Page 78 - Meeting with Children Manual

Section 5 P a ge | 76

something about the topic area and then recants what he/she was saying.
Defense mechanisms are often observed when children are distressed. Generally,
you want to capture the importance of the item to the child.

A child would score moderate, if there were a few comments about Time but
accompanied by less emotion related to those comments.

A child would score low on the scale if there were perhaps one offhanded comment
but little emotionality attached to the comment. This would indicate the child is
concerned enough to reference the item such as Time but it is not an intensely felt
issue for the child.

The rating here is related to your observations. You could rate the child as low,
medium, high in a negative or positive way. Some children may refer to Time, for
instance, positively. The child may intensely express his/her happiness about how
time is managed in his/her family and provide many examples of how he/she spends
time in positive ways with various family members.

Regarding the 5-point rating scale, if you do not observe the child referring to the
item at all, do not rate the item.

Can you add child comments to more than one item?
The short answer is yes. If a child says something about Time but it is also about
Family Relationships such as “I have fun spending time with my mum and grandma”
you can place this item under both headings. It identifies the child’s positive
experience with time with important others; grandmother and mum in this case. If
the comment(s) was about Time and Emotional Space such as “I am sad because I
miss my mum when I go to my dad’s house and it is a long time until I can see her
again. When I am at my dad’s I cry and I feel sick in my stomach because it I don’t
know when I will see mummy again”. This can be placed in both the Time and
Emotional Space categories.

Once you identify all the items that are salient to the child, and you anchor them to
the CYCS, you will have a picture of what is important to the child, both positive and
negative.

© The International Centre for Children and Family Law Inc. This material cannot be copied in whole or in part without the express written permission
of the copyright owner