Honey, I Wrecked The Kids Part 2

-Dr. Jane Nelson Thankfully, all children are born with the ambition to fulfill the Crucial C's. We don't need to motivate them: it's innate. No stickers required! But we do need to point them in the right direction, show them the way, and create experiences that help them get each of their needs fulfilled on the "positive side of life" through useful and co-operative methods. It is only if their efforts are thwarted, if they can't find a way to meet these needs through positive endeavors, then, and only then, do they work to get their needs met through negative means. Then the mistaken approaches appear.

There is a similar survival mechanism in embryonic development.

I remember that when I was pregnant my doctor cautioned me that if I didn't drink enough milk to supply the needed calcium to the fetus through my diet, the baby would take the calcium from my bones.

What a smart baby. Sure, the preference is from the proper source, namely, the food you eat, but failing that, babies will seek survival by looking for less optimal alternatives.

34.So, we are charged with the task of making sure we have a home life rich in all four of the Crucial C's. The democratic methods and tools you'll be learning will make your home "C positive." Currently, most of our home and school environments are leading to "C defi cits"

for children; consequently, misbehaviors abound. Let's look more closely at each one.

Connection-I Need to Believe I Belong Will your children find belonging in the family, or seek out a diff erent group who wants them? Will your children find belonging in the family, or seek out a diff erent group who wants them?

Did you know that Canadian geese fly in a V-formation because this reduces the air drag by about 10 percent for each of them individually? They also rotate which bird is flying in point position, so no one goose has to carry that extra burden alone. Did you also know that if one of the geese gets injured, the whole flock lands to attend to that goose before continuing the migration? You'd never catch a Canadian goose saying "Why should MY son have to be slowed down because YOUR son is a problem in the fl ock?"

Just like geese in a flock, bees in hives, ants in colonies, cows in herds and people are social creatures. We are hard-wired as a species to live communally since our survival requires a collective living arrangement. Just as the geese need the flock for migration survival, we need our tribe if we are to reproduce, feed and raise our youngsters.

We hang out in groups as families, cla.s.srooms, teams or communities. Because there are grave consequences if we don't have the security of being in a group to ensure our care and survival, we humans can't rest until we feel we belong and are accepted by others in our group. We use the words connection, bonding and attachment to capture the phenomenon of needing to know that we are accepted and loved. It's "Job #1" for people.35.When children feel they belong and are loved and accepted, you'll know this by their ability to reach out socially to others, to enjoy independent time and not demand you keep busy with them. Th ey'll be co-operative as a result of feeling they are part of the group and they will want to partic.i.p.ate in taking care of the group's health too.

I Need to Believe I Am Capable Will your children develop abilities, or prove their bigness by boss-ing others?

The urge to grow, mature and develop is in each of us. Babies want to learn to crawl and to communicate. Toddlers and preschoolers want to play "grown up" with toy cell phones and plastic shaving sets from Disney. Teens want to wear makeup and drive. It's all about moving from immature to mature, from incapable to capable, from being dependent to gaining skills that allow for your autonomy and self-direction. We all need to have choices and options to exercise.

Competence is what freedom is about. Without it, we are enslaved.

However, we are guilty as a society of infantilizing our children, keeping them in a dependent state as long as possible. The life expectancy for h.o.m.o sapiens was at one time only about 20 years. Today's 20-year-olds are only just finis.h.i.+ng school and starting life! I'll bet a 20-year-old caveman could cook something more than Ramen Noodles. Between moving out of our cave dwellings and settling into condos, the life of children has drastically changed.

Today's children are given little chance to develop their own abilities. There are a number of different reasons for this. We're busy and have no time for pokey learners, and we don't like the look of the crocked corners and wrinkles that come when we allow a four-year-old to make a bed. Also, we enjoy feeling important and needed, so we don't want to stop being the caregiver and instead stimulate our children's independence. Where would that leave us?

36.On a deeper level, a big part of the problem resides in the fact that adults simply hold a low estimation for children. We think they are far more incapable than they are, and we don't trust them in general. Blunt, but true.

