Guilt enough to go around

A friend of mine told me that her two kids are sick today. She said that she felt so guilty about it.

Maybe that is why so many moms can wield guilt so effectively. They are just peddling their own personal inner state.

Anger expressed

A mom talked to me the other day about her son who had been performing well enough that he was moved out of the kids who were not performing to a higher level class. He was upset about not being with his friends and the powerlessness he felt. In his anger he made a drawing that was filled with violence and blood. In essence it was a threat. He didn't want to see it that way, but there really wasn't any other way to look at it.

I suggested that she affirm her son's anger. It's okay to be angry. It's how we deal with it that provides us with consequences.

Years ago I got angry at something and threw a wooden spoon. It left a large hole in the screen in the kitchen window. Mosquitos found an entrance into the house. I had to fix it immediately. I HATE fixing screens. That was a great deterrent to throwing things in the future.

That he feels anger is understandable. Underneath the anger is hurt, frustration, and pain. It would be good for him to develop new ways of dealing with his anger. If he can find ways of expressing his anger that are socially acceptable he will have achieved a lot. It will be helpful in his future as well as much of life is dealing with what we didn't want or expect.

The safety bond

I just finished watching "Little Miss Sunshine" for the second time. It had been a while since I had seen it and I had forgotten how weird the family was, but also why I had liked it so much. It was a moving tribute to the resilience of families.

In the movie, the family is driving Olive, the youngest daughter, to compete in the "Little Miss Sunshine" pagent several states away. There were so many obstacles in their path, both on the outside, and what each person in the family brought with them in the form of emotional baggage.

The thing that struck me so powerfully, and brought me to tears is how we as families limp along. Families are so imperfect. It is not the weirdness of family members that breaks a family down. It is the lack of one essential ingredient. Is the family, at its core, safe? And while everyone in the family is responsibile for the safety of others, parents are the ones who model it and teach it to their children and are ultimately responsible for it's initiation into the family.

As this family limped along struggling with their own strangeness and conflicts, one thing was never doubted about the family. They were concerned for the physical and emotional safety of each other. In one scene mom had just explained to Olive that her grandpa was dead. Mom started crying. Duane, Olive's older brother, who was refusing to speak to the family, writes Olive a note that said "Go hug mom." That moment is so ripe with all the different motives involved and who was being affected. The way of handling it was strange. The point was that someone in the family was hurting and it was addressed.

I have worked with many dysfunctional families as a family therapist. What I was looking for in the family was to make sure the family was safe. It didn't matter to me what the family looked like to the outside as long as it worked on the inside. And the only way it could work on the inside is if EVERY member in the family practiced physical and emotional safety.

As an instructor I work hard to maintain physical and emotional safety of all my students. I don't worry if everyone gets along or even likes each other. But I will confront ANYONE who threatens the physical or emotional safety of my students.

Over the years, I worked with many families that when I got done, I could honestly say I was glad I wasn't a member of some of the families that were safe and nurturing. It, however, was working for them, and the proof was demonstrated by how connected the family members were to each other.

Parent, heal thyself...if you want to help your child.

I met with a woman who talked of her concerns about her child acting out in ways that may be sexually inappropriate ways. As we talked through the issue it came to light how disturbed the mom was with the whole notion of sexual acting out of children or of perpetrating children. We talked about how the mom's thought process and behaviors may be increasing the child's acting out.

A number of years ago I worked with a mom who had been violently physically abused. She had a 10 year old son. When the son acted in aggressive ways, mom would become more withdrawn. Mom's withdrawing increased the son's sense of power. As he felt more powerful, he acted more aggressively which increased mom shutting down even more.

It was a powerful negative spiral. The mom, scared for herself, increased in the son the very behaviors she was afraid of.

There is a need to not only look at the child's dynamics of acting out, but what we as parents may be contributing to the child's acting out, if we are to get a handle on the situation.