splitting

I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it.
~ J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

She went from cool to hot in about 15 minutes because nobody leaped into action.

The dynamic had always been to make Dad "the bad guy" for resisting her whims and desires and Mom "the good guy" who was willing to rescue her from frustration and distress. (This is called splitting. Teenagers are pros at it. When their efforts are frustrated they’ll pull a tantrum worthy of a two-year old.) But since Mom had learned to deflect her daughter’s pressure tactics, the girl was at loose ends. Nobody was willing to jump in and be the hero.

The girl had a meltdown in my office. Because her parents knew that the problem their daughter faced was manageable and that she was well-equipped to handle it, their hearts broke for her but they did not cave. Instead they just gave their sobbing child lots of empathy, encouragement and support.

In our next family meeting, the girl described how she had handled the situation, by herself. She got through it alone and was glowing, proud and confident.

By forming a united front, by refusing to split into good cop/bad cop, the parents in this story enabled their daughter, not only to find the resources she needed within herself, but also helped her to see her own parents more realistically. Mom and Dad taught her that there are no good guys and bad guys out there. That nobody’s a monster and nobody’s perfect and that there are no magic solutions to life’s problems. We all just do the best that we can.

the drama triangle

This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing.
~ Margaret Atwood; Surfacing

In 1968, Steven Karpman coined the term drama triangle to refer to the constellation of roles we play when we engage in the game of victim-rescuer-persecutor. Basically, the triangle comes about when one or more person gets stuck in a corner of the triangle as opposed to moving into a more adaptive position. To defuse the drama, we need to refuse to play the game.

Unfortunately, we often respond to conflict by moving into one of these roles.

For example, when a bully is name-calling another student at school, the student, feeling helpless, may see himself as a victim and just stand there crying. A teacher witnessing the interaction may decide to intervene. She completes the triangle by rescuing the bullied student.

In an alternative scenario, the bullied student refuses to play the victim and takes action against the bullying by saying that he does not like the way the bully is speaking to him, and then leaves. He seeks out friends to support him and then he and his friends confront the bully and the bully backs off.

This is a more constructive response.

It sounds easy. And in a way, it is. The problem is that, like the Bermuda Triangle, the drama triangle is insidiously magnetic, drawing us in against our wills! We may unconsciously identify with the roles projected onto us, as in projective identification, introjecting the role attributed to us and colluding with the projection. We then unwittingly act out someone else’s nightmare.

The antidote? Self-awareness and the commitment to not playing the game. In order for the triangle to lose its power, you need to know your own nightmare and identify the roles you play in it. Then you make a conscious effort to interrupt your tendency to play them out and take back the playwright in your head.

The Right to Remain Silent

We must be the change we wish to see
~ Ghandi

Silence is one way of drawing a boundary. It is particularly useful when you do not want to engage in conflict or pursue a violent dialogue.

Many parents have difficulty disengaging from their children when they start to bicker and pout about a chore or house rule. Mom says: Time for the TV to go off. Child asks: Why now? Mom answers: Time to do your homework. Child replies: Just one more program...

You can explain the rule to your child and justify any points he takes issue with. This is especially appropriate when the rule is new or has not been well understood. You can also be flexible and negotiate with your child, especially if he is growing out of a rule and needs more autonomy. Generally speaking, however, a child needs rules and boundaries to be firm in order both to know where he stands with you as an authority, and to have some dependable guidelines for making his own decisions. To respond to his every objection, to allow every conversation to escalate into an argument, or to let your child harass and badger you into submission is simply allowing him to violate your boundaries. This is not good for either him or you.

You have the power to defuse this situation.

If your child already knows the rule, if he has had a reasonable explanation of it in the past and has been given fair warning about your expectations when the rule is broken, this may be the time to remind him of that, and then turn the TV off. If your child continues to argue with you, you may want to placate your child with empathy but, in terms of arguing anything, it may be best to remain silent.

between a rock and a hard place

You can't go forward
You can't go backward
You can't stay in place

What are you going to do?

~ a Zen koan

This week I met with a bus driver who told me that he felt caught between the public and his employer. He told me that there aren't enough buses during rush hour so buses often run late. People board the bus in a foul mood and complain to him, blaming and sometimes even threatening him when the bus is not on time. It's not his fault there aren't enough buses; but do they care? The bus company, on the other hand, expects him to manage cranky passengers with tact and self-restraint. If he loses his temper and snaps back, and the passenger files a complaint, he will be reprimanded by the boss. He may be under great stress and defending himself against an aggressive customer; but does the boss care?

