Westbridge Residential School

John Rutherford

CEO Westbridge Residential School

The son of a Methodist minister, John grew up in numerous North Island locations including Foxton, Orama on Great Barrier Island and Hikurangi. Like many present West Aucklander educators John’s teacher training was at North Shore Teachers College. His first school was Tokoroa Intermediate from which he returned to the North Shore to teach at Belmont Intermediate. “I left teaching for a while and worked at Marsden Point for a year before taking the role as art specialist at Raumanga Intermediate School, in Whangarei for four years. During this time I moved back into the classroom - a year 8 class - and then in 1990 I started at Hikurangi Primary where I spent another three years. From there I won a position as craft teacher at Tikipunga High School which had an attached intermediate school. In 1996 I went to England for three years, equal time teaching and in teacher recruitment.” John’s wife wanted to return to New Zealand and John took a specialist technology teaching role at Kamo Intermediate School. He was then principal at Northland Health Camp School, Whangarei, for a year and then at Hibiscus Coast Intermediate School as deputy principal from term four 2002 to the end of term three 2003 when the MOE decided that the school was to be disestablished. “Then the opportunity to come to Westbridge came up and I commenced late 2003.” Westbridge Residential School is one of three highly specialised schools in New Zealand catering for students in years 3-8 with severe and challenging behaviour, with a forty week intervention programme for both students who attend daily and those residing at the school during school terms. “We have an excellent team and I’m proud of the way the team – a diverse group - has grown, and the success we are experiencing. We are constantly looking at further innovative family support ideas.” John and his partner, Kim have two pre-schoolers. The Good vs The Responsible Parent (this article, written by John, appeared in the Western leader in October 2007) In today’s modern world parenting is getting more and more complex, parent(s) working long hours to pay the bills, young children being cared for by daycare centres and others, T.V. acting as the baby sitter while breakfast is being prepared and/ or tea is being cooked, advertising bombarding our children with “stuff” to spend our hard earned money on that children feel they can’t live without. It has become difficult to find time and energy to spend playing and talking with our children. Our time with our children is precious. We want to enjoy our children. We want our children to enjoy us! We want our children to be happy and we want to enjoy our life too! We don’t want our children to be unhappy. And we don’t want the hassle of dealing with tantrums and crying, sulky children. As parents we want to be good parents, we want our children to be well looked after, to be safe and happy. We want our children to have the very best we can provide and to thrive. It is when the children are “happy” that we are being good parents, isn’t it? It is amazing how much trouble we will put ourselves to in order to keep our children happy. A “good” parent will drive a forgotten lunch up to the school when it has been left on the bench even after several reminders to put the lunchbox in the school bag. The toy that “Johnny” saw on TV this morning that he wanted so badly that he cried when we said “No” appears after school so that he will know that we love him. These days with all this pressure it is easy for caring and loving parents to begin to see their parenting role as keeping their children happy and saying “No” to children is becoming more and more difficult for some parents to say to their children and hold to. As loving, caring parents who want their children to be happy we often want to remove unpleasantness, pain and unhappiness from our children’s life. But is this always the best thing for our children? In my view, one of the most important skills for children to develop to be successful is self discipline. Self discipline is about doing the things we should do, the things we need to do and the things we have to do. This involves being able to delay gratification and meet one’s responsibilities. This is one of the essential keys to success in life. However, children often want to do what they want to do and holding them accountable often causes them to act as if they are unhappy (at times they look as if they are VERY unhappy). Often we let them off. After all it is easier! This can give children a mixed message, create confusion and tells them that what they want is more important than doing the “right” thing. Everyone will agree that children need a nurturing and loving environment to grow up in. It should also be a predictable and consistent environment too. This helps children to feel secure and lowers anxiety because they know where they stand. They know where the boundaries are and confidence and trust is able to grow. This actually allows children to be truly happy. To have a predictable and consistent environment, children need to understand the rules and boundaries. To know and understand the boundaries, rules must be clear and consequences, both positive and negative, must be followed through with consistently. “No!” must mean “No” every time. Where consequences are delivered consistently children learn to make appropriate choices – do what is right. These are the first steps toward training children to be self disciplined. One of the important principles in helping children to accept responsibility for their actions and to behave responsibly is allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions. Often we are tempted to back our children and attempt to rescue them from the consequences of their actions. However, how do people learn? Most of the time, we learn best from the consequences we experience. Every time we rescue children from consequences we take away a learning experience. Obviously we must keep children safe and some consequences could cause real harm e.g. touching a heater after having been told not to, and we must ensure children’s safety. However, allowing a child to experience hunger for a day through forgetting to put their lunchbox in their bag won’t harm them and may help them to remember to put it in tomorrow. The “responsible” parent allows children to experience the natural and logical consequences of their actions. They understand that this is part of training their children to make good and appropriate choices, and developing a greater sense of responsibility for them selves. It is a strategy to empower children. Every time we “rescue” children by trying to protect children from negative consequences we create dependence. If we keep driving the lunch up to the school, the child will not change their behaviour, they will expect us to keep doing it, and boy will they be cross if we don’t!! Rescuing children from consequences and creating dependence gives children a false expectation of the way the world really works and I believe makes it more difficult for children to be resilient in a very challenging world. Children need all the help they can get, but let’s help them to help them selves by training them to be self disciplined. It is the key to success.