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When Parental Authority is Undermined

Posted on November 30, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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For many women, learning to step into our genuine, inner authority will be a major piece of psychological work. The challenges of parenting can be part of what helps us find our firm stance, as we discern what values matter most to us, and become used to inhabiting our own “no” in the face of pressures from both our children and the culture. We may decide, for example, to go against the collective grain, and keep video games out of our home as our children’s friends all begin to play them. Standing up for our values will take courage and an integrated sense of our own deep knowing about what matters most to us.

Recently, I have heard stories in my practice of a mother’s authority being challenged on a different level. As our children grow older, we may find that our authority as parents is challenged by those around us, including other parents. As our children pass through the perilous terrain of adolescence, it is natural that they look outside the family for mentors to guide them to adulthood. At this stage, children need to separate from their family of origin psychologically, a process that requires discernment about what parental values will be kept, and which will be jettisoned. It is normal for there to be some friction between parents and children at this time. But when forces outside the family work to undermine parental authority at this point in a child’s development, a normal stage of negotiating separation can become a wedge inappropriately driven between parent and child. At such a time, it may be important for parents to stand up and reassert their authority in the interest of protecting their child.

My client Emily gave me permission to share the following story. Names and details have been altered to protect privacy. When Emily’s daughter Clara was 13, she made friends with a girl slightly older than her named Gretchen. Emily took an immediate liking to Gretchen and Gretchen’s mom Andrea. According to Emily, Gretchen’s family was artistic, eccentric, and interesting. Andrea and Gretchen welcomed Clara into their lives, and it wasn’t long before she was spending part of almost every day at their house. At first, Emily was pleased to see that Andrea and Gretchen were exposing Clara to new and interesting things. Emily gave permission for Clara to accompany them on occasional weekend camping trip with other families.

But Emily started to notice some changes in Clara. After spending time at Gretchen’s house, Clara would return home sullen and irritable, looking for any excuse to pick a fight with her parents. She became withdrawn, and spent most of her time alone in her room. She had always enjoyed accompanying her parents in their occasional attendance at a Unitarian church, but now she flatly refused, and became angry when asked whether she wanted to go. Emily was perplexed. Probing her daughter to understand what was going on, she asked Clara whether spending time with Gretchen made her unhappy. “No!” Clara responded with great heat. “You’re the ones who make me unhappy!”

Fortunately, Emily was now alert to the fact that something was amiss. She began doing some research into the “camping trips” that Clara had attended, and learned more about the values and beliefs of Andrea and her family. It turns out that Clara’s friend and her parents were part of a new age cult. They had effectively been indoctrinating Clara into their belief system, and while doing so, had undermined Clara’s attachment and connection with her mom and dad – and Emily’s parental authority. Once Emily realized what was going on, she moved deftly to re-establish her role in her daughter’s life, while helping her daughter get some healthy distance from Gretchen and her family.

When Emily told me about this incident, I could sense her fear. Had Clara been older, had things gone a little further, Clara might have estranged herself from her parents under the undue influence of Andrea and the cult. Emily also felt angry – at Andrea, but also at herself. She could see that she had been taken in by the charm of Andrea and her family, and that it had been convenient for her to let Clara become so attached to them.

Most parents won’t face a situation as extreme as Emily’s. However, many of us can relate to a time when someone outside the family came to have an inappropriate amount of influence over our child. At such a time, it can be important to be honest with ourselves about the need to take the time to reconnect with our children. It is our responsibility to make sure that we are the primary influence in our children’s lives. Afterall, it is likely that no one cares for or knows our children as well as we do.

In speaking about this incident, Emily and I referenced the fairy tale “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” In the tale, the town of Hamelin is overrun by rats. The townspeople hire a piper with the magical ability to lure rats to their death with his music. When the townspeople neglect to pay the piper his fee, he lures the town’s children away. Interestingly, this tale is, as far as I can determine, the only Grimm’s fairy tale that is based on an actual event. The earliest written record from the town of Hamelin in Lower Saxony is a 1384 document that states, “It is 100 years since our children left.” According to historical records, a large number of the town's children disappeared or perished sometime in the 13th century, though the cause remains a mystery. The fairy tale is a fitting metaphor for those times when we may have allowed someone to exercise an inappropriate degree of influence over our child.

Reconnecting with our child in the aftermath of a disruption in our connection will require time and careful attention. Spending time with our child engaging in fun activities of his or her choice is a good way to cultivate a renewed attachment. We will also need to assert our parental authority in a loving and caring way. Re-establishing sensible boundaries and making our expectations clear will be important ways that we do this.

In 2006, Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate published their important and bestselling book Hold onto Your Kids in which they discuss the importance of parents being the most important and influential people in their children’s lives. There is much in this book relevant to the topic covered in this blog. Readers can also watch a lecture on the same subject by Dr. Mate.

Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

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Article

Parenting is a Journey, Not a Destination

Posted on November 15, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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As my previously delightful daughter became sullen, surly, and withdrawn as she approached adolescence, I asked an older and wiser friend if the fun part of parenting lasted only a scant dozen years, and then was all downhill. Her response was elucidating. “It’s hard for a few years when they’re teens,” she said. “And then they start doing things that make you proud of them.”

