Though it can seem like we are stumbling blindly through the web of challenges parenting presents, there are ways to better understand our child’s rapidly developing mind and strategies to help our children through their own personal challenges and emotional lows. Some of the most valuable of insights come from a new book by Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive. In this acclaimed text, parents are introduced to a new science illustrating how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. With this understanding as a base, parents can implement techniques that help turn meltdowns into opportunities to integrate their child’s brain.

Like all human beings, children are ruled by their emotional right brain and their logical left brain. Helping children to understand and integrate both sides of their brain equips them with an invaluable tool that enables them to lead a more balanced, emotionally stable, and mentally healthy life. Even though our goal is to raise calm and happy kids, very often we make mistakes in the moments when our children are at their most vulnerable. For example, when our kids throw tantrums, we may attempt to appeal to them through pure logic, instruction, or worse case scenario, by “losing it” ourselves. When we comprehend what is going on in our child’s brain during these meltdowns, we learn a better way to relate to our children as well as a powerful method to teach them effective tools for coping with their own tumultuous emotions.

On January 24, I will host a live CE Webinar with Dr. Tina Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind. In this online presentation, Dr. Bryson will introduce ways to turn the difficulties of parenting into opportunities. Tough as they can be, outbursts, arguments, and bouts of fear can all offer prime chances to integrate a child’s brain. Here are a few effective tips to help get your child develop a well-integrated mind. To learn more, join us for the upcoming free and CE Webinars with Dr. Bryson.

Use the logic of left brain to make sense out of feelings in the right – Simply telling our children to “calm down” or “stop crying” is not an effective way to help them through what Dr. Bryson calls “emotional tsunamis.” Demanding our kids be rational when they are operating under the influence of their irrational right brains is a mis-attuned effort often made in vain. Instead, offer your child empathy. Acknowledge that they are feeling bad, scared, frustrated etc. and express that you are sorry they’re in pain. As they become calmer, ask them to explain what upset them and help guide them through their story, while investigating what triggered the meltdown.

Help kids tell their story – Protective as we may be, our kids will all experience at least mildly traumatic events. Mean teachers who ridiculed them, scary seconds when they got lost in the supermarket; instances that incited fear, anger, or sadness will arise. We can help our kids resolve these traumas when they occur by supporting their effort to make sense out of what happened to them. This process starts with talking to them about it. Don’t avoid stressful topics in hopes that your kids will forget all about the incident. Instead, gently guide your children, as they tell you their story. “When did you notice your mother wasn’t around? How did you feel when you realized you were lost?’ Talking may seem difficult at first, but the more a child can make sense of his or her story, the more integrated and calm he or she will become. Contrarily, any unresolved trauma can present problems later in life.

Teach your child that feelings go through us – When our child has calmed down, it is helpful to explain to them that feelings, even intense emotions, come and go. Our emotions pass through us like waves, building and building until finally they reach their peak, crash, and subside. We can’t choose these feelings, but we can decide how we will behave when they arise. We can be curious about them and talk about them, all the while understanding that they won’t last forever.

Rupture and repair – Parents are human. We mess up, we say the wrong thing, and sometimes we let our own emotions get in the way. When this happens, we can help our kids a great deal by talking to them about what happened and how we behaved. We shouldn’t be afraid to say sorry when we make mistakes. Be open about your own story. Explain how you overreacted because you felt angry or afraid. By relaxing and acknowledging your reaction, you are demonstrating how to calm down, a lesson your children can apply when they find themselves in similar situations.

Keep calm and carry on – We’ve all either seen or been that mother who is getting into a full-on argument with their two-year-old about putting a sweater on, or that father who is practically throwing his own tantrum as his kid cries over what he’s served for lunch. No matter what the scenario, losing our temper is never the solution. Letting our emotional right brains take over only teaches our kids to feel as out of control as we’re behaving. Our own unresolved traumas and negative early experiences will constantly inform our reactions to our kids. Be aware of what triggers you, and be sure to separate the emotions these events stir up from your kids’ independent experience.

By being more attuned to our kids, understanding their developing mind, and actively seeking out and implementing effective strategies to help them cope, we are doing them a great service in arming them with tools that will not only strengthen their own resilience but will be passed on to future generations.
 

Dr. Lisa Firestone, PhD, is the Director of Research and Education for The Glendon Association. Since 1987, she has been involved in clinical training and applied research in suicide and violence. In collaboration with Dr. Robert Firestone, her studies resulted in the development of the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST) and the Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT). Dr. Firestone has published numerous professional articles, and most recently was the co-author of the books: Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships (APA Books, 2006),Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice(New Harbinger, 2002), and Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion: The Wisdom of Psychotherapy (APA Books, 2003).

Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships

by Robert W. Firestone, Lisa A. Firestone, Joyce Catlett

Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice: A Revolutionary Program to Counter Negative Thoughts and Live Free from Imagined Limitations
by Robert W. Firestone, Lisa Firestone, Joyce Catlett, Pat Love

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Emotional hunger is not love. It is a strong emotional need caused by deprivation in childhood. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people often act out in a desperate attempt to fill a void or emptiness. This emptiness is related to the pain of aloneness and separateness and can never realistically be fully satisfied in an adult relationship. Yet people refuse to bear their pain and to face the futility of gratifying these primitive needs and dependency. They deny the fact of their own ultimate death and do everything in their power to create an illusion that they are connected to other persons. This fantasy of belonging to another person allays the anxiety about death and gives people a sense of immortality. Hunger is a powerful emotion, which is both exploitive and destructive to others when it is acted out. People identify this feeling with love and mistakenly associate these longings with genuine affection. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Feelings of emotional hunger are deep and are like a dull but powerful aching in your insides. You may often find yourself reaching out and touching others or expressing affection and loving movements in order to attempt to kill off this aching sensation.

Because of the confusion between emotional hunger and love, both on the part of parents and outside observers, much innocent damage is perpetrated on children in the name of love. In my book, Compassionate Child Rearing, we noted that if parents are genuinely loving, and attuned they will have a nurturing effect on the child, which has a positive effect on his or her ongoing development. That child will tend to be securely attached, harmonious in his /her relationships, and tolerant of intimacy as an adult.

In contrast, contact with an emotionally hungry parent leaves a child impoverished, anxiously attached, and hurting. The more contact between this type of parent and the child, the more the parent is damaging to the child’s security and comfort. This style of relating–excessive touching, over-concern for the child or over-involvement in the child’s life–not only violates the child’s boundaries but also promotes withholding responses in the youngster. This can result in serious limitations in both the child’s later career and personal life, can threaten his or her sense of self and autonomy, and can be more destructive than more obvious abuses.

Parents who are emotionally hungry act compulsively in relation to their children in much the same manner as an addict. Their exaggerated attention and involvement have an ongoing negative impact on the child’s development. These parents often find it difficult to reduce the intensity of their contact even when they recognize that the contact is damaging.

Emotionally hungry parents are often overly protective of their children. They limit a child’s experience and ability to cope with life and instill an abnormal form of dependency. In being overly concerned with his or her physical health, they induce excessive fear reactions and tendencies toward hypochondria. Some overly protective parents may attempt to isolate their children from peers or other extra-familial influences that might have a negative impact. However, when carried to an extreme, such exclusion limits the child in his or her exposure to a variety of different attitudes and approaches to life, and is detrimental to a child’s trust in other people and ability to function in the world.

Many parents overstep the personal boundaries of their children in various ways: by inappropriately touching them, going through their belongings, reading their mail, and requiring them to perform for friends and relatives. This type of parental intrusiveness seriously limits children’s personal freedom and autonomy. Many mothers and fathers speak for their children, take over their productions as their own, brag excessively about their accomplishments, and attempt to live vicariously through them.

The difference between loving responses and those determined by emotional hunger can be distinguished by an objective observer, but it is difficult for parents themselves to make the distinction. Three factors are valuable in ascertaining the difference: (1) the internal feeling state of the parent, (2) the actual behavior of the parent in relating to the child, and (3) the observable effect of the parent’s emotional state and behavior on the child’s demeanor and behavior.

A parent who is capable of giving love typically has a positive self-image and maintains a sense of compassion for the child and for himself, yet remains separate and aware of the boundaries between them. Such a parent acts respectfully toward the child, and is not abusive or overprotective. The tone and style of communication is natural and easy and indicates a real understanding of the individuality of the child. The loved child actually looks loved. He or she is lively and displays independence appropriate to his or her age level. He or she is genuinely centered in himself or herself. The child subjected to emotional hunger is desperate, dependent, and either emotionally volatile or deadened. An onlooker can observe these important differential effects on children and can often trace them to the specific feeling states of the parent.

