This week I visited a SEND school in Birmingham with the aim of supporting the staff to develop rapport-based classrooms after having delivered an INSET day a week earlier. I visited each class for a short period of time, offering opportunities for answering questions, demonstrating the practice, reminding staff of the principles and trying to be generally helpful and supportive.

Judging by the similar themes of many of the questions I was asked, it was clear that staff were encountering similar issues when trying to implement the Rapport-Based Communication. One common question centred around the observation that children would often turn away or move away when a staff member approached for interaction.

One answer to this common situation lies in what we are trying to achieve when we approach. It is very natural for a staff member to want to get a response from the person they are supporting. A positive response feels good to the practitioner, validates the approach and seems to meet the needs of the person.

Yet, ironically, by aiming for a response, the practitioner will sometime approach the person too directly, which for a socially anxious person, may land as a demand. If the person turns away or moves away then it’s likely that the practitioners approach made them feel uncomfortable in some way and they need to change position to address this and feel better.

So my suggestion to staff at the school was to aim to simply share space with the person rather than go directly for a response. If we start by trying to share space then we may begin at a greater distance from the person, perhaps even so far away that they don’t notice us. The benefit of this is that we have approached the person and they have not turned away as they may usually have done. The next time we approach we could then try to be a little closer, and perhaps closer again the next time, until we find the distance at which the person is happy for us to be without feeling demanded upon. It is from this sharing of space that the response we are hoping for can then emerge in a way that person has more choice over. We start to show the person that they can trust us to be calm, predictable, responsive, simple and straightforward.

The human quality called for in this situation is the virtue of patience. By simply being available and waiting we can often find the most beautiful of things have time to flower.