Thankfully, my own kids are passing through the difficult teen years, and they are indeed beginning to do things that amaze me and make me proud. I can imagine how delightful it will be to see them spread their wings in young adulthood and begin to live their own lives.

Yet I know there is no guarantee that I will continue to feel pride or pleasure in my kids once they are adults.

Although we rarely speak about such things in our culture, it can’t be taken for granted that a relationship with our adult children will be mutually satisfying. Indeed, research suggests that tensions between adult children and their parents are the norm. This research corroborates my own experience as a therapist.

In some cases, adult children and their parents become estranged. Estrangement is often initiated by the adult child. This can be a bewildering experience for a parent. In other cases, adult children may struggle with addiction or serious mental health issues. In many cases, such struggles may extend the caretaking period, as parents help adult children navigate these difficulties. Both estrangement and mental health issues are extreme cases where the relationship with the adult child may be a difficult or fraught one.

In addition to these more serious concerns, many relationships with adult children may suffer for more mundane reasons. Our child marries someone whom we don’t respect, or have difficulty getting along with. Or perhaps he espouses values that are inimical to ours, and we find ourselves feeling disappointed or distant. Perhaps our adult daughter makes one poor decision after another, and then inconsiderately expects us to bail her out.

It can be lonely and confusing to find ourselves disappointed, frustrated, or angry with our adult children on a regular basis. And yet it isn’t uncommon. Some parents of adult children take these vicissitudes in stride, accepting what is good in the relationship, without burdening their children with their disappointments. For others though, learning to let go of bright expectations for that relationship can be more difficult. Some parents have a hard time releasing their children to their own fate, allowing them to live their life even though it is not the one they would have wanted for them.

Stan and his wife Alison had adopted Meghan at birth after finding that they were unable to conceive. Meghan seemed like the answer to their prayers when she arrived, and Stan tells me that she was always an easy-going and pleasant child. But as Meghan finished college and set out on her own, tensions increased. Stan and Alison are highly educated, and value scholarship and knowledge. Meghan was not particularly studious, and struggled throughout high school and college. Stan and Alison had always hoped that Meghan would go on for a PhD or at least a master’s, but that was not a goal that made sense to her. When Meghan became a nursery school teacher, Stan had to manage his disappointment that his daughter’s career trajectory would be very different than the one he imagined for her.

Stan did eventually come to terms with this disappointment, but as he and his wife aged, a new unmet expectation surfaced. In my work with Stan, it became clear that there had always been an unconscious assumption that Meghan would bring meaning to his and Alison’s life. They were quite demanding of her, expecting her to spend much time visiting them, and hoping to see their own worth and value reflected back to them in Meghan’s choices as well as her loving care of them. Meghan, of course, could not live up to these super human expectations. As Stan and Alison put increasing pressure on her, she began to try to distance herself from them.

In his work with me, Stan was able eventually to identify the unrealistic hopes he had pinned on his daughter. He came to see how he had unconsciously assumed that being a parent would assuage all kinds of desires, and make up for many previous hurts and disappointments. A turning point in our work occurred when Stan was able to identify that parenting Meghan had indeed been the most meaningful thing he had ever done, even though Meghan herself could not be the source of all meaning and purpose in his life.

Together we arrived at the image of a sand mandala, a beautiful, intricate creation that takes hours and hours of work, only to be swept away upon completion. He arrived at a new sense of satisfaction when he began to appreciate that he had been the very best father he could have been. With me, he reviewed the parts of parenting Meghan that had been most meaningful and pleasurable to him. Knowing that he had shared these moments with her, and given the best of himself to this important project became enough for him. He no longer needed the adult Meghan to be the ongoing source of meaning in his life.

In time, the new attitude he brought to relationship allowed father and daughter to find new footing together. The new relationship did not live up to the picture that Stan had once had, but it had its own unique pleasures.

Stan’s reappraisal of his parenting experience and his relationship with his adult daughter calls to mind for me the poem Ithaka by Constantin Cavafy. The poem encourages us to find joy in the journey, rather than the goal – advice parents would be wise to take to heart.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise you have become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

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Article

Do You Believe Your Child is Special?

Posted on October 31, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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When my children were small, we were friendly with a family who had a daughter who was quite bright. The parents spent a lot of time talking about Sophie’s intelligence and talents, and the special challenges that came along with parenting such a gifted child. Because of her superior intelligence, Sophie was especially sensitive to many things, and therefore needed to have special arrangements made for her. For example, she felt easily overwhelmed by crowds and noise. Her parents would reassure her that, due to her struggles, she deserved special treatment. It wasn’t all that surprising, then, when I came upon the following scene at a neighbor’s 4th of July party: Sophie was sitting on a float in the middle of the pool while other kids waited in line to bring her food at her request. When I asked them what was going on, the other girls let me know that Sophie had explained that she needed them to get the food for her because she couldn’t manage the crowds around the food table. Needless to say, Sophie’s friends were not happy about this arrangement, but they couldn’t quite figure out how to tell her “no.”