Although there are some exceptions, the concept of emotional hunger has not been sufficiently investigated in the psychological literature. Yet it is one of the principal factors negatively affecting child-rearing practices. The immaturity of many parents manifested as a powerful need to fulfill themselves through their children has serious negative consequences on a child’s development and subsequent adjustment. By recognizing important manifestations of this core conflict within themselves, many parents in the Compassionate Child-Rearing Parent Education Program have changed responses to their offspring that were based on incorrect assumptions, and have significantly improved the quality of their family relationships. Finally, from our studies of family interactions, we have begun to question the quality of the maternal-infant bond or attachment formed in the early hours and days of an infant’s life. As students of human behavior, we feel it is incumbent on us and on developmental psychologists to clarify the extent to which this bond or attachment may be based on emotional hunger and the needs of immature parents for an imagined connection to the child rather than on genuine concern and love for the child.

It is painful but bearable for people to experience these feelings of hunger and face their own emotional needs. Unfortunately, most individuals choose to deny or avoid this pain as they did when they were young. They seek outlets or choose courses of action that help them deny their pain or kill off the sensations of aloneness. They create fantasies of connecting themselves to others and imagine that they belong to each other. When these fantasy bonds are formed, real love goes down the drain. [see my earlier blog: December 5, 2008 ]. The emotions of love and respect for others disappear as we become possessive and controlling and as we make use of one another as a narcotic to kill off sensations of hunger and pain.

A fantasy bond can become a death pact in which the individuals narcotize each other to kill off pain and genuine feeling. Often it serves as a license to act out destructive behavior because the individuals belong to each other and have implicitly agreed that their relationship will last forever. The myth of the family love and regard for the individuals that comprise it is a shared conspiracy to deny the aloneness and pain of its members. It is a concerted refusal to acknowledge the facts of life, death and separateness and live with integrity.

Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, theorist and artist. He is the Consulting Theorist for the non-profit, The Glendon Association. He is author of many books including Voice Therapy, The Fantasy Bond, Compassionate Child-Rearing, Fear of Intimacy and Beyond Death Anxiety among others. He has published more than 30 professional articles and chapters for edited volumes, and produced 35 video documentaries. His art can be viewed on www.theartofrwfirestone.com.

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As adults, we are often asked to reflect on the positive influences, role models, and experiences from our past that shaped who we are today. Just as often, in everything from college essays to job interviews, we are asked to retrace an obstacle we overcame, a challenge we faced head on, or a disadvantage we wouldn’t allow to hold us down. As human beings, we are shaped by our environment. Every high and low molds us into who we are, for better or for worse. This is most true of when we are young and our brain is rapidly developing. The power of everything from an unheard cry to an unmarked facial expression can have a heavy impact on a child’s evolving psyche.

Positive interactions in our development can lead us to develop what my father psychologist Robert Firestone and I refer to as the “self-system.” The self-system is made up of the unique qualities of the individual combined with a harmonious identification and incorporation of parent’s positive attitudes and traits. Of course, no person, or parent, is perfect. The “Division of the Mind” is a model my father and I developed, which poses that every person is divided. People both love and hate themselves, and, as parents, they extend both reactions to their productions, i.e., their children.

While the nurturance of a parent enriches their children’s self-system, rejection, neglect, or hostility from a parent leads to the formation of an “anti-self system.” The anti-self system extends from a destructive identification with and incorporation of negative parental traits. When we internalize destructive attitudes during hurtful or traumatic experiences in our past, we strengthen our anti-self. As we grow up, our anti-self resides within us and encourages us to take actions that replicate our past but that are damaging to us in the present.

There are many traits we developed as children that served a purpose in our childhood but actually hinder us in adulthood. Say we felt heavily intruded on by our parents while growing up. Perhaps, we suffered the wrath of a critical mother or the frustration of a father who worried excessively about everything from our winter weight gain to our average SAT scores. As kids, we may have armed ourselves against our parents’ shortcomings by keeping to ourselves, rebelling against restraints, or commanding a self-prescribed perfectionism. More than likely we acquired some bad habits along the way. A father who broke promises may have taught us to be less trusting of those close to us. A mother who ignored us may have left us feeling self-reliant and guarded against wanting anything from someone else.

These characteristics served as “defenses” in our youth. They shielded us from fully experiencing the pain and even terror of recognizing the faults of those responsible for our well-being. Growing up, it was our parents’ duty to protect us. Our survival depended on them. This dependence is part of what made our parent’s actions so significant to our development and what gave them such strong influence over us. To an adult, having another adult erupt in anger or act victimized by us might spark in us a feeling of anger or provocation. But for a child, having someone who is not only physically larger than us, but fully responsible for us, either explode in rage or fall apart can be terrifying.

Even parents with the best intentions, experience moments of stress in which they are misattuned to their children. These misattunements and moments of trauma cause children to form self-protective defenses to comfort themselves or “get by.” The defenses formed out of childhood events stay with us into adulthood. Often, they continue to serve the purpose of cutting us off from unpleasant emotions or harboring us from perceived risks. However, while our defenses may seem like a beneficial layer of protection, they usually do more harm than good.

For example, shutting off from scary experiences as a kid may have meant hiding under the bed, avoiding high-pressure situations like sports or academics, or playing video games. As an adult, it can mean becoming anti-social, avoiding goal-driven behaviors, or abusing substances like alcohol. Our defenses may influence us to engage in self-soothing rituals or to avoid perceived dangers. However, their cues are taken from past events that are no longer real threats to us. In fact, as we grow older, the defense itself often becomes the threat.

An example of this is a a man who refused to ask a woman out because he was afraid of being rejected. Though he was good-looking, kind, and funny, his shyness and insecurity made him difficult to approach. As a young boy, he had been raised as an only child with a single mother who devoted most of her energy and attention to him. The combination of her intrusiveness and strict, no-nonsense attitude left him feeling inadequate and like a constant disappointment. In response, he withdrew from social situations and developed a fear that he would let a woman down. His “defense” did keep him from being rejected, but it also kept him from meeting someone he really liked. In addition, due to his passivity, the women he did meet tended to be more dominating, a trait that further replicated dynamics from his childhood.

If we were hurt as kids in a certain way, throughout our lives we will tend to unconsciously seek out relationships in which we are hurt in the very same ways. This is not necessarily because the situations from our youth felt good, but because they feel familiar. Our defenses are tricky, because they drive us toward familiarity in an effort to shield us from the pain of our past. They may seem like they will protect us, but in truth, they tend to protect the people who hurt us, who we depended on as children. But why are we so determined to protect those who hurt us?

When we are young, we rely on our caretakers. Seeing them as flawed or unstable presents a direct threat to our survival. The defenses we form may seemingly protect us from the negative traits of those who raised us, but they also serve to protect these influential figures. For example, a woman withstood countless instances of both verbal and physical abuse throughout her adolescence from a mother, whose temper was wild and unpredictable. After long battles, in which her mother would scream and make threats against both herself and her daughter, her mother would lock herself inside her room, sobbing uncontrollably. As one can imagine, this left the daughter feeling alone and terrified. In desperation, the girl would attempt to set aside the abuse she’d withstood and would write long letters of apology to her mother. Afterward, she would slip the letters under the door in hopes that she could “fix” whatever was broken in her mother.

This act of self-sacrifice is highly common in young children. As kids, the same people who frighten or hurt us are the people we must go to for comfort and care. Therefore, we often surrender ourselves to protect our caretakers. Though most incidents might not be as glaring or dramatic as that illustrated by the above story, children are constantly adjusting themselves to please and protect their parents. These acts of sacrifice, large and small, create the core defenses that often hurt them as adults. In other words, we form a set of internalized parents that recreate emotions and interactions from early in our lives.

The connection we feel to our parents is natural. Parents can serve as positive role models, instilling traits in us that we value throughout our lifetime. However, we can also create what my father psychologist Dr. Robert Firestone termed a “Fantasy Bond” with our parents, an illusion of connection that aligns us with those who raise us and causes us to identify with them in ways that are negative as well as positive.

As I’ve said before, no person is perfect. Even the best parents are only attuned to their children about 30 percent of the time. This is why, as adults, it is important to recognize the ways that we’ve negatively adapted to the damaging side of those who cared for us as children. Once we identify how we shield ourselves from our past, we can separate from the internalized parents in our heads and move forward as independent individuals, consciously adopting traits we respect and rejecting those that hurt us.

