Reemerweb

In 2012 a boy arrived at summer camp with a serious diagnosis and a manual. Severe oppositional defiant disorder, a thick stack of paper explaining what set him off, and a briefing before the week even started. Call him Dennis.

Some background. Every summer since 2004 I've volunteered at a camp for kids who need one, and this was my twenty-second year. The third week is the one for children with autism, ADHD, ODD, trauma, foster placements, whatever combination life has handed them so far. That's the week I keep coming back for. Beforehand we get files: notes from parents, from group homes, from last year's leaders. Real information, written by people who care about the kid and who took the trouble to write it down.

And this was a file unlike I've seen before. I wasn't a rookie at camp anymore, having nine years of experience under my belt. But this feisty eight-year-old looked like I was going to have my hands full with him. And the night before camp started, I was mentally preparing everything I was going to do to make things work with him. In short: I was warned!

But surprise! Dennis turned out to be one of the sweetest kids I've ever had. Polite, enthusiastic, helpful... we bonded immediately and he was a happy camper for the rest of the week. When I asked his mother about "the file" and told her I saw none of that behavior at camp, she was like: "yeah, he doesn't do that all the time. When he's having fun, he's great."

Then there was another boy in that same group. Call him Leroy. His file said essentially nothing, so I assumed it would be okay. But this little fellow gave me the hardest week of that summer, constantly picking fights and doing things he wasn't supposed to do.

And year after year, the week disagrees with the file.

Why the files miss

I don't think they're badly written. I think a file is mostly a record of a child's worst days.

Nobody writes down the ordinary Tuesday. A note gets made when something goes wrong badly enough that a tired adult reaches for a pen at the end of a long shift. So what you're handed is an accurate list of the times a kid came apart, with none of the conditions that produced them. The classroom, the sibling, the teacher who kept passing him over, the bed he wasn't sleeping in. All of that is missing, because it was invisible to whoever was writing.

Then the child arrives at camp, where every one of those conditions is different. New group, new adults, no school, a week in the woods. He meets a version of himself that hasn't existed before, and so do we.

Where this stops being about camp

I think about this constantly now, because we are getting very good at building systems that read the file and tell you what to expect from a person.

The uncomfortable part is that they will often be right. Right often enough to be worth trusting, which is where the trouble starts. A prediction about a person doesn't sit quietly next to them. It changes what they're offered.

The boy flagged as the biggest risk gets watched more closely, and being watched closely is its own experience. Kids can feel it in a room within about ten minutes. Some of them rise to it and some of them start performing the thing you're braced for, and either way you've now got a week that the file helped create. The prediction doesn't just describe him. It gets a vote.

None of that is an argument for throwing the files away. I read every one, twice, and I'd be worse at this without them. It's an argument about how tightly to hold them.

Let's create our own truth!

Here's what I do at summer camp, whenever I'm in charge of a group of special needs kids. I do read the files - they contain genuinely good information. But they're a starting point, not the full truth. Instead, I create my own truth on the very first day, by announcing to the kids that from now on, they aren't just kids anymore, but "super champs"! I give them clear expectations, reinforced in a positive and enthusiastic way.

By approaching each child in a positive, encouraging and structured way, I give them a different truth. A truth where they can see themselves in a positive light, and start living up to it. And of the almost hundred children I've guided over the years, I've seen most of them grow because of that approach. Not all of them. Leroy never did.

And the files fail in the other direction too, which took me longer to learn. There are the quiet ones who don't stand out and don't cause trouble. They're easy to mistake for "doing alright". But quiet doesn't file well. No news reads as good news, and it usually isn't news at all, it's just nobody looking. Which is why I often take the time to sit with the quiet kids, join them in their world, and learn what makes them tick. Seeing them.

The rule I'd defend

Twenty-two years in, this is the only one I've got: read the file, then let the week overrule it.

The week tells me more than the file does, every single time. Not once has the paperwork turned out to be the whole child, and I've never regretted going in ready to be wrong about someone. If anything, the file tells me how other people see the child. And then I see what happens if we see the child in a different way.

In the end, don't judge people based on what's written down about them. Don't assume you know them because other people already wrote in detail about them. Get to know them through your own eyes, rather than someone else's. They're bound to surprise you.

Names and identifying details of the children have been changed.