Parental Overvaluation

Sophie’s belief that was entitled to special treatment – a belief that had been encouraged by her parents – was already getting in the way of Sophie having satisfying, mutual friendships. Narcissistic traits can make it difficult to get along with others. They can even foster a kind of fragility, requiring us to seek constantly praise and attention.

Recent research on parenting style and its effect on the development of narcissistic traits in children confirm what a lot of us know intuitively – communicating to our child that she is better than others can foster later narcissism. Scientists gave parents a short questionnaire meant to determine whether the parent overvalued their child. They then measured narcissistic traits in that child at a later point. Indeed, children who were overvalued by their parents were more likely to exhibit narcissistic traits in the future. (Want to find out your parental overvaluation score? Take the survey here.)

Note that there is a difference between having healthy self-esteem, and being narcissistic. Researchers differentiated between kids who boasted that they were really good at drawing, and those who, like Sophie, felt that they were entitled to special treatment. The latter group of kids are less likely to be resilient, as they will be dependent on having their specialness reinforced and praised.

Diamonds and Toads

Not surprisingly, fairy tales, with their intuitive psychological wisdom have been making this same point for thousands of years. Fairy tales are full of overvalued children – and their fates are rarely happy ones. Many stories contain a motif of the virtuous but undervalued sister, and a self-centered and much doted upon sister. For example, a Louisiana variant of “Diamonds and Toads” called “The Talking Eggs” begins like this:

There was once a widow who had two daughters, one named Rose and the other Blanche.

Blanche was good and beautiful and gentle, but the mother cared nothing for her and gave her only hard words and harder blows; but she loved Rose as she loved the apple of her eye, because Rose was exactly like herself, coarse-looking, and with a bad temper and a sharp tongue.

Blanche was obliged to work all day, but Rose sat in a chair with folded hands as though she were a fine lady, with nothing in the world to do.

As in the original French tale, things do not go well for Rose as the story unfolds. She is too self-centered to think of others, and therefore she is punished, while Blanche is richly rewarded for her kindness and ability to think of others. Because Blanche has been kind to a strange old woman, she is given a choice of talking eggs to take home with her. She dutifully accepts the advice given her and picks the plainest egg, which later opens to reveal marvelous treasures. Rose is mean-spirited and selfish, and picks the egg that is outwardly most beautiful. These, however, contain snakes and toads.

This seems prescient when I think back to Sophie. It was likely very enjoyable for her to be able to ask for special treatment from her friends at 11, but even then, her peers were tiring of her selfish demands. Behaving in a narcissistic way may look appealing at first, but in the end, such behavior may yield dark dividends.

Fairy tales contain profound psychological wisdom, but they also contain straight forward common sense too, which is often expressed in exaggerated images such as those in “The Talking Eggs.” Teaching children that kindness matters, praising effort over ability, and perhaps above all, that no matter how much we love and admire them, they are not entitled to special treatment, will help make sure that our children have the skills they need to negotiate a happy and emotionally healthy adulthood.

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Photo by DAVID ZHOU on Unsplash

Article

When Parents Get Angry

Posted on October 23, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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Most parents get angry with their children frequently, and when we do, we often feel badly about it. While unrestrained parental rage can be damaging to a child, in recent posts, (see here and here) I’ve been taking a look at the potential positive side of getting angry with our kids. While this might seem counter intuitive, it’s important to remember that our children learn about how to handle emotions in part through our modeling. If we never get angry, our children won’t get practice in learning to deal with this difficult but important emotion. On the other hand, when we get angry but take care to reconnect with our child and make a repair for any hurt we might have caused, our children learn that anger is survivable. They learn that people who love each other sometimes disagree and may even have strong feelings about these disagreements, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still love each other.

Psychologists have noted that relational ruptures are commonplace between parent and child. Even when we try our hardest to be attuned to our child and his needs, there will always be times when we are distracted, busy – or irritable. At these times, our child may have the momentary experience of knowing we are “out of sync” with him. We don’t understand him, or are not attending to his needs. “Good enough” parents have frequent moments of empathic rupture, but they do their best to repair these momentary mis attunements. We might apologize for losing our temper, and take extra time to reconnect through a playful tickle.

Last week, I suggested that the normal parental rhythm of rupture and repair served as a kind of “emotional annealing,” helping kids to become more resilient to different emotions – including their own. One of the most important jobs we have as parents is to teach our children how to manage their feelings – how to experience and value emotions, while not becoming overwhelmed by them. The experience of rupture and repair that occurs when there is an angry exchange can be a part of this important lesson.

A story from Ancient Greece can serve as a poignant illustration of how the right kind of challenging emotional experiences can help a child build resilience. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is one that is likely familiar to most readers, but many may not know the story of Demeter and Demphon as described in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. After her daughter’s abduction, Demeter looked everywhere for her, but could not find her. In her grief, Demeter disguised herself and hired herself out as a nanny to a wealthy family. There she cared for the infant boy Demophon. She grew so fond of the child that she decided that she would make him immortal. Every night, after other members of the family went to bed, Demeter would bank the boy in the fire as if he were a log, burning away those parts of him that were mortal. This process needed several nights. She was almost done with it when the boy’s mother wandered into the room, and shrieked in horror to see her son baking in the fire. Demeter then revealed herself in her full goddess glory, and Demophon’s mother was shocked to know she had been honored by the goddess in this way.

