That work ethic also developed out of the “well-ordered, well- structured life that was important to both my parents.” This structure was not necessarily mundane.
We children were expected to do our chores, to make the beds, do the dishes. But even the chores could be fun. I can see my five- year-old self rushing ahead and climbing into the unmade bed before my mother got there. She pretended to smooth the sheets saying, 'There’s a lump in this bed.' I would giggle. She would say, 'It makes a noise!' She would touch my hair, 'It must be a mop!' Unable to wait any longer, I peeped out, and with a big grin, a big hug, she cried with delight, 'Oh no! It’s Phyllis.' Then we made the bed neatly and moved on to the next task.”
According to Phyllis, “these early years were not accompanied by any ‘awareness’ of the importance of attachment and the parent- child relationship. They simply embodied many principles that I now know are so important. But very early on I began to be interested in working with children professionally and that led to thinking about attachment issues.” Although her first professional aspiration was to become a school music teacher, she changed her mind after working in a Wartime Day Nursery during the summers between her first two college years. With surprise and pleasure, she remembered thinking, “They are paying me to do something I really like to do.”
Phyllis married in 1946 at the age of 20, after her junior year of college. Her husband had just returned from the war. They both enrolled at the University of Chicago where he pursued studies in English and she entered the committee on Human Development to become a nursery school teacher. Phyllis learned a great deal, working half time in the U of C nursery school while taking classes. Her views on child development burgeoned and changed under the influence of Helen Ross, who had studied at the Anna Freud Center in London. As Phyllis explained:
I pictured my task as a
therapist was to clear away the road blocks so that the child could fulfill his or her full potential.
To understand children’s needs, we presented case studies. I got a strong sense of the importance of the mother-child relationship, which I had not focused on consciously before. The child needed the nurturing care of a loving mother before he could be expected to move forward on his own. This contrasted with the attitude that I gradually became aware of in myself at that time: I focused more on encouraging children to grow up. I wanted to talk straight to them, treat them as more grown up. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to “talk down” to them with the high pitched, baby talk
that I often heard adults use toward children. We call this “parentese” now, and value it as something properly attuned to connect with the needs of very young children. Only gradually did I come to see how important it is to respond to children’s inner, often younger, needs first before focusing on helping them grow up.
Phyllis’s experience at the U of C Nursery school had another highly significant effect on her life trajectory. In 1949, she became Head Teacher, and Ann Jernberg became her assistant. Ann was 22 and Phyllis was 23. Phyllis credits Ann, “whose creative ideas and initiative led to the development of Theraplay®
,” and further added
that, “my collaboration with Ann over the years set my life on the path that I have followed since. And this has made all the difference.”
Phyllis also underscored Carl Rogers’s influence as a faculty member of U of C while she was there. He was popular with the graduate students and she was impressed by “his ability to conduct a meaningful discussion with a large group of 125 students. The concepts of ‘unconditional positive regard’ and the ‘self-actualizing principle’ were very important to me. I pictured that my task as a therapist was to clear away the road blocks so that the child could fulfill his or her full potential. Unconditional positive regard as well as trust in children’s amazing resilience are basic principles to our Theraplay®
work.” Fascinated by hearing about the rudiments of Theraplay® , I asked
Phyllis about how the didactic work began. She admitted loving to tell this story, and recounted that in 1967 Ann Jernberg accepted the task of providing psychological services to all the Head Start programs in Chicago. Ann recruited people she knew had training and experience working with children. “I had been away for many years, but was happy to hear from her and to join her team.”
Our mandate was to go into Head Start classrooms and identify children who needed help. We consulted with the teachers and observed the children and found over 200 who needed help the very first summer. Even in a big city like Chicago, it was impossible to find therapeutic treatment for so many kids. There were very few agencies prepared to treat young children, and no money to pay for it, even if it had been available. So, Ann created a program of her own that we could take directly to the children in their Head Start Centers.
She based the plan in part on her experience working with Austen Des Lauriers and Viola Brody at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, an inpatient unit for the treatment of children with psychosomatic illnesses. Des Lauriers’s strong emphasis on creating a real, here- and-now connection with withdrawn patients, along with Brody’s use of touch, were crucial influences on Ann’s ideas about what we could do with Head Start children.
Viola described her own work at the time: “I was asked to treat children who were not doing well under child analysis. I used touch as the main avenue for reaching these children. By touch, I mean I carried them, held them, bathed them, sang to them and allowed
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