Somehow we think that without us around our children would never eat right, never get any sleep, never hit the books, and most certainly they would never say please and thank-you without fi rst getting a poke in the ribs.

We parents sure are a bunch of naysayers with our constant negative nagging: "You'll cut yourself, you'll fall, you'll get cold, you'll get hungry, you'll fail."

Children need to feel they are capable. This is empowering. It allows them to exercise self-direction and autonomy. It's what self-esteem is built on. If we interfere with the child's ability to develop or if we lag behind in handing over to them what they are capable of doing for themselves, we'll see them find alternate, negative ways of achieving a sense of their own power.

I Need to Believe I Count Will your children partic.i.p.ate or retaliate?

Children need to feel they are valued. That can be in the form of casting a vote, sharing an opinion or doing a deed. We all want to count for something. Otherwise, why were we born?

We seem to understand the importance of this crucial C for adults, but children need it too. It is through service and contribution that we all feel our lives are worth something. We need to feel we are part of something larger than ourselves; a cog that helps to make the whole mechanism work.

Children used to be relied on to contribute. Having a child used to mean more hands to work the land; they were seen as an important a.s.set. Now economists predict having a child sets you back about $100k and you still aren't guaranteed they'll visit you Chapter Two 37.in the nursing home; they may be too busy working on their ca-reers after that university education you paid for. Modern society has generally stopped calling on kids to pitch in and share the family load.

We don't ask their opinions, we don't use their talents and we don't ask for their ideas. We don't give them a function in our families. No egg collecting, cow milking or manure shoveling for this generation. We don't even ask them to do the dishes anymore. Th ey are expected to do nothing but play and study. I know that sounds like utopia to overworked parents, but people are designed to be in service of others. THAT is what makes us mentally adjusted. People caring for people. It's the "give" part of the "give and take" equation that makes our symbiotic relations.h.i.+p satisfying. We especially shortchange children in this department these days.

I Need to Believe I Am Courageous Will your children try new and challenging things, or avoid them? Will your children try new and challenging things, or avoid them?

Put down the superhero cape; that is not the kind of courage I am talking about. There are no dragons to slay today. Th e courage I am referring to is the profound kind. It's having the belief in ourselves that we can face challenges and stumble through life's roadblocks in a rather imperfect way, making mistakes, revealing our inadequacies and imperfections to the world. It's about being okay with "looking bad" because other things are more important.

Can you make a mistake gracefully? See it as a learning experience?

Do you avoid things that you think you'll fail at, only showing your good side? Children with this crucial C are confident and they will try new things. They have a resiliency to bounce back.

When we have the crucial C of courage, we stop being interested only in things that feed our ego and so we are free of the fear of "failing." We don't concern ourselves with impressing people, with others' judgment, with "winning people over" or "pleasing."

38.Once we feel courageous we accept that we are all humble humans, no better or worse than another. We stop trying to prove and protect our worth, and instead we are ready and able to accept ourselves, fl awed as we are, and ready to live in the service of life.

Period. Now tell me that doesn't sound like Nirvana. It does sound a little Buddhist in tone, doesn't it? Courageous enough to just BE without need of grasping, attachment and anything else you can remember from your yoga cla.s.s. It's all pointing to the same human experience of needing to accept and be at peace with ourselves, right now, as we are in this moment.

For children this is especially critical, because adults seem so consumed with having children "reach their potential" that they send an ongoing message that as of right now, they are not good enough. If they bring home a test that they got 98 percent on, we ask how they lost the last two points. You're always two points from being okay in someone's eyes if you play that game. Th e courageous child doesn't.

Just to recap. Our children need the 4 Crucial C's. If they can't get these C's on the positive side of life, in ways that are appropriate and co-operative, they'll attempt to get their needs met on the negative side of life. These are mistaken approaches, or misbehaviors that are non-helpful and disruptive.

New Insight #4: Children need to find their 4 Crucial C's. They will try through positive means first, but if they must, they will turn to negative means.

As parents in the middle of a discipline crisis, we will need to know which C is deficient. Which C is your child trying to obtain?39.To decipher this, you will need to think of yourself as a diagnostician.