This part of the myth is both beautiful and strange, and the meaning of it is complex. It does, however, provide an image of something we somehow sense to be true – that burning in life’s fires in a controlled way where we do not become overwhelmed and are protected and cared for can bring about greater resilience.

My purpose with these recent posts on anger is to encourage parents to feel more compassion toward themselves when they do find that they have lost their temper with their child. I hope these posts will give parents permission to forgive themselves, because only in doing so can we ensure that we will remain emotionally available to our kids. We can always strive to do better next time, but when we slip up and become angry, we can hopefully appreciate that even when we are not perfect, we may be offering our children valuable lessons.

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Photo by Paul Schafer on Unsplash

Article

The Lessons of Anger

Posted on October 16, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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Last week, I explored whether avoiding all anger at one’s children might be too much of a good thing. In essence, I argued that when children see us deal with our aggression, they learn to deal with theirs. Anger is most essentially a response to having one’s boundaries violated. When someone is angry at us, we get valuable feedback that we have crossed a line. In this way, we learn that we must adapt ourselves to other people’s boundaries. We become familiar with necessary limitation. Our own fiery feelings are tempered in the flames of another’s anger.

A child, therefore, who never or rarely experiences parental anger may be insufficiently aware that his actions have consequences – that he can affect other people. He may not be aware of limitation. Parental limits – often set in the context of parental anger – is how children first learn that they are not omnipotent. Anger is how we know we have stepped on another’s toes. In that sense, it is how we find each other – we see the person as an “other,” with her own subjectivity, feelings, moods, and needs. This is relieving somehow. It is, in the end, good to know we are not all-powerful, that there is some place that our influence stops, and that there are things larger than us in life. This loss of infantile grandiosity relieves us of the need to have all the answers and prepares us for genuine relatedness. Real relationships have joy and friction; love and hate. Deep in our bones, we know this.

A child who has not experienced the limitation of interpersonal anger is uninitiated. She is not ready to handle the dark energies that she may meet out in the world – or within herself. Some research is perhaps relevant by analogy. Psychologists have discovered that there is an inverse relationship between being exposed to some challenging behaviors as a child and anxiety later in life. In fact, parents who engage in “challenging behaviors”  -- for example, roughhousing, playful teasing, allowing a child to lose a game – are inuring their children against anxiety, according to recent research.

I have wondered whether exposing our children –within limits – to our difficult emotions such as anger might help them develop resilience and fearlessness about such fiery feelings. The tendency to stay away from difficult feelings, termed emotional avoidance, is a significant contributor to mental health problems. If our children see us get angry, express our feelings, and then recover and reconnect, taking responsibility for any rupture that may have occurred, we have modeled for them an appropriate relationship with anger. They have learned that anger – our own and that of those we love – can be survived. They may see that anger can be clarifying, perhaps even bringing us closer together. This will likely help children to feel less avoidant of angry or aggressive feelings as they grow, giving them greater access to their own emotions, and helping them to be more attuned to other people’s.

A child that has not faced the fiery furnace of emotion may be unprepared to deal with upsetting experiences, or the natural frictions that occur in relationships with others. Metal and glass work sometimes need to undergo annealing – a process of heating and then cooling in a controlled way in order to make a material softer, more workable, and less brittle. Experiencing difficult feelings such as anger at or from a loving and trusted parent can serve as a kind of emotional annealing, allowing the child to become more resilient.

The Grimm’s tale “Frau Trude” can provide a fairy tale example of a psychological situation in which a child has never been forced to yield to limits, perhaps as a result of not being sufficiently exposed to parental anger. Such a child has not been exposed to “emotional annealing,” and may be easily burned once she comes into contact with strong affective experiences.

 

Frau Trude

Once upon a time there was a small girl who was strong willed and forward, and whenever her parents said anything to her, she disobeyed them. How could anything go well with her?

One day she said to her parents: "I have heard so much about Frau Trude. Someday I want to go to her place. People say such amazing things are seen there, and such strange things happen there, that I have become very curious.

Her parents strictly forbade her, saying: "Frau Trude is a wicked woman who commits godless acts. If you go there, you will no longer be our child.

But the girl paid no attention to her parents and went to Frau Trude's place anyway.

When she arrived there, Frau Trude asked: "Why are you so pale?"

"Oh," she answered, trembling all over, "I saw something that frightened me."

"What did you see?"

"I saw a black man on your steps."

"That was a charcoal burner."

"Then I saw a green man."

"That was a huntsman."

"Then I saw a blood-red man."

"That was a butcher."

"Oh, Frau Trude, it frightened me when I looked through your window and could not see you, but instead saw the devil with a head of fire."

"Aha!" she said. "So you saw the witch properly outfitted. I have been waiting for you and wanting you for a long time. Light the way for me now!"

