Summary: The Ranches is, at its very core, a place for kids to get a fresh start and to develop new tools and learn new ways of navigating life. In most cases, kids come to The Ranches with inadequate and unhealthy ways of dealing with relationships and with conflict. Initially, we start the process of orienting kids to their new living environment. New room, new roommate, new schedule and new rules. While we’ve all had to navigate these situations in our lives, for young people this can be fairly traumatic and a fairly abrupt entry into a place that they have little to no experience with. Everything is new. It is in this first phase that we begin to see how kids naturally operate. How they handle peers. How they handle change. How they deal with and view authority and, in many cases, how they see themselves. We see boys who’ve had to navigate the label of toxicity and how much of their behavior is associated with shame and fear. We also see girls who’ve had to navigate expectations, shame and isolation. When kids first arrive at The Ranches, we see them at their most raw and their most vulnerable…and often scared of what is to come. <br> <br> <br> <br> As kids adjust, we start to introduce accountability to them and help them to see how accountability effects their daily lives. It is unfair to say that they have never experienced accountability, but it many cases they have experienced inconsistent, unpredictable and sometimes violent accountability. For most of the kids, this creates a resistance to accountability and to being held accountable. <br> <br> <br> <br> Definition of accountability: the quality or state of being accountable - especially: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions.<br> <br> <br> <br> As you can probably imagine, most kids – really most people – struggle with accountability…especially when it comes from perceived strangers. Along with accountability usually comes conflict, stress and a plethora of negative behaviors. For the staff of The Ranches, this is often uncomfortable and difficult to emotionally process. Why does this child that I don’t really know seem to hate me and everything that I try to communicate with them? Well, this is the work that we do. <br> <br> <br> <br> To understand the struggle with -accountability, it helps to know what kinds of behaviors that we deal with in kids when we attempt to introduce consistent, caring, committed accountability. In working with the kids at The Ranches, our goal for accountability is for them to achieve competence and competence requires accountability. Their resistance to competence and accountability usually comes in several forms. <br> <br> <br> <br> Transfer of Blame – Kids often seek to transfer blame to others. In transfer of blame situations, we see the blame become the most relevant part of accountability to the child. “It wasn’t my fault! My roommate did it!” or “You’re not my parent!” are typical utterances at The Ranches. While one is true and one may indeed be true, these statements serve the child by transferring the all-important blame for the transgression onto someone else. “It isn’t my fault,” therefore you can’t, or shouldn’t, hold ME accountable.<br> <br> <br> <br> “I need (vs. want) this!” – We work tirelessly to meet the needs of the kids at The Ranches. It is part of our mission. Because of our deliberate choice in meeting the needs of our residents, the kids often attempt to turn their wants in to needs in an effort to force us, through guilt, to give in to their wants. If accountability is to be avoided, turning accountability into an accusation of not meeting their needs is a powerful strategy. “I lied because I didn’t feel safe enough to tell the truth” is just one example of this behavior. Safety is a basic need and reshaping situations to be a need unmet is typical and, at times, prolific.
