Liking is not rapport

Why do we hold, especially with younger children, this expectation that they’re all friends? If someone insinuated that this was necessary with a group of adults, many of us would resist. With teams that I work with, I invite folks to think about the distinction between liking and rapport. Liking is a preferential choice we make with our friends. Rapport is an ongoing commitment to see, hear, and value children and youth, even in moments when we don’t like their behavior. Rapport involves an ongoing commitment to return to the person, model social skills, have boundaries, establish clear guidelines at the activity, program/classroom, and organizational levels. This sounds straightforward right!? For anyone in the practice of working with behaviors which are challenging, there is nothing simple about any of this. In fact, the profound capacity of educators working in and out of schools to keep seeing, hearing and valuing the people in their group is the foundation of all learning.