The concept of “defenses” is the ultimate illustration of the fact that very often, our own worst enemy lies within us. It is ironic that the very defenses that saved us emotionally so long ago are now robbing us of our lives today. What originally served as a reasonable adaptation to a difficult situation can become our imprisoning agent. Too often, we live our lives shrouded in the armor of our childhood defenses-not realizing that it is safe to shed these false identities and deceptive layers of protection. When we do, we open up a whole new world of possibility, a whole new level of potential for success, happiness, adventure, and love. Most importantly, we give ourselves the greatest gift possible: freedom, the freedom to be who we are and live as we choose, released from the chains of past experience.

Dr. Lisa Firestone, PhD, is the Director of Research and Education for The Glendon Association. Since 1987, she has been involved in clinical training and applied research in suicide and violence. In collaboration with Dr. Robert Firestone, her studies resulted in the development of the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST) and the Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT). Dr. Firestone has published numerous professional articles, and most recently was the co-author of the books: Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships (APA Books, 2006),Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice(New Harbinger, 2002), and Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion: The Wisdom of Psychotherapy (APA Books, 2003).

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The heartwrenching stories and startling statistics coming out about bullying are commanding a justified level of concern in parents. With new data revealing that more kids are affected by bullying and cyber-bullying than we ever imagined and that both bullies and victims are at higher risk for suicide, our eyes are opening to the fact that we’re faced with a potentially life-threatening situation. So what can we do to protect our children against the painful effects of bullying?

The primary step in helping our children persevere when being bullied or facing other sources of trauma is equipping them with a solid foundation of emotional resilience by ensuring that they feel accepted at home. It is important that we accept our kids for whoever they are, no matter how different they are from us or from how we expected them to be. When kids feel consistently accepted for who they are, they are more able to cope with stress and adversity.

According to NPR, a study conducted Dr. Caitlin Ryan, Director of the Family Acceptance Project, has “found that the gay, lesbian and bisexual young adults and teens at the highest risk of attempting suicide and having some other health problems are ones who reported a high level of rejection by their families as a result of their sexual orientation.” Dr. Ryan further found that if kids are bullied, being accepted by their families has a buffering effect, making them less susceptible to negative outcomes.

As parents, we want our kids to feel confident within themselves, so that even if they experience bullying, they will be able to recover. As PTSD expert Dr. Donald Meichenbaum has said, “Resilience reflects the ability to ‘bounce back’ … [and] move from being a victim to being a ‘survivor’, and even to becoming a ‘thriver’.” If we want our children to have the ability to adapt to, handle, and overcome the tough situations they encounter in life, the effort to provide them with these skills must begin at home. Here are some of the dos and don’ts of building resilience in our children.

Do:

1. Inspire Positive Emotions: It’s essential that we provide our kids with opportunities to have positive emotions. This sounds simple, but very often we get so distracted by the practicalities of parenting (making sure our kids change their clothes, brush their teeth, and do their homework) that we fail to provide them with enough opportunities to be joyful. We should always encourage our children to find pleasure and humor in life.
2. Find an Area of Interest: Helping our kids find an area that interests them and that they can excel in is a gift that can shape their lives. Get them involved in activities that help them feel good about themselves. Provide them with a variety of opportunities to find what specifically appeals to them. In doing this, we should be flexible in our expectations of children. If they prefer sketching cartoons when we’d prefer they were playing the cello, it is important to support them in their excitement. It is also important not to confuse false praise with encouragement. Kids can tell the difference and often feel confused when our compliments don’t match their accomplishments.
3. Teach Mindfulness: Children must be taught how to calm themselves down when falling apart or feeling aggressive. We can read young children books like The Peaceful Piggy, which introduces them to the benefits of mindfulness and how it can help them develop the ability to remain calm, even in the face of bullying. For advice on teaching mindfulness to children, parents can read The Whole-Brain Child, which offers techniques for developing “mindsight,” the ability to see what is going on in our minds and the minds of others. This helps our children be able to recognize their own reactions and better understand others, so they can more effectively cope with bullies.
4. Promote Problem Solving Skills: To equip our kids with invaluable problem solving skills, we must show them how to be flexible in their responses. If a child faces a challenging situation, it’s important to sit down with them and encourage them to think about the many possible courses of action available and which will yield the most benefit. If, for example, they endure teasing from a friend, what can they do? Is revenge really the best option? Does ignoring it really solve the problem? Should they talk directly to the friend about how the teasing makes them feel? Should an adult be present in the conversation?
5. Orient Them Toward the Future: Part of ensuring that our kids stay hopeful involves orientating them toward the future. Helping them plan for their future doesn’t necessarily mean knowing what college they want to get into or how many children they plan to have. It also doesn’t mean creating a fantasy of a future that could never exist. It is more a matter of helping them focus on their real, everyday goals, like visiting a certain city or learning to drive a car. It can mean making them aware of a heroic person who inspires them or introducing them to slightly novel situations that open them up to new ideas and opportunities. Teaching our kids that the future holds brightness and possibility is a lesson that can lift them through low times.
6. Lead by Example: In each of the previous suggestions, it is vital to lead by example. Telling our kids what to do and how to behave will rarely influence them as much as showing them how to handle difficult situations. Exposing them to the constructive approaches we take in finding solutions to problems in our lives encourages them to handle matters in a similar way. If we come home complaining about our responsibilities or feeling victimized by our boss, we encourage kids to take the same attitude toward their own challenges.

Don’t:

1. Support Maladaptive Thinking: Negative thoughts contribute to a child’s insecurities and low self-esteem. Allowing our children to focus or dwell on a perceived weakness or negative trait is not constructive. Rather, it is productive for us to encourage them to challenge their hostile self-criticisms and self-attacks. This form of maladaptive thinking, which is referred to as the “critical inner voice,” leads a child to feel mentally defeated and victimized by circumstances. Allowing our kids to ruminate or act on these critical inner voices can have harmful effects. Instead, encourage them to identify these negative thoughts and challenge them in their actions. Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, a book I co-authored with Dr. Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett, provides exercises for recognizing and overcoming this internal bully.
2. Be Critical, Coddling, or Ignore Issues: We should always support our kids in new challenges. We can help by putting them in somewhat novel situations in which they’re slightly uncomfortable, but we’re there to back them up. We shouldn’t over-push them, leading them to feel abandoned or afraid, nor should we overprotect them by speaking for them or stepping in too often, which teaches them to feel dependent or helpless. Most importantly, we should never pretend not to notice that there’s a problem. Ignoring the fact that our children are struggling will not encourage them to toughen up and move on. It will only leave them feeling more alone than ever.
3. Dwell on the Negative: When a child goes through a negative experience, it is important to give them the platform to talk about it. Encourage the child to express what happened and how it made him or her feel. We can help our children resolve any traumas they experience by reframing the experiences so that they can learn from them. This is not to say we should attempt to alter reality or ignore the fact that they were hurt. However, the more people mull over painful events or tell themselves stories about being victims, the worse off they are.
4. Avoid Dealing with Painful Events: When a traumatic event occurs, we shouldn’t help our kids engage in avoidant behavior by steering clear of anything that reminds them of the occurrence. Never avoid talking about painful events. One of the challenges in stopping bullying is that many children fail to disclose incidents of abuse. When we encourage our kids to talk about bad things that happen to them, we help them make sense out of these experiences. Memories that are not made sense of can have negative effects on children. They may start to show behavior problems, increased fears, stress, or anger. Creating a coherent narrative helps make meaning out of experiences and form a sense of personal agency and closure.

As parents, we may not be able to protect our children from the bullies that exist in the world, but we can help our kids build the resilience required to not allow bullying to have the devastating impact it is capable of having on a child’s life. And this will provide them with an essential coping tool that they can take with them into adulthood.

Dr. Lisa Firestone, PhD, is the Director of Research and Education for The Glendon Association. Since 1987, she has been involved in clinical training and applied research in suicide and violence. In collaboration with Dr. Robert Firestone, her studies resulted in the development of the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST) and the Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT). Dr. Firestone has published numerous professional articles, and most recently was the co-author of the books: Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships (APA Books, 2006),Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice(New Harbinger, 2002), and Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion: The Wisdom of Psychotherapy (APA Books, 2003).