Before prescribing nitroglycerin or a Tums, doctors need to know if the patient's chest pains are due to angina or indigestion. Likewise, a child seeking connection is not going to respond to being given more opportunities to be capable, just as surely as a defi ciency in calcium can't be cured by taking vitamin E.

We need to view our children's behavior as symptoms that hold important information. They are a key to understanding our children and a way of accessing their private world. Don't be so quick to want to get rid of misbehavior at any cost; we have to study it fi rst!

It's important evidence at the "crime scene," and we don't want it to disappear just yet.

The next time Zack spazzes out because you refuse to turn the car around and go back to the drive-through window to ask for the other Happy Meal toy, you can now say to yourself "Hey-excellent.

I am just reading this parenting book and look-what luck!-here is an example of some misbehavior now. I hope Zack keeps this up for a bit so I get lots of good data." Well, maybe at least it will make you smile for a moment and ease the tension.

Let's continue reshaping our att.i.tudes about misbehavior and mistaken approaches by adding our next new big insight to the equation: our role in creating and sustaining misbehavior.

Care to Dance? It Takes Two to Tango Can you tell the diff erence between a fox-trot and a waltz? Th e tango and the Charleston? No? Okay, how about the Macarena and soldier-boy? Ahhh, now those you know!

Each of these dances has its own unique style and movements.

They are highly identifiable with people moving together in a syn-chronous, predictable and consistent fas.h.i.+on that makes these dances recognizable and repeatable. We see these very same qualities in the 40 patterns of interactions that are the "kerfuffles" we have with our children; it's a predictable, repeatable pattern between two synchro-nous partners.

Let's face it, that blowup in the front hall about how the bus is coming in two minutes and they're going to be late, and how you will not drive them if they miss the bus . . . if I were a fly on the wall in your foyer, I'd be having a deja vu nearly every day! It's always the same thing, morning after livid morning.

New Insight #5: Misbehavior is a co-created experience.

In family systems counseling, we don't just look at the dawdling child and his or her bad att.i.tude in the morning. Th e situation is not conceptualized as a bad child who needs to smarten up.

Nor do we look at the adult and blame solely his or her parenting approaches.

What is identified as being problematic is the pattern of interactions between parent and child. They co-create a pattern that is recognizable, that is consistent, that plays out regularly and in which each partner knows every dance step.

Adult Child In family systems theory, the interactional patterns or "the dance"

two people create together are the focus of our intervention. Neither the child nor the adult is "the problem."

When things go squirrelly and your children start to misbehave, try thinking about their actions as being a subtle way of asking Chapter Two 41.you to dance. They know how to act in ways that will engage you.

They commence their behaviors with the implicit desire to evoke a certain response from you. They expect your response. Th ey want your response. While this is all pre-conscious, it is still a calculated maneuver. When they zig, you zag. When they throw sand, you come running.

It may seem a bit odd to think that our children act in ways that would make us run to scold them. But it all serves a purpose to them, and that purpose is part of what we must come to understand.

When we agree to "dance," we interact with our child in ways that meet one of their needs and fulfills one of the missing Crucial C's.

Here they are: When I don't feel connected-I will seek undue attention.

When I don't feel capable-I will seek power over others.

When I don't feel I count-I will seek revenge.

When I don't feel courageous-I will seek to avoid.

Attention, Power, Revenge and Learned Helplessness are the four mistaken goals that discouraged children seek when they don't have the 4 Crucial C's fulfi lled positively.

Next, you will learn how to recognize which dance you are partic.i.p.ating in, so that you can learn to apply effective new parenting tools for each situation.

CHAPTER THREE.

NITROGLYCERIN OR TUMS?.

In the last chapter, I shared a new perspective for thinking about children, their motivations and behaviors. We learned about people's need for the 4 Crucial C's and our children's quest to find them. I also shared the surprising news that we actually partic.i.p.ate in misbehavior by agreeing to "dance" with our children in dysfunctional but utterly predictable and repet.i.tious ways. Somehow these dances provide our children with one of the Crucial C's they're lacking, as we'll see.

