Life events can include the Tuesday afternoon cooking class with the group worker or the Saturday afternoon football game, but in the sense that Fritz Redl thought of them, these activities are only threads in a fabric of living that includes all the elements of daily life: playing, working, school-based learning, learning through activities, relating with staff and peers, doing chores, solving problems, eating meals, going to bed, getting up, and other elements of a more occasional, but equally important nature, such as going on a hike, having a party, going to the movies, and taking a trip to the beach. All these "life events," as Redl called them, are essential ingredients and together create the therapeutic milieu. For kids, that milieu becomes a dynamic place--both secure and challenging--for learning new ways to manage self in relation to life. For child and youth care staff, it becomes their "office"--the place where they do their professional work. Unlike so many workers in today's residential centers whose preoccupation is control--social control, control of the group, control of individual kids for fear of what results if they get out of control--Redl's preoccupation was interaction. Many group programs for youth claim to include activities in their repertoire, but the effective use of activities in a group program, the author contends, is not just scheduling an activity. It is creating a total environment filled with life events in which staff and kids are involved together.