Fish or fishing rods? Parents or the children?

A look behind the scenes: how do we offer help and for whom? Just one example from our daily practice:

The therapy we provide here is primarily for adults, not for children. And that is a very conscious choice… apart from the fact that therapy for children is a different specialization, there is something else that weighs more heavily for us.

Suppose… a child is hungry. What can you do?

Yes, if it is acute, you give that child food. Let’s call that food a fish.

But yes, tomorrow that same child will be hungry again. Now, what do you do?

In principle you could teach the child to fish. You have to give them a fishing rod (practical help) and then you can teach them how to fish. So, yes… teaching a child to fish is possible… but where are the parents? What is their role? Why couldn’t the parents provide fish? What went wrong there?

And that is why we work with parents/adults. If we teach the parents to fish, they can feed their own children again. Then you have a long-term and stable solution, in which everyone does what they are responsible for. And yes, that sometimes takes more effort, you sometimes have to buy fishing rods, you sometimes have to temporarily supply fish in an emergency, but the end goal remains the same: we teach the target groups how to fish. And yes, there are always exceptions to the “rule”. 🙂