With that she turned to girl into a block of wood and threw it into the fire. When it was thoroughly aglow she sat down next to it, and warmed herself by it, saying: "It gives such a bright light!"

 

The child in this story has not managed to come to terms with limitation. No matter what limits her parents set, she oversteps them. She is unprepared to meet the devouring archetypal forces that exist both within ourselves as well as out in the world. These forces can be overwhelming and destructive when they are not properly mediated. “Good enough” parents help mediate such strong emotional experiences for children in part through the every day experience of rupture and repair. When we become irritable or upset with a loved one or friend, we may say or do something that is hurtful, that temporarily breaks the sense of connection and simpatico we have with the other person. We may, for example, raise our voice at our child. In response, our child feels angry, upset, or afraid. When the conflict is passed, we reconnect with our child through hugging, talking, playing, or just being silly together. These kinds of ordinary interactions help children integrate a sense that strong feelings are a normal and even healthy part of life.

Next week, I will expand on the metaphor of “emotional annealing” and how it can lead to resilience.

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This article originally published on PsychCentral

Article

When is Anger at Children Healthy?

Posted on October 9, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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Burning with rage at our children is a nearly universal experience, and yet it is one that most moms feel great shame and remorse about. It is frightening to find ourselves capable of wrath and perhaps even violent impulses toward those whom we love so greatly. Could it be okay or possibly even important to feel fiery, hot anger toward our kids?

Jung’s concept of the archetype can be helpful in allowing us to come to terms with this dark side of ourselves. Jung posited that there are inborn patterns that precede experience, priming us to respond to certain experiences or images. He called these patterns archetypes, and always stressed that an encounter with archetypal energy will leave our conscious personality feeling dwarfed. According to Jung, the archetype of the Great Mother is one of the big ones – turning up eternally in art, myth, and dreams. Archetypes, importantly, always have two poles, a positive and a negative one, and one pole cannot exist without the other. When the positive aspect of the mother archetype gets constellated, the negative aspect is never very far away.

This makes a lot of sense in practical terms. When we become a mother, we fall deeply in love with our child. We feel protective, maternal, and nurturing. But it is precisely because we love our child so deeply that we can feel such depths of rage and frustration toward him or her. Then for a moment, we may embody the dark aspect of the archetype – the Negative Mother.

While most images of the archetype in Western culture show the positive and negative aspects split and personified by different mythological figures, other cultures have retained both poles of the archetype in one image. In Hindu mythology, Kali is both the giver and taker of life, she who gives birth to new life, but is also capable of devouring her offspring.

We all have both potentials within us, and it can be frightening and confusing to get in touch with our potential for rage and darkness. Verbal abuse can be very damaging, as our children are likely to take in the negative things we say to them, and those thoughts may become part of their self-concept. But is our anger always negative? I think not.

There are many possible benefits to our children experiencing us as capable of anger at times, and I aim to explore some of these in upcoming blog posts. To start, what might it look like if we never got angry with our child? Would that be a good thing?

When my daughter was four, I befriended Beth, who also had a four-year-old daughter named Mindi. Beth was a very thoughtful and intelligent person who herself had been subjected to much abusive treatment as a child by a raging, alcoholic father. She confided in me that she had felt very damaged by this, and had sworn when she became pregnant that she would never speak harshly to her child. She told me about the tremendous self-restraint she had cultivated in order to keep this promise to herself.

One day, my daughter and I were visiting Beth and Mindi at their home. While my daughter and Mindi were playing, Beth went upstairs for a moment. With her mother was out of sight, Mindi pushed my daughter, knocking her down. I witnessed the incident quite clearly. Mindi’s aggression was entirely unprovoked, as far as I could tell. My daughter began crying. “It’s not okay to push someone, Mindi,” I said, while tending to my daughter. At that moment, Beth returned. “Mindi doesn’t push,” she answered me, matter of factly. I was quite flummoxed and wasn’t sure what to say.

It was clear that Beth genuinely believed that her daughter was incapable of aggression. It was as if she had so effectively cut herself off from her own aggression that she could not imagine it to exist in her child. Anger had been so effectively banished from consciousness in this family that it was free to roam unchecked in the unconscious, behind mom’s back, as it were. It struck me that Mindi was not being helped by having her aggressiveness erased so completely. She never got to see her mother angry, and therefore never learned that anger can be normal and healthy, or that people can survive being angry at one another.

The incident with Beth and Mindi recalled for me a Grimm’s fairy tale about a “too good mother.” The tale is called “Sweet Porridge.”

There was a poor but good little girl who lived alone with her mother, and they no longer had anything to eat. So the child went into the forest, and there an aged woman met her who was aware of her sorrow, and presented her with a little pot, which when she said, "Cook, little pot, cook," would cook good, sweet porridge, and when she said, "Stop, little pot," it ceased to cook. The girl took the pot home to her mother, and now they were freed from their poverty and hunger, and ate sweet porridge as often as they chose. Once on a time when the girl had gone out, her mother said, "Cook, little pot, cook." And it did cook and she ate till she was satisfied, and then she wanted the pot to stop cooking, but did not know the word. So it went on cooking and the porridge rose over the edge, and still it cooked on until the kitchen and whole house were full, and then the next house, and then the whole street, just as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world, and there was the greatest distress, but no one knew how to stop it. At last when only one single house remained, the child came home and just said, "Stop, little pot," and it stopped and gave up cooking, and whosoever wished to return to the town had to eat his way back.