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If it suddenly feels like anywhere you go, you’re surrounded by heavily pregnant women, it is probably not your imagination. In the United States, there are more births during the months that close out summer and ring in fall than any other time of year. The season marks an exciting and scary time in the lives of many expectant parents. Physical and mental preparations are made to accommodate the grand entrance of a human life into your family. And while this is perhaps one of the most anticipated moments in life, there are still certain things no one seems to talk about when it comes to what to expect when you’re expecting

In my 25 years as a researcher and clinical psychologist, I have become familiar with the trials and tribulations of countless parents who’ve been taken aback by the unforeseen challenges and emotions that come with making the transition into parenthood. One of the worst parts of going through the roller coaster ride of having a child is the feeling that so many parents have that they are unique in their struggles and unlike all other parents. Too often, new parents feel alone in their lows, and therefore, unworthy of their highs. By recognizing that certain struggles are, in fact, shared by most parents, we can allow ourselves to be more curious, introspective, and compassionate toward ourselves, as we face the challenges that come with parenting. Here are four common reactions that are rarely discussed, but that should be expected when entering this new phase of life:

1. Saying Goodbye to Being a Kid

Along with obvious changes, such as lack of sleep and a complete shift in day-to-day priorities, there are transitions of parenthood that run deeper than what’s observed on the surface. Becoming a parent marks the ultimate step away from one’s own childhood. Being a mother or father can challenge the part of us that still longs to be nurtured or taken care of. Many pregnant women have just spent nine long months feeling “pampered,” being treated gently, and attracting interest. The sudden shift from feeling taken care of to becoming the primary caretaker of a dependent newborn can be wonderful, but it can also stir us up emotionally.

No matter how old we are when we decide to start a family, a symbolic separation takes place in our minds that many of us aren’t even aware of. However, this separation frequently affects the way we feel and can manifest itself in sadness, anxiety, depression, or a sense of loss. It can even arouse emotions of which we are deeply ashamed, such as resentment or jealousy toward our baby. The mixed bag of emotions we experience as new parents often leaves us falling silent about anything negative we may be feeling. This prevents us from realizing that having these feelings does NOT mean we don’t love our children or value and appreciate the fact that they were born. However, if we feel guilty or refuse to talk about our negative reactions, we miss out on identifying where these feelings are coming from and on better understanding ourselves so that we can become better parents.

2. Milestones that Stir Up Emotions

Parenthood has the amazing ability to rouse feelings, thoughts, and memories from our childhood that we may have long since buried or forgotten. Our children act as constant triggers of the painful things we experienced while growing up. No matter how perfect our parents and caretakers may seem to us, every human being is flawed and carries with them their own shortcomings. The ways we were hurt as children influences our thoughts and affects our feelings as adults. Painful experiences from the past can trigger reactions in us in the present without us even making the connection. If we had a parent who worried excessively about our every move, on some level, we will hold on to that cautious feeling of panic in each step we take in of our adult lives. This is especially the case when we become parents.

For example, a man who’d just become a dad was having irrational fears about picking up his newborn son. Instead of challenging his worry, he left his wife to do most of the early caregiving. This left both he and his wife disappointed, as both had expected him to be a hands-on parent. When I asked my friend about his own dad, he could barely remember him. He too had left all the parenting to his wife and was only really in the picture to offer discipline or advice. Although the young father felt he was completely different than his own father in his desire to care for his son, as soon as his son was born, these negative thoughts flooded his mind telling him that he didn’t know what he was doing, that he would never be a good dad, and he should just stay away from the baby. By identifying where these negative thoughts, which I refer to as “critical inner voices,” came from, the man was able to challenge himself by taking actions to care for his son. He found he was not only competent in doing so, but that he also really enjoyed the tender moments between them.

3. The Fear of Becoming Your Mother or Father

While we are aware of fears like not waking up to the baby crying or forgetting to put wipes in the diaper bag, there are more psychological concerns we carry with us as new parents that don’t necessarily rise to consciousness but that influence us all the same. One of these is the fear of becoming like our own parents. We are horrified when we find ourselves saying or doing the very things we hated our parents saying and doing to us. The truth is that how we were treated as kids will continuously influence how we treat our own kids. Unresolved issues that we haven’t faced and fully felt or made sense of can influence the way we act in our relationships, especially those we form with our children.

If you had a parent who worked a lot, which left you feeling neglected and like you weren’t a priority, you may tend to focus on your career and ignore your child. If you had a parent who worried excessively about your every move, you may tend to be overprotective of your own child. However, the fear that we will hurt our child in the ways we were hurt can overwhelm us when our children are born. It can cause us to overcompensate or to question ourselves more than we should.

A friend of mine noticed that after her first baby started walking, she was constantly worried that the baby would fall. Even as she or her partner walked right next to the baby, ready to grab her at the first wobble, my friend simply couldn’t shake her fear. As a result, she often picked up the baby instead of letting her walk. This frustrated both her partner and her baby. In one moment of distress, my friend confided in me, “It’s just, my mother never paid attention to my sister when she was learning to walk. She must have fallen and hit her head like every afternoon.” This “aha” moment for my friend helped her understand her fear. It also helped her to stop reacting to her mother’s style by trying to make up for her carelessness. Such examples illustrate that, while it is important to make conscious decisions about how we want to be in relation to our children, the fears we torment ourselves with can leave us to act in ways we don’t respect.

4. Projecting Yourself Onto Your Children

When our reactions to our children are either imitating or compensating for the ways we were treated as kids, we run the risk of not living in the current moment and not reacting appropriately to the present circumstances. Our kids are not us, and their story is not our own. Pressuring them to succeed in areas we failed or assuming they will make the same mistakes we did may do our kids a disservice and bend them out of shape. Many of us have known parents who made so many rules and set such high standards that they ultimately drove their kids in the opposite direction of what either they or their parents had wanted for them, be it a solid education, a nurtured talent, or a healthy lifestyle.

Though it may seem unlikely, we can start projecting these things onto our kids when they are still very young. I once met a mother who was certain her 6-month-old baby would cry at night “just to bother her.” This perception was clearly an inaccurate view of the situation and rather a direct projection of the burdensome way in which her own mother viewed her as a child.
By getting to know ourselves and how our pasts influenced who we are, we can differentiate ourselves from negative experiences that influence us today. In doing so, we influence our kids to be themselves instead of who we’ve needed them to be for our own purposes.

5. A More Pronounced Sense of Age and Time

Having a child may be the single most concrete symbol of adulthood. The sense that we are older, that the term “my family” no longer means our parents and us, but us and our children, is a powerful alteration to experience. Becoming a “mom” or “dad” weighs us with a mature responsibility. While we may not intuitively associate an experience of new life and birth with age and mortality, this connection is often made on an unconscious level. Having a baby forces us to acknowledge the passing of time and face the fact that we are getting older.

In addition, giving a child life impairs us with the knowledge that the life we have given them is temporary, that they too will grow up and face their own mortality, just as we’ve had to. Regardless of the beliefs or principles you hold, this realization can create a heightened awareness of time, change, and the life cycle that alters your perspective for the rest of your life. Dozens of my clients have told me of how, after the birth of their first baby, they were struck by two emotions: the overwhelming joy that they had given this person life and the overwhelming guilt that this is a temporary gift.

By being attuned and sensitive, (curious, open, and accepting), toward your own emotions, you give your child the best chance of having the strongest and healthiest parent available to them at all times. The guilt that comes with not feeling inside like the perfect parent you’d like to be on the outside is a sentiment most new parents encounter at one point or another. Rather than going with this guilt, it is important to get to know yourself, to identify your reactions and to understand where they come from. In doing so, you differentiate your own past from your present and your own child from your adult self in a way that allows you to love them freely and support them in their own independent path to adulthood.

Dr. Lisa Firestone, PhD, is the Director of Research and Education for The Glendon Association. Since 1987, she has been involved in clinical training and applied research in suicide and violence. In collaboration with Dr. Robert Firestone, her studies resulted in the development of the Firestone Assessment of Self-Destructive Thoughts (FAST) and the Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT). Dr. Firestone has published numerous professional articles, and most recently was the co-author of the books: Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships (APA Books, 2006),Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice(New Harbinger, 2002), and Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion: The Wisdom of Psychotherapy (APA Books, 2003).

Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships

by Robert W. Firestone, Lisa A. Firestone, Joyce Catlett

Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice: A Revolutionary Program to Counter Negative Thoughts and Live Free from Imagined Limitations
by Robert W. Firestone, Lisa Firestone, Joyce Catlett, Pat Love

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In the following interview, Dr. Dan Siegel talks about the different types of attachment styles that individuals develop during childhood as a result of the relationship they had with their parents. Embracing the freedom to see parents as they really are literally liberates the adolescent to find his or her own way in life.

These exclusive video clips are part of a featured interview series with Dr. Dan Siegel, an expert in the theory of Mindsight, a fundamental concept that explores the dynamics of healthy relationships.

Idealization of Parents

Idealization of parents you know has an understandable benefit as a child. Because it makes you feel safe in the world, it makes you feel that there’s an entity called “parent” that is perfect and does what it needs to do to keep you feeling good and protected from harm and reliable, you know, so it’s really understandable why kids idealize parents.
But the normal course of adolescence, as anyone with adolescents knows, is to bust through that idealization and find your own way towards seeing the truth, which is that your parents are people, they have positive sides and negative sides, they let you down in certain ways and they really held you up in other ways. You know, and embracing that kind of freedom literally liberates the adolescent to find their own way in life. And adolescents who hold on to the idealization of childhood are really hampered. Because they can’t move forward. They often have to constrain their own development in order to maintain the idealization of the parent.
They can’t own the certain ways the parent was negative in their life. They can’t own the impact of the negative parts of parenting on themselves. And they also haven’t given themselves the freedom to just say, “Hey, you know, my parent likes chocolate, I like vanilla,” you know, “forget them, I’m going a vanilla way,” or whatever. So they’re constrained even in exploring their own preferences.

Emotional Balance

The overall view of attachment that’s so helpful is to realize that when parents have a kind of presence in their own skin, you can call it mindfulness, you can call it being coherent. You can say they have what’s called “mind sight” — they can see their own minds and they can see the minds of others; when parents have this feature of not just reacting to behaviors, but seeing the mind beneath the behavior, the behavior that’s coming from themselves or from others – when the mind is seen that way, when mind sight is present, what studies are really showing is that parents provide the kind of communication that promotes security of attachment. And when kids have security of attachment, they have the ability to regulate their bodies, to attune to other people, to balance their emotions. So, emotions get revved up and you feel life has meaning. They don’t get too revved up so they’re out of control and become, let’s say, violent and they’re not too depleted, where you just feel hopeless and despair and depressed. That’s emotional balance.

Avoidant Attachment

In the other attachment situations where parents don’t have that kind of capacity to be very present in their own skin and present in their own relationships, what happens is, children will pick up, in the case of avoidant attachment, a feeling like, “There is no internal intention of my caregiver to know me.” Some children then experience that there’s no one to know and there’s this deep sense of emptiness and what happens is in those children grown into adolescence and then into adults that I work with, what I see is that the way they look at the world is as if the world were only one aspect – the physical aspect, that which is touchable, measurable, weighable – and those people just see reality as purely on the physical plane of existence, physical aspect of reality. So if you have a plane of reality, one side of that plane is physical. Of course the physical world is real. But another side that’s equally real, is the mental side, the subjective internal sea that fills us with feelings and thoughts and hopes and dreams and impulses, desires, longings. In the group of avoidantly attached kids, there’s this amazing blindness to the sea inside, and the way of understanding it through the initial mirror neuron system interaction is that they don’t have any experience that their caregivers saw that world, so that world is not created inside of themselves.

Optimal Attachment

For a child where a parent has positive intentions of loving and care and concern, the child will pick up those intentions and even if you goof up as a parent, a child is going to pick you that you didn’t mean to do that, you didn’t mean to hurt them, you misunderstood, it was a rupture that they didn’t intend.  Then there’s a repair that’s made.  So repairing ruptures is the most essential thing in parenting.  And a child will pick up your intention to do good by them, to really make a connection that’s loving and supportive even if it can’t happen all the time.  Just being human.  They see the whole intention behind those actions and their mirror neuron system is filled with a sense of, “WOW.  It’s possible to be human and still be full of love.”

Ambivalent Attachment

Now, people with ambivalent attachment histories, what you see there is, if I’m feeling hungry and my internal state is hunger and I cry out of hunger and you’re my mom and you see that I’m hungry. But you yourself have a very anxious, ambivalent history and you really doubt your capacity as a mom, so you come to me, seeing I’m hungry, really wanting to feed me, but being terrified that you’re not going to be able to do it and nervous and concerned and doubting your ability. And you come with all this anxiety inside of you that I’m just hungry, but now you’re feeling anxious. So my mirror neurons, which probably should be called “sponge neurons” is really what it is. I’m not really going to so much mirror you as sponge in, just soak in your internal state. So I sponge in what’s going on in you, I’m hungry, but now, since you’re feeling anxious, I’m feeling anxious. There’s no reason for me to have your anxiety. But because you have unresolved issues, you have left over garbage, I pick them up. My sense of self then becomes very confused. All I know as a 2 month old, 3 month old, year old kid is I’m hungry. But now, hunger gets neurologically connected to anxiety and uncertainty for no reason except from our interaction. So there’s where the mirror neurons can make my internal sense of self confused in the avoidantly attached kid, it kind of disconnected. In the ambivalently attached kid, it’s confusion.

Disorganized Attachment

And then with the disorganized-ly attached child, it becomes fragmented. And what this looks like from the mirror neuron point of view is, you come at me really, really angry and you’re terrifying me, not so much from you fear, which could be there, but with your fury. Right? Now I see your intention. You may not want this intention to be there, but it is. Your intention is there to hurt me. And I look at you and my mirror neuron grouping makes the assessment that the intention of this caregiver is to do me harm. Now, that is totally incompatible with my whole evolutionary history as a mammal, of attachment. Where my attachment figure is supposed to protect me, to want good things for me, to provide safety, security for me. All these experiences that I’m evolutionarily engineered to have, you are now violating. Because of your own unresolved trauma or grief is what the research would show. So because you haven’t done the therapeutic work to actually heal yourself, maybe you didn’t have to opportunity, maybe you didn’t even know it was possible, maybe you’re just on automatic pilot, maybe your so mind sight-less that you don’t even know that you can change your own mind, for whatever reasons, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It does make you an unresolved parent. And my mirror neuron system soaks in your intention to harm me. Even though it’s not your global intention, at that moment, you have it. And you can show by microanalysis of video, you know, something like this. Like a parent comes up to a child and goes like that – the teeth snarling there like an animal may last, you know, a quarter of a second or less. You can hardly see it. You get a feeling like, ‘what was that?’ You slow down the video and you see this – like that. And we are, you know, animals, after all. We have these very complex nervous systems and with unresolved trauma, you often see this lack of integration of the nervous system. So what you get is this very rapid, low road thing where theses fight responses that are deeply embedded in the brain stem and limbic areas response get activated. And so the child picks that up like that. Now what’s a child going to do when they’re intentional sponge neurons are soaking in the intention to be harmed by the one who’s supposed to protect? You fragment. And in that fragmentation is dissociation, is dis-association of the usual continuity of the self. We all have multiple selves, but here the multiple selves are fragmented.

