6 Year Olds

The presence of the two 6 year old girls really wasn't helpful at the time. They'd dropped in to the church as they'd finished after school club and didn't want to go home.

We spent some time with them, then said they really needed to go home now, as it was late, and we were there for a detached youth work planning meeting and reconnaisance session. They didn't want to go home and took lots of persuasion. I got steadily more and more frustrated.

"I don't do six year olds! eight year olds I can just about handle but that's as young as it gets! We're trying to get a job done! We're running late! We have things to do! We're here for young people tonight not children!

Eventually they left. Only to be knocking on the door again ten minutes later. Grrrr we say. We try to ignore them. We go into another room so they can't see we're here. They're are so persistant, they're doing our heads in. We need to concentrate. We have risk assessements to write, id to sort, recording forms to develope, walk about to do. They continue to persist.

We go to the door.

"Nikki, you've left your car lights on they say"

I humbly walk out, turn off my car lights and learn something from the six year old girls. It later transpires that one of them has nowhere to go having been locked out of the house at 8.30 on a cold wet night. I realise that maybe I am interested in the six year olds after all.