This is a story of a mother who is “too much of a good thing.” It hints at how destructive and dangerous that can be. The mother in this story doesn’t know how to say “stop,” and as such the sweet porridge threatens the whole town. It is anger that helps us to find our “no,” that helps us put our foot down and put an end to that which doesn’t serve us or is destructive.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that the destructive action in the story involves a pot that is boiling over. Beth could not allow her own anger into her relationship with her daughter. Where did it go? Perhaps it boiled over in sweetness, filling the room with a sticky ooze that doesn’t leave room to breathe. Beth was unable to say “no” to Mindi’s inappropriate aggression, and therefore her daughter was not getting help in learning to contain these impulses. Some anger on Beth’s part would likely have helped Mindi to metabolize her own entirely normal hostility, which likely would have felt relieving to the child.

Soon after this incident, I found my own “no,” and stopped spending time with Beth and Mindi. Though I appreciated Beth’s intelligence and depth, I wasn’t willing let my daughter become a victim to the over-flowing sweet porridge that ruled the psychological dynamic in her home.

In next week’s blog, I’ll explore more about how anger and aggression can be a healthy and necessary part of our relationship with our children.

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This post was originally published on PsychCentral

 

Article

Parenting in the Age of Polarization

Posted on March 2, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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My two kids have always had a competitive and contentious relationship. Now that they are teens, this friction often expresses itself as fierce disagreement on social and political issues. As the wider culture has grown increasingly polarized, so had our dinnertime conversation. Name any hotly debated topic – gun control, abortion, immigration – and one kid would be strongly on one side while the other kid took the opposite viewpoint. My dining table had become a tiny version of larger societal debates, where both sides screamed and yelled at each other, and listening, compassion, and empathy were in short supply. As you can imagine, this made dinner time about as much fun as a congressional filibuster. Something had to be done.

We tried instituting rules of fair engagement, but the incitement to provoke the other to tears or incriminations proved irresistible. For a while, we tried banning political conversations. This not only proved ineffective, it felt like the wrong message to send. Was it really right to teach them that we just don’t talk about things that we find uncomfortable? Then, I hit upon an inspired idea which has largely solved our nightly problem. The rule is simple: no topic is off limits, but you must argue your opponents side. When we discuss gun control, the kid who supports a person’s right to bear arms has to come up with reasons why it might make sense to put limits on gun ownership, and the pro gun control kid has to explain why protecting second amendment rights might be important. And my husband and I have to do the same. (Let’s just say I’ve learned a lot about the second amendment recently.)

I can’t claim that implementation of this new rule as gone perfectly smoothly. The initial reaction to my suggestion was shock, followed by righteous indignation: shock that there might be another viewpoint with merit enough to investigate, and righteous indignation that they would be asked to climb off their ideological pedestal to do so. Yet even the request seemed to shift something. We were asking each kid to think outside his or her comfort zone, and the immediate effect of this was that the rhetoric toned down.

Not only has this new policy made for more pleasant dinnertimes, I feel good about helping my kids to think critically and appreciate viewpoint diversity. Being able to see only one side of the argument is dangerously limiting. Author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt founded Heterodox Academy to promote viewpoint diversity and “constructive disagreement” on college campuses. This short video makes the case for why a range of view points can be so important in teaching kids to become critical thinkers.

Shutting ourselves off from other viewpoints and perspectives may mean that we miss the “big picture.” It calls to mind the Indian parable of the three blind men and the elephant. None of the blind men have ever seen an elephant before, and they are all touching different parts of the animal in an attempt to learn about it. The blind man touching the elephant’s tail asserts that an elephant is like a rope. The man touching the leg gets angry at the first man, saying that an elephant is like a great pillar, not a rope! The third man becomes enraged at both of the others, proclaiming that an elephant is like a broad leaf as he strokes the animal’s ear.

All of us – parents and kids – are being encouraged to see things through the narrow lens of bitter partisan squabbles. I want my kids to learn to think for themselves and to feel heard and respected, even when I disagree with them. Just maybe, I can help conquer political tribalism – one family dinner at a time.

Originally posted on Psych Central

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Do Kids Have Too Much Power?

Posted on January 26, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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These days, there is a widespread tendency for children of all ages to have too much power relative to their parents. I realize it sounds a bit old-fashioned to say this, and in fact I believe this trend has developed in part as a reaction against overly authoritarian parenting styles that dominated earlier generations. However, the pendulum has perhaps swung too far.

In some circles, there appears to be an implicit assumption that children enter the world in a state of pure potential, which needs to be protected and sheltered by the parent so that it can emerge in its fullest form. Parents with this unconscious philosophy believe that it is their job to follow the child’s lead as much as possible. The aim appears to be to foster what naturally emerges rather than trying to shape or mold the child according to parental expectations and values.