Disorganized Attachment in the Making

Most people are doing the best they can. Not everyone. But most people do the best they can. And when you bring that positive regard, then even a parent who is abusive to a child can be understood with empathy and compassion. So that many parents who themselves are providing the terrifying experiences that lead to disorganized attachment, have themselves experienced all sorts of trauma and loss. And if we just look at an example you know, let’s say a child is asserting herself of not wanting to have her father brush her teeth, let’s say. And the father himself was the unfavored child and was beaten as a child when his siblings weren’t and he gets an experience now as a father where the child says, “You’re not going to brush my teeth. Only mommy’s going to brush my teeth.” And he says, “No, I’m going to brush your teeth.” When the child says, “No, no, it’s mommy!” a couple of things are going to start happening. The kind of memory that embedded in our nervous system that isn’t woven into a narrative of who we are, so in this guy’s case – the feeling of abandonment by parents because they favored the other siblings – the feeling of terror, of people coming after you to beat you, in general, but especially when they’re supposed to be protecting you. All that kind of betrayal, humiliation, abandonment – that can be embedded in what’s called “implicit memory.” It’s the emotional perceptual, bodily memory, sometimes behavioral memory. It does what’s called priming the brain for readiness to act. So at this moment, when his 2-year-old daughter is saying, “Mommy’s going to brush my teeth, not you!” This father’s brain, if it has unresolved trauma, which in this case we’re describing, the implicit memories will become activated. Now, at that moment, he could go down a couple of routes. One is purely reactive, in which he feels humiliated by his own daughter: I should be a competent father, let me brush your teeth. She goes, “No, no, no. You don’t know how to do it!” “I can do it. I can do it.” So that sense of incompetence as a father brings up humiliation that then resonates with the humiliation from his own childhood. So it can trigger that directly like that. The mirror neuron system of the father can also pick up the anger of the daughter, because it goes both ways. So the father’s mirror neurons are soaking in like a sponge the daughter’s anger, “You can’t brush my teeth!” And she’s showing this anger. That’s going to trigger, in a mirror neuron way, his own anger. So now he’s got humiliation, abandonment, betrayal. The daughter gets more and more angry at him for his insisting and maybe he grabs the tooth brush and tries to start, you know, brushing her teeth and maybe she bites his hand and who knows what’s going to happen there? And it can go extremely quickly from a father saying to his daughter, “You need to brush your teeth.” to within 10 seconds a father out of control. And the ‘out of control’ are all these activations of implicit memory, all these mirror neurons soaking in of present emotional resonance with the daughter. And then because he has a history of disorganized attachment, this father, if he hasn’t worked it through in therapy, he’ll be prone to the low road. Now, once the low road starts to happen, of course, with all this implicit subcortical memory being activated at that moment, all the subcortical resonance of the mirror neuron system happening at that moment, it shuts off prefrontal functioning and what’s going to happen is he is going to be letting loose an evolutionary onslaught of, in one case, if he collapses in hopelessness, he may just start crying and fall down on the floor and scream. He may get fearful and just run away. But even as likely is he’ll get angry and hit his daughter. That he’ll be so enraged at the assault on his sense of self, the cortex is off line, that he will become not only verbally abusive, but potentially emotionally and physically abusive to her.

Dr. Siegel is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he is also on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization that focuses on the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families.

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Dr. Don Meichenbaum, PTSD expert, discusses an individuals journey from birth, to engaging in violence in this exclusive interview series with Dr. Lisa Firestone.

I’m a clinical psychologist and for thirty-five years, I had been involved at the University of Waterloo, which is near Toronto and we have developed what are called cognitive-behavioral procedures to work with children, adolescents, and adults. In fact, we developed a procedure called stress-inoculation training, which is the best evidence- based intervention in working with angry and aggressive individuals.

So after being at the University for 35 years, I retired and I have become a research director for the Melissa Institute For Violence Prevention and I invite your viewers to visit the website because we have a lot of information that they could access, both as educators and others, about how to alter the trajectory of violent behavior.

Many of the individuals I work with, I have a whole project now with returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and they have a high incidence of not only dealing with the PTSD, but the anger and substance abuse. So we have worked with them and having them appreciate how you can also address substance abuse which also exacerbates it.

I think we have a pretty good feel, and if your viewers visit the Melissa Institute website, you will see how you make a violent individual. You see, Melissa was a young lady who went to Washington University in St. Louis, and she was in her last year and she was car jacked and murdered. Now when such a tragedy like that befalls an individual, one of the things they do is they transform their pain into something good that could come of it.  So they created this institute against violence and I am the research director. We run conferences, we train people, and we do consultations. Everything that the Melissa Institute does is available free and online. So if your viewers are interested in following this up, I really invite them to visit the www.MelissaInstitute.org. There’s a sister website for educators, these websites have gotten over 3 million hits, so people are using these procedures with some efficacy pretty much around the world.

Violence Prevention: A Gender Sensitive Approach

This is a critically important event. You watch the 6 o’clock news, CNN, Headline news, every one is another story of violence. We now need to address that — both on a preventative and treatment basis — and that’s what I and the Melissa Institute are committed to doing. And you need to do this in a gender-sensitive way because it turns out that treating girls is different than treating boys in terms of how aggression develops and therefore, you need gender-specific kinds of issues.

Dr. F: What do you see as the differences?

Once again, we had a whole conference at the Melissa Institute (about this) and so I’m going to only capture the bit of this, but girls are much more likely to have what is called relational aggression, silent bullying, gossiping, exclusion and so forth. Boys do this as well and there are different developmental courses. Girls are more likely to have a history of victimization, they’re more likely to have co-morbid features of depression, suicidality, so one of the things that is now been developed, both by Beth Peppler, in Toronto, programs in Oregon, is how to have gender-sensitive interventions that address these kinds of needs.

The other thing is that these girls who are violent and aggressive are more likely to have a history of victimization that needs to be addressed, as part of the therapy process. So over and above the skills training, the stress inoculation, you need to have trauma-focused interventions, which is the major treatment for PTSD in the area of cognitive-behavioral interventions. Remember I said that individuals who have PTSD are very prone, up to 7 times more likely to be violent. So addressing the co-occurrence of that is an absolutely critical issue.

Dr. F: And that’s true in males as well, I imagine.

That’s true of males and females.

Dr. F: Because men that we interviewed who have been violent, have incredible trauma histories.

DM: Yes, incredible and the question is how can we help them deal with that trauma history besides using aggressive responses? How do you get them to transform that anger, that pain, that grief, that guilt, that shame.

No One is Doomed to a Life of Violence

I think that there are individuals who fall along the dimension of angry and aggressive behavior, especially with co-occurant problems, who vary in their prognosis and the likelihood of them benefiting from treatment. But from my perspective, I don’t think the data says there’s anyone you should write off, OK. I do not think you are doomed. Now, the later you intervene, the less likelihood of success. The more likely that people are surrounded by peers where aggression is valued and honored in that culture, the degree to which aggression works, the lower the likelihood of them benefitting from treatment.
But there are numerable accounts of people who have been very angry and aggressive, who have found faith, spirituality, who have found a mate, who have found a mission, who have transformed their pain into something good that could come of it. So from my point of view, I think that there is hope for all. That doesn’t reduce the risk, I’m not an unrealistic person, but I would not give up on any individual and moreover have them think about how they can make a gift of their experience. So we have asked people who have been rather angry and aggressive, what advice would they have for other people so they don’t follow in their footsteps? So the name of the game is how to make a gift of your experience that could help others. There are clearly some serial killers, other people who I would not like to release and count on therapy to avoid that process. Them being put away is reassuring to me and to society. But before you ever got to that point, do you think we could have intervened?
Especially with those people with histories, you’re talking about 20% of kids coming into schools having that background. What are we now doing to address that?

 
Donald Meichenbaum, Ph.D. is  a founder of Cognitive Behavioral Modification and has been voted one of the 10 most influential psychotherapists of the Century by North American clinicians in a survey reported in the American Psychologist.  Dr. Meichenbaum is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist.

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The matter of siblings is complicated.  In family life they are our first peers.  Consequently, we learn many of our problem solving skills and intimate social relating from these interactions and how our parents mediate them.  There are millions of conflicts a week: Johnny breaks Suzie’s toy, Suzie calls Johnny a name, Johnny doesn’t want to go so Suzie has to miss her dance class etc.  What we hope gets learned is that we are unique individuals with feelings and needs and have to be considerate of others.  When there are conflicts each party must manage their emotions well enough to eventually apologize and repair.  Developmentally children need to be able to name their feelings and calm down.  Next children need to learn to acknowledge how their behaviors hurt the other and make some efforts to repair. Empathy and building problem-solving skills are essential components of successfully managing conflicts. In the absence of these skills children are at risk of employing less socially adaptive responses of retaliation and or sadistic bating in response to their unresolved hurt.

Teaching our children to be accountable for their behavior and be considerate of others provides a valuable life skill.  This is a two-step process: 1) Take responsibility for one’s behavior and how it affects the other. This requires both awareness of one’s own feelings and those of another without making excuses or blaming 2) Make efforts to repair, fix or make amends.  In this step the child can be experience responsible guilt and a constructive resolution.  An example of this is when Johnny has to apologize to Suzie for his behavior and give voice to the fact that his feelings/actions caused her distress.  In this way he is taking responsibility for his behavior.  Next Johnny has to make reparation to his sister by paying to replace Suzie’s broken toy out of his allowance.  By implementing these two steps, Suzie feels like her feelings were heard and rights acknowledged.   Similarly, when Suzie does something to Johnny the same type of repair process is repeated and Johnny feels his rights were acknowledged and his feelings were heard. Ultimately repetition of this process embeds the qualities of accountability and consideration into how the child manages conflicts in relationships in the future.