This driver felt sandwiched between what he called the “je m'en foutisme” (the “I don't careism”) of consumers and employers. Nobody sees the bigger picture, blaming an employee for a problem which is not his, but nobody cares or really wants to solve it. He is caught in the wedge of their indifference but the more he pushes back, the more it chafes and hurts. This is a no-win situation.

There's a time and place to fight but it's not when you're caught between a rock and a hard place. This is a time to do nothing.

Another kind of attention deficit

Quite often I meet with parents who are concerned about their child’s ploys for attention: a broody daughter’s mood swings, a tantrumming son’s belligerence, a withdrawn teenager’s prolonged silence or apathy. Should I ignore him? they wonder, concerned that if they pay their child any attention, they might be reinforcing a negative behaviour.

My answer to this is that any ploy for attention, no matter how unsavoury it may be to you, is still a cry for attention and you should listen to it. To ignore it or worse, punish it, won’t make the need go away, it will only frustrate and exacerbate it, increasing your child's sense of a deficit in attention from you and probably spurring him on to bigger and better ways of getting his needs met.

Instead, give your child the attention he needs.

Without indulging a behavior you do not condone, tell your child you’re concerned about his mood and/or acting out, and that you feel very badly that he’s suffering. Gently explain that, although you refuse to be the brunt of any aggression or rudeness (and please do remove yourself from a situation that is unacceptable to you!), you’d like him to come and talk to you when he feels ready to explain what’s going on with words. Tell him you’d like to understand him and help him feel better. Once your child has calmed down and, if he is still unable to put words on his feelings, which is pretty likely, offer some hypotheses of your own. Are you angry at your little sister? Frustrated with school? Upset about what someone said or did that hurt your feelings? Assume that your child is hurting for a reason and give him your unconditional loving support.

As a general rule, if your child seems excessively attention-seeking to you, make more time to be with him. Show him you are available and that you care. Curb the deficit by being more emotionally present. Just be there.

ADD?

Does your child always want to do what he feels like doing and only how and when he feels like doing it? Congratulations then! Your child is normal and healthy.

Take it a step further though, to where your child is uncompromising to the point where he really doesn’t care what you or others want and his stubbornness deteriorates into tantrums that he should have outgrown by now and his behavior is really trying your nerves… well, then, maybe he is displaying symptoms of so-called Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD, with or without the “H” for “Hyperactivity”, the disorder so frequently diagnosed in young school-aged boys (see these Fast Stats).

ADD is not a form of moral deviance due to rudeness, orneriness, or anything that may be within your child’s conscious control. Nor is it a mental or learning disability. In fact, although ADD is commonly believed to be an attentional deficit, it is not due to a lack of capacity for attention or to "selective inattention”. It is in fact just a set of behaviors related to poor impulse control due to the immaturity of the frontal lobe cortex, the part of the brain responsible for filtering out irrelevant information, thereby enabling us to stay task-focused despite a constant flux of competing ideas and urges.

The more active your child's mind, the more difficult it may be for him to stay focused and self-controlled. Since this part of the brain is well-known to develop more slowly in boys, this may explain why boys seem more impulsive and scatter-brained than girls. Because of this developmental discrepancy, boys in some parts of the UK now start primary school one year later than girls. Normally, with time, the frontal lobe catches up to other parts of the brain such that an ADD child without other learning problems, although he may always remain more spirited than others, will surely grow into an adult with a very active and creative intellect.

Stand Up To Bullying

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke
~ Benjamin Disraeli

Bullying has received a lot of public attention in the past decade and, while it is good that something is being done to try to prevent the dire consequences of bullying, which can go as far as murder and/or suicide, public initiatives tend to rely on the principles of conflict resolution as the basis of their anti-bullying programs.

Typically, for example, if a student complains that another student is bullying him, the adult or teacher in charge is likely to send both students to the office where, after both get to tell their side of the story, they are urged to graciously acknowledge their respective roles in the incident and then make up. The incident, in other words, is treated as a conflict and then dealt with using conflict resolution and peace-making strategies that suppose two equal parties that equally share in the responsibility for both conflict and peace.

Treating the situation in this way ignores the power differential created by intimidation and, as a result, bullying is not being effectively redressed or defused at its source.

The best way to curtail bullying is, quite simply, to fight intimidation with intimidation, not necessarily with brawn (although there is wisdom in the macho father's urging his son to defend himself against a bully by “punching his lights out”). Numbers will also do the trick.

When a child is a victim of bullying at school, we should instruct other children to gather round the victim and publicly denounce the behaviour as a group. By standing by the victim, you stand up to the bully. The bully, when outnumbered in this way, will be made to feel weak. No longer supplied with the power surge he was hoping for, he will retreat, defeated.

This is called solidarity or resistance, a united front. And this is what children should be taught at school.