Preschoolers don’t need to be consulted about their bedtime.

Though aspects of child-led parenting can work well for both parents and children, there are situations in which it is ill-advised. I once knew a woman who believed in letting her four-year-old take the lead in all things, including bedtime. According to this mom, imposing an arbitrary bedtime would be unnecessarily coercive and thereby do damage to his perfectly-formed little soul. So the little boy often stayed up until 11 pm or later. This meant he was often hours late for preschool. The mom would relate to me the long talks she would have with her son, discussing with him the reasons why going to sleep earlier might be preferable. She wanted to negotiate all of this with his input.

I recall feeling badly for the child in part because his unusual sleep patterns were disruptive and meant that it was difficult for him to participate normally with the things the other children did. But mostly I felt badly for him because of the enormous and wholly inappropriate degree of responsibility that had been placed on his shoulders. Deciding – or even substantially consulting on – when he ought to go to bed was not liberating. It was confusing and distressing for him. And it was unfair. He couldn’t possibly have the cognitive and emotional maturity to weigh the consequences of going to bed at 8 versus 11. And he couldn’t be expected to exercise judgment and restraint by making the wiser and less fun choice.

This mom would roll in several hours late for preschool, and I would watch her patiently negotiate with her son, readying him to join the other kids who had long been engaged together. It would take some coaxing, as he would be tired. He didn’t look happier or more care-free. He looked and acted care-worn.

Teens aren’t ready to make big decisions about their future solo.

When children become teens, the ways in which we give them too much power are likely to shift. These are somewhat more insidious, and unfortunately are also often supported by the wider culture. I sometimes speak with parents who have the mistaken assumption that, because their children have fully formed and loudly articulated opinions, they must be listened to and granted authority as if they were adults.

Teens can gain this kind of inappropriate power by claiming harm at our hands. “You’re triggering me, mom,” one teen I know said to her mother when discussing her lagging academic performance. “I don’t feel safe with you!”

One mother I worked with had a 13-year-old daughter who insisted that she had no intention of going to college and intended to start her own business at 18 instead. She was giving this as a reason for dragging her heels in applying to private high schools, which is what her parents had deemed in her best interest. For a brief period, the conflict on this issue became fairly intense in her household. This mother’s previous therapist encouraged her not to press the issue, instructing her that she shouldn’t expect to control every aspect of her daughter’s life! (This daughter is now a senior in high school, and is very much looking forward to going to college.)

Contrast this with advice given to me by a wise friend when I sought out her perspective on parenting my own teen. “Adolescence is the wrong time to take your hands off the wheel.” We all know this, right? Teens are not necessarily equipped to measure long-term consequences of their actions. They may not like us asserting parental authority when it comes to decisions with significant downstream consequences, but it isn’t fair to deprive them of the mature perspective of a caring adult just because we don’t want to upset them.

A Greek myth helps us know that this, like most things, is an ancient dynamic between adults and youth.

Phaethon

Helios was the god of the sun, who each day drove the fiery steeds across the heavens in his chariot. Helios had a mortal son named Phaethon, who was very proud of his Olympian father. One day, wishing to prove to taunting boys that he was indeed the son of a god, he begged his father to grant him whatever he wished. Helios swore on the river Styx to give him whatever he wanted because he wished to please his beloved son. Phaethon demanded that he be allowed to drive his father’s fiery chariot across the sky. Helios knew that this would be a terrible mistake, but he had already given his word. He tried to convince his son to change his mind, but Phaethon would not be dissuaded.

So Helios sadly crowned his son with his golden rays, and covered his son’s body with ointment to protect him from the burning heat. He barely had time to shout a few warnings about handling the fiery, spirited steeds, when the great gates opened and Phaethon flew up in the chariot of the sun.

For a while, all went well, and Phaethon stood beaming with pride in his father’s chariot, but the horses were not easily managed. Sensing a less steady hand upon the reins, they veered off the heavenly path, and careened too close to earth. Phaethon was unable to master the horses. Zeus saw that the sun chariot was in danger of creating great destruction. Sadly, he struck Phaethon down with a thunderbolt, killing him.

Grieving Helios never let anyone else drive the sun chariot again.

Phaethon was mortal, and was rashly asking to be treated as a god. Any parent of a teen will know that adolescents can be filled with an inflated sense that they are immortal and can do anything. Helios’s rash promise was made in part because he wanted to please his beloved son.

Undermining parents

Disturbingly, there are many in the wider culture who seem to share the view that kids have to be given more power, and even protected from their parents. In some subcultures, children are empowered by therapists, teachers, and other adults to view their parents as potentially harmful people with suspect motivations. When schools make major decisions at the request of a child without consultation with parents, the message gets reinforced that parents can’t be trusted to have their child’s best interest at heart.

When as a culture we overvalue the child perspective and undervalue that of the adult, we run the risk that young people won’t have the steady hand to guide their way to adulthood.