Unfortunately, there are circumstances when this process doesn’t work and result in retaliation and/or sadistic bating. Sometimes the challenges stem from how a parent learned about sibling relationships in their childhood.  One such challenge may arise from a parent having a strong empathic response for a particular child due to birth order. For example, if a parent was the baby in the family and always felt inadequate or put down they may not see why when Suzie insists on tagging along with Johnny, Johnny might be resentful and retaliate later.  Similarly, if the parent as the eldest child felt that the younger child got all the breaks, the parent may not see the hurt Suzie feels from Johnny’s resentful comments leading Suzie to take matters into her own hands as she bates her brother to get him in trouble.  Finally, some parents get overwhelmed by their children’s strong feelings and respond by sending both children to their rooms.  Without a good road map on how to navigate sibling conflicts children may take matters into their own hands with less constructive results.

Another factor that may feed the sadistic and retaliatory behavior between siblings is when one of the siblings is very impulsive, demanding and intense and/or provocative.  If one of the children, Johnny or Suzie, has difficulty managing their feelings and calming down, conflict management is significantly hampered.  Similarly, if Suzie or Johnny can’t understand that the other person has rights and feelings, repair is also challenged.  Finally, if a parent has the perspective that the hurtful behavior was “deserved” (ie: Suzie deserved to have her toy broken because she “annoying” her brother or Johnny deserved to be called a name because he was cussing) the parents are inadvertently teaching that retaliation and sadistic pleasure are condoned ways of dealing with others who hurt our feelings or violate our rights. Clearly in these types of situations it is important for the parent to address Suzie or Johnny’s provocative behavior so the siblings does not take matters into their own hands.

The scope of this problem is not small.  With the exponential increase in the incidence of autistic spectrum disorder, we have many children who have difficulty regulating their emotions, seeing the impact of their behavior on others and recognizing the feelings and rights of others.  Similarly, children with ADHD can be very impulsive, have difficulty managing their emotional reactivity and have difficulty seeing the cause and effect relationship between their reactions and the consequences.  Other diagnosis such as Bipolar disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder and Anxiety Disorder to name a few are clinical conditions that are also associated with difficult behaviors.  If a child has a clinical condition, the demand on parents to manage the sibling relationship is much more challenged.

Parenting children who struggle with a clinical condition requires additional parenting skills.  First, it is important for the parents to have a clear sense of their children’s capacity to manage their impulsivity and/or emotional reactivity. Furthermore, understanding the child’s triggers can help with minimizing the factors that provoke disturbing behavior.  For example, if Suzie who has ADHD, gets irritable at 2pm and begins calling her brother names for even the slightest infraction because lunch was at 11:30am, having snack ready in the car can minimize this behavior. Another trigger for some children is managing ambiguous responses.  If you are not sure how you feel about responding to Suzie’s request for sushi for dinner, saying maybe now and no later can be a trigger. It is also important to minimizing situations that invite impulsive behavior (ie: taking your child who wants to buy everything they see into store).  Additionally, some respect of Suzie or Johnny’s sensitivities may be appropriate.  For example, if Johnny who is on the autistics spectrum, gets upset by loud noises and Jane knows this, she can make a choice to keep her loud toy in her room or play with it when Johnny is not around. Similarly if Johnny looses his appetite if his Jane starts describing bugs or injuries at the dinner table, an expectation can be established that these topics are not acceptable at meal times.  Therefore, having a clear sense of the triggers for your child can be very helpful in decreasing the frequency and/or intensity of their reactivity making a more peaceful and considerate home for all the children

While some accommodation is needed and appropriate, the needs of one child should not be the “tail that wags the dog”.  Suzie and Johnny can not be allowed to impinge on Dick and Jane such that they don’t feel safe and relaxed in their own home.  So, in addition to minimizing unnecessary triggers, it is important that Johnny or Suzie learn to manage demands associated with family life such as getting up in the morning in time for school, taking a shower, doing homework, staying at the dinner table etc.  These expectations need to be developmentally reasonable, and implemented in a manner that is not be too harsh or quick to minimize resistance and reactivity.  If the demands are implemented with out such considerations, Johnny or Suzie is at risk of being a lightning rod for all the problems in the family. While emotional upsets associated with implementing these expectations are likely, it is helpful to let the other child(ren) Dick and/or Jane, know that you as the parent are managing it.  During this process all siblings need empathy and to be reassured you as the parent are in control.  Suzie or Johnny needs to know you understand their distress but still expect them to comply.  This demonstrates to the Dick and/or Jane that they can rely on you to be empathic and have confidence that you are managing the behavior.

When parenting Suzie and/or Johnny’s challenging behavior, a time should be made to debrief the Dick and/or Jane.  At these times it is important to be empathic with Dick and/or Jane letting them know you understand how scary it is when the Suzie and/or Johnny say “I hate you”, “your stupid” or make other hostile statements.  Dick and Jane may have many feelings such as resentment, frustration, and embarrassment that their family has these struggles.  Letting them know that it is your job as the parent to keep them safe and to help Johnny or Suzie learn to manage their feelings relieves the sibling of the feeling that they are alone and must resort to retaliation and/or sadistically provoking their annoying sibling.

Ultimately, it is our job as parents to help our children learn to be accountability for their behavior and demonstrate consideration for others when managing conflicts   These skills get modeled at home with how sibling conflicts are mediated. The unique history of the parents and the reactivity of the child(ren) are significant variables in how this process unfolds in each family.  Sometimes the challenges are beyond our experience and require therapeutic assistance to learn to navigate.  Ultimately, parenting that focuses on minimizing unnecessary triggers, regards individual differences between siblings and has clear expectations of repair, decreases the risk that siblings will take matters into their own hands and employ sadistic and retaliatory methods to deal with their hurt feelings in the family and in their futures.

Read More From Dr. Debra Kessler

 
Debra Kessler, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in the care of children and their families. Dr. Kessler was awarded her Bachelor of Science in Nursing, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Vanderbilt University. While working as an RN in Pediatric Intensive Care, she pursued a Masters Degree in Pediatrics from UCLA to further her skills in caring for children. After a career in nursing that included bedside nursing, Kessler chose to focus her attention on addressing the emotional needs of children and their families by obtaining a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at California School of Professional Psychology. Her post-doctorate work was done with Child Development Institute treating autistic and developmentally challenged preschool and young children and at Reiss-Davis Child Study center addressing the needs of school children, adolescents and their families. She has contributed to Infant/Child Mental Health, Early Intervention, and Relationship-Based Therapies: A Neurorelational Framework for Interdisciplinary Practice (Lillas &Turnbull 2009). Dr. Kessler has an active practice in Montrose, California. In a family centered manner, she treats a range of developmental and emotional issues including adoption/attachment difficulties, bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, autism/Asperger’s syndrome, ADHD, learning challenges, regulatory difficulties and other issues that interfere with children reaching their potential.

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In 1989, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a public report stating that up to a third of all teen suicides were committed by gay youth, there was a flurry of media attention and speculation surrounding the rising rates of teen suicide committed by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered youth. It was suggested that the data indicated that these young people were suicidal because of their sexual orientation.

Where a university study published in the American Journal of Public Health reported that “homosexual or bisexual junior high boys are 7 times more likely than heterosexual boys of the same age to report suicide attempts,” the same study reported that among teenage girls, homosexuality and bisexuality are not significant factors in suicide attempts, suicidal thoughts, or suicidal intentions. These findings make it clear that sexual orientation does not predispose an individual to suicidal thoughts or actions.  They found that factors such as verbal and physical harassment, substance abuse, or isolation from peers for being sexually “different” contribute to their high rates of suicide.

New research reveals that rising rates of suicide in LGBT young adults has less to do with their “minority sexual orientation” status, and everything to do with the social stigma and negative societal responses that LGBT teens face on a daily basis as a result of gender expression outside our accepted norms. Consistent research over the past few years has shown that LGBT youths are disproportionately bullied, and that the effects of that bullying increase a risk of suicide that continues into adulthood.

The media has played a large part in establishing our cultural misconceptions about incidents of suicide among sexual minorities by publicizing isolated cases of bullying related LGBT suicides. The media has to act responsibly in their reporting to not imply that suicide is a natural response among LGBT teens to bullying and thereby perpetuate misperceptions of this minority group. They must be careful not to emphasize details that could actually increase the contagion of risk.

