themselves or others. They're exuberant about getting out. And they're not running away, they're running too. So can we all agree it can happen? And I think it was a relief for that person too that he he didn't feel that he was going to be out of control of everything if they just let the children do it. So even on those small ways of living groups are parts of groups and uh and I think actually community living can incorporate not family but familial dimensions into it. And and they work. They're not exactly the same but the principles of the spirit that underlines them can be elaborated and added onto within the community. Is this the way we want to live you know we ask them when something goes badly broken is this the way we want to live broken windows?

Tyre Races, Good Risk, And Goodbye

Colby 45:20

And then the group is saying no not really I'll have to read the Patrick Yeah he released a a paper only a week or two ago of his thoughts um around that um just I'll tell you one last little story. When I was in grade six and grade seven at my primary school I'm just thinking about the running the and the not running at my primary school they had a pile of old car tyres. Oh wow and my class the four the classroom of boys at reset at our breaks recession lunch we used to there was a a bitumized area around the school before you got to the school buildings before you got to the oval and we set ourselves up a a a track as such it's not really a track it because it was more like a drag strip. And we would we would over and over and over for the entire period of these breaks we would have races with these tires pushing these tires the length of this bitumized area stretch. Yeah and you just think of we never had a pet we never had a teacher come out and say what about the the small reception kids who are sitting on the grass just at the end of that because we none of us ever lost control of the tires but but you yeah you just think about and and I it's it's one of my best memories of primary school I used to love doing that. I loved it and uh but it was so there was so much risk but a lot of reward associated with that. Yeah. Anyway you got me think about it when you talked about running running across the from building to building but look Richard it was it was wonderful to speak to you again and thank you I I certainly enjoyed it and appreciate the opportunity thanks yeah yeah and maybe maybe uh if there's more objects we can do it again next time.

Richard 47:27

Oh there's plenty more good good okay thanks Richard Colby all the best