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Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

Originally published on PsychCentral

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When Connecting with Kids is Hard

Posted on January 13, 2018
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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Last week, I shared a fairy tale which explored a parent child relationship in which the parents are ashamed or embarrassed by their child. There is a similar tale that explores this – and darker themes.  A recently published book by Orna Dornath entitled Regretting Motherhood: A Study explores the difficult subject of mothers who regret having had children. You can read more about Dornath’s study in this short article.

Dornath is exploring maternal regret through the lens of sociology, and her work is an important contribution to a neglected subject. As a therapist, however, I am more interested in the experience of maternal regret from the point of view of the individual. What is it like to find that you regret being a mother? In my experience, mothers who have difficulty attaching to their children have often themselves experienced extreme stress or trauma.

One of the most unusual and oddly lyrical fairy tales in all of Grimms touches on this taboo subject of poor attachment between mother and child. The beginning of the story is of most interest to us. Text of the full story can be found here.

Hans-My-Hedgehog

Once upon a time there was a peasant who had money and land enough, but as rich as he was, there was still something missing from his happiness: He had no children with his wife. Often when he went to the city with the other peasants, they would mock him and ask him why he had no children. He finally became angry, and when he returned home, he said, “I will have a child, even if it is a hedgehog.”

Then his wife had a baby, and the top half was a hedgehog and the bottom half a boy. When she saw the baby, she was horrified and said, “Now see what you have wished upon us!”

The man said, “It cannot be helped. The boy must be baptized, but we cannot ask anyone to be his godfather.”

The woman said, “And the only name that we can give him is Hans-My-Hedgehog.”

When he was baptized, the pastor said, “Because of his quills he cannot be given an ordinary bed.” So they put a little straw behind the stove and laid him in it. And he could not drink from his mother, for he would have stuck her with his quills. He lay there behind the stove for eight years, and his father grew tired of him, and thought, “if only he would die.” But he did not die, but just lay there.

Now it happened that there was a fair in the city, and the peasant wanted to go. He asked his wife what he should bring her.

“A little meat, some bread rolls, and things for the household,” she said. Then he asked the servant girl, and she wanted a pair of slippers and some fancy stockings.

Finally, he also said, “Hans-My-Hedgehog, what would you like?”

“Father,” he said, “bring me some bagpipes.”

When the peasant returned home he gave his wife what he had brought for her, meat and bread rolls. Then he gave the servant girl the slippers and fancy stockings. And finally he went behind the stove and gave Hans-My-Hedgehog the bagpipes.

When Hans-My-Hedgehog had them, he said, “Father, go to the blacksmith’s and have my cock-rooster shod, then I will ride away and never again come back.” The father was happy to get rid of him, so he had his rooster shod, and when it was done, Hans-My-Hedgehog climbed on it and rode away. He took pigs and donkeys with him, to tend in the forest.

Although the tale eventually ends, happily, I find that it contains some of the most heartbreaking images of any fairy tale. A hedgehog child is an eloquent metaphor for a child who is, for whatever reason, unlovable.

Attachment Trouble

Wikipedia tells me that hedgehogs are spiny mammals. When threatened, they roll themselves into a tight ball, causing their spines to all point outwards. Certainly, there are children – and adults – who show similar psychological defenses, such as is the case for those with reactive attachment disorder. Because of profound early trauma, children with RAD may be difficult to comfort. They find it difficult to attach to a caregiver, or receive love.

Imagine trying to nurse or cuddle a hedgehog!

Temperamental Fit

The image of child as hedgehog could also be an apt analogy for a poor temperamental fit between mother and baby. Researchers have noted that a baby’s temperament has a significant effect on the relationship between mother and child. Babies with difficult temperament may be hard to soothe, making parenting them more challenging and less rewarding. Some of that research can be seen here.  It is instruction to compare and contrast the tale of  The Little Singing Frog that we looked at last weekwith Hans-My-Hedgehog. Both animal offspring are redeemed in the end by a royal marriage and transformation to human form. The little frog’s redemption, loved as she is by her parents, is much less complicated and difficult than that of poor lonely Hans, who lives many years alone in the forest. This can indeed be the psychological experience of those whose parents were, for whatever reason, unable to love them.

The fairy tale is relatively silent on the subject of Hans’ mother and father. They want him dead. They want never to see him again. At the end of the tale, Hans finally reconciles with his father, who rejoices to learn of his son’s good fortune. By this time, the mother is not in the story at all.

I suspect that hers is a particularly difficult story to tell.

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Humble Gifts: On Knowing We’re Enough

Posted on December 15, 2017
by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW
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I had a conversation with a mother in my practice this week that brought up something important. As usual, I tried to find a fairy tale that captured the essence of what this mother was struggling with. The right tale did come to mind – it’s a 12th century French legend – and it just so happens to have an association with Christmas, so consider this my holiday offering!

The mother I was speaking with is going through something very difficult with one of her children. On the day that we spoke, she was feeling very badly about herself, and how she has been handling the challenges she is facing. She has seen other mothers who, she thinks, have managed similar difficulties much better. She was berating herself for not being as gentle, wise, and confident as she has seen other mothers be.

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