In truth, the circumstances and conditions that lead an individual to commit suicide are extremely complex. However, with LGBT youth, understanding the dynamic of societal and familial conditions that are consistent among reported incidents of suicide or attempted suicide in this group is crucial for prevention. It is our culture’s intolerance of homosexuality, which is often violent, that leads many teens to consider suicide, and an alarming number to take their own lives. The popular assumption that an LGBT individual is inherently at risk for suicide is evidence of our culture’s inability to understand or accept differences in sexual orientation or sexual expression. Our intolerance is reflected in the incidents where these people are targeted and bullied because of their perceived sexual orientation or because they do not conform to accepted gender expectations. In being seen as different and as challenging a societal norm, they are often ostracized and discriminated against. Therefore, in our investigation into the higher rate of suicide among LGBT adolescents, we should not look to them for the cause, but to ourselves and our stigmatization of them because we perceive them as “different from us.”

By: Madeline Romero

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Read an exclusive interview with Father Greg Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention group in the country.

What Homeboy Industries Does:

My name is Greg Boyle, I’m the Executive Director and Founder of Homeboy Industries, located in Los Angeles, the largest gang intervention program in the country. We serve about 12,000 people a year, 8,000 of them are gang member from 800 different gangs from all over L.A. County. They come here looking for one thing, and they probably discover other things on our menu of services. They might come to get tattoos removed. We have two laser machines, 12 doctors, 4,000 treatments a year. We have 4 job-developers trying to find jobs in the private sector. We run 5 businesses, where enemy rival gang members work side by side with each other.

So we’re big. We’ got about 400 employees or trainees, and um, anger management, all sorts of classes, mental health services you name it we do it, legal services, housing services.  So that’s who we are, you know, it’s a kind of rehab or recovery place. It’s not for those who need help, it’s for those who want help.

You know, Scripture scholars always say that throughout history and Scripture that the principle suffering of the poor is shame and disgrace. It’s not their inability to feed their families or buy Pampers. It’s shame and disgrace. And so you have to reach in and dismantle those messages of shame and disgrace and replace them with the truth. And the truth is good. It’s always good.

And so they have to redefine themselves. What happens here at Homeboy Industries, which is a therapeutic community really (is that) people get held. So they come in here and they rediscover the first attachment that was denied them when they were infants really. And so it’s delayed.  And they discover that secure base, is what psychologists will call it. And they start to feel soothed, and comforted, and ready, and resilient.

Then they can move out into the world and face whatever the world is going to hand them. So um this place kind of offers that. Alot of them come from a place of insecure, an insecure base, or problems of attachments. And that’s almost always what’s happened with them.

That’s why it’s not just a job here. We can locate jobs for folks. But when they come here they get the full package, which is loving, caring adults, who pay attention. It’s unconditional. There’s a “no matter whatness” to it, so no matter what you do we’re going to be in your corner.

And then they’re part of this family, and then it gives you what you need to kind of move on. And then you re-identify, you start to say “oh, that’s what a man looks like… that’s what courage looks like… that’s what a father ought to be.” They kind of don’t know that because they don’t have uh road signs, you know.

Prevention is key to preventing violence, we need “all hands on deck.”

Gangs a symptom, hopeful kids don’t join gangs, we need to offer an exit ramp from this gang fwy:

A lot of times people rarify this thing and they absent themselves, or say there’s nothing they can do to contribute positively to this issue. Well, all hands on deck — I think everybody needs to help as best they can. It’s an enormously complex social dilemma, so we need to be reverent of its complexity. And many things need to happen. Everything from mentoring to after-school programs, to keeping schools open, to offering an exit ramp from this craziness of this gang freeway. You want to allow them to get off, and to, to exit a previous kind of life.

You know, everybody acknowledges now that you do prevention, intervention and suppression. And you have to do all three um, but you want to do them with equal vigor and equal allocation of resources. We’re not there yet. Especially in intervention, as I understand it to mean.

If prevention is say under 14 kids who aren’t in gangs, how to you want to keep it that way. So you do all the things that you do, from mentoring and helping kids. But intervention is 14 and up, kids who have regrettably found their way into a gang. Now what do you do and how do you help them?

And they’re a tougher sell because society is into demonizing sometimes, and so it’s hard for them to see that these young men and women belong to us. But they do. And that’s, demonizing is always untruth. So we belong to each other, there is no us and them, there’s just us.

And so these are the kinds of things that have to happen first. Nobody, not even cops, say we can arrest our way out of this issue. In fact they always say the opposite. And then they proceed to (try to) arrest their way out of this issue.

Then they proceed to do everything that’s required.  And so, you know, law enforcement will do intervention, law enforcement will do prevention, and I think that’s a bad thing frankly. I think law enforcement shouldn’t do what the community can, because you want to engage more and more stakeholders, not fewer. You know, you want churches and schools and psychologists and therapists and people who can just mentor. You want them to show up.

Society is not telling law enforcement, “please solve this problem, let us know when it’s solved.” They (law enforcement) have one small piece. And then prison, you know, as a deterrent. Gosh, it’s not much of a help, although we’ve added rehabilitation to the title now. But we prepare prisoners for nothing. Nothing awaits them when they return to the community, we’ve lost our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country. So we need to rethink this. But programs and education and training are the very first things that’re cut when they need to cut prison budgets.  So that’s where we are, regrettably.

So it’s crazy. It’s costly in human lives, it’s costly in resources and money that we don’t have. And so you’d be far better off, in supporting, say, Homeboy Industries,  because it’s not for nothing in Los Angeles County the gang-related homicide rates have been cut in half and then half again, since 1992. And that’s as long as we’ve been around, and lots of programs, like ____, Communities and Schools, A Place Called Home, ___, and L.A. Conservation Corps — these are all, the people decided to do comprehensive services. And it’s worked and there’s proof. Nobody would ever suggest that law enforcement is the reason, because, nor could you suggest that we’re the solitary reason. We’re part of the reason why gang-related homicides have been cut in half and then some.

So all hands on deck, everybody needs to be involved, we belong to each other, and we all need to seek together to create a community of kinship such that God might recognize it.

What drives a person to join a gang? “Kids are never seeking (when they join a gang) they are always fleeing.”

So gang violence is not a problem it’s a symptom, it points beyond itself to all sorts of things that we need to address, from poverty to despair to racism. So nobody’s ever met a hopeful kid who joined a gang. Because hopeful kids don’t join gangs. So if you know that, then you’re going to try to infuse kids with hope and try to identify kids for whom hope is foreign. No kid is ever seeking anything when they join a gang. People always think that, that’s sort of the outsider’s view. Kids are always fleeing something, and so that’s what you want to address.

What are they fleeing? I can remember once being at a high school packed gym with kids, and I had a Homie with me who started to tell his story. And I knew parts of his story. He was about 27 years old, had been in prison, gang member. And he starts to talk and all of a sudden he stops, and he says,  “I think I was 7, I was playing with matches, and my Mom caught me and she dragged me into the kitchen, and she turned on that electric coil on top of the stove. And she put my hand down on the coil and she held it there for a really long time.”

Well, when he says this, the whole high school gym audience gasped. And then he said, “All I remember is waking up in the middle of the night and my hand was in the toilet water trying to seek relief because my hand was all pus-y and red. And severely burned.” Then the gasp again. And then he looks out at them and he said, “That’s why I joined the gang.”

And I thought it was brilliant, I thought here he had come to a sense of his connection, that nobody joins a gang, you know, “join a gang and see the world.” I don’t care what they tell you. They may tell you, “Wow, that’s what I wanted to be, they had the fast cars and the money and the women.” Don’t believe it for a second. I don’t care if a gang member is saying that. Every gang member is fleeing something and that’s why they gravitate in that direction.

There is no pull factor, there’s nothing that draws, attracts. There’s only push factors, whatever pushes this kid into that environment.

Father Boyle addresses the factors that contribute to a kid leading a life of violence, “A kid who is in pain is going to inflict pain.”

Well, I think, you know, again, a kid who is in pain is going to inflict pain, so you have to look, and I try to identify the kids who are hopeless, despondent, unable to imagine a future for themselves.  If a kid can’t imagine a future then their present isn’t compelling. And if their present doesn’t compel them, they won’t care whether they inflict harm, and they won’t care whether they duck to get out of harm’s way, that’s how it works. So you can’t scare any kid straight, because if a kid has stopped caring, it won’t work. You can care a kid straight, through care and loving attention you can get them to a place where they start to recognize the truth of who they are. That they’re exactly what God had in mind when God made them.

And then you watch them as they become that truth, as they inhabit that truth and that’s the most powerful thing in the world.

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