This chapter is the last step to fully understanding the dynamic that has dogged you till this point. We are going to learn to become good diagnosticians so you'll know what exactly is transpiring when you're in the middle of those sweaty changing room antics we heard about earlier. You'll be able to say "BINGO, I got it! I know what is happening here. I see the dynamic!"

Once you get to that great epiphany, you'll be ready to charge ahead with the correct tools and tactics needed on a case-by-case basis. All the subsequent chapters will be dedicated to bringing you those tools. They are chock full of the democratic, non-punitive, 44 non-reward-based tactics and techniques that I know you've been wanting to get your hands on. But first, let's learn to recognize those dances so we know if we need to be reaching for the metaphorical Tums or a nitroglycerin tablet. Remember my pledge to you: no more putting bandages on symptoms for your family. We're getting to the root of the problem.

FOUR DANCES AND THREE QUESTIONS EVERY BUDDING.

SHERLOCK CAN SOLVE.

"Holmes, you see everything."

"I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see."

-"The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier"

Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat, grab your calabash pipe; we're getting into some deductive reasoning. Learning to diagnose a child's misbehavior is like Sudoko for psychology buff s.

We have to learn to observe situations so we can properly identify the four dysfunctional dances that we do with our children.

The process involves asking three questions every time you observe misbehavior.

Maybe you are thinking to yourself, "I am not a mind reader; how can I possibly know for certain what is going on inside my kid's head?" Have no fear-the three questions are actually about you and your observations of your children. You are already an authority on this.

So, Sherlock, What Do You See? What Are We Looking For?

Part of learning to recognize these "dances" is to watch for the interactions between ourselves and our children. Notice how little we learn about a dynamic from the typical parental description of Chapter Three 45.a problem: "My child won't go to bed without crying and making a fuss. How do I make him stop?"

I know nothing from this small amount of information. Maybe he is getting poked by a spring in his mattress! To learn more about what is happening from a psychodynamic perspective, we need to think of the bedtime behavior as a small play with a cast of characters.

These characters have dialogue and stage movement and they deliver their lines with emotion.

I should be able to visualize the action in my head by knowing who said what to whom, how the other person reacted and all the backing and forthing between the characters. And I also need to pay attention to how the scene ends. What was the big fi nale? Aft er all, something had to happen to make the episode come to a conclusion.

That's key information too.

With that in mind, let's hear the bedtime story again, this time with the scene set and actors in position. Compare this to the original telling of the tuck-in: Everything was going well, but as soon as I finished tuck-ins and said "Good night, Ethan," he started to cry.

I went back to his bed and I kissed him, rea.s.sured him that he was okay and told him to go to sleep. I felt guilty because I had worked late again and I hadn't had time to play before bed. I left him crying and joined my wife and his older sister in the living room. I no sooner got seated when he called out for a drink of water. I can't say no to a kid who needs water, so I got him a gla.s.s and sat on the edge of his bed while he drank it. I made some joke like "Whoa, you camel. You must have been thirsty!" and we both had a laugh.

I settled him back in bed and headed downstairs again.

A few minutes later, Ethan cried "I have to go pee." I knew 46 he just had all that water and he's just started potty training, so I wanted to encourage him. I went back upstairs and put him up on the toilet, then grabbed a book from the book bin so I could read a story to him while we waited for him to pee. After about five minutes I started feeling frustrated.

Finally, I said, "Forget it; let's go back to bed." I hoisted him up to the sink to wash his hands and then took him back to his room, where I tucked him in again. Finally, I joined the others.

A few minutes later, Ethan called out "Daddy-I left Fluffy downstairs." I was aggravated by this because he can't sleep without Fluffy, so I had to traverse the stairs once again, bringing Fluffy to Ethan. When I got there he said "PleeEEASE-Just lie with me until I fall asleep."

I was annoyed by how the tuck-in was going, but I knew if I stayed, he'd be asleep in a minute. By that point I was irritated by all of the going up and down the stairs. So I did lie beside him, and sure enough he was asleep in a few moments.

Okay, so now we have an interaction to study! We already know a lot about this scenario from the general principles we've learned: We know that all (mis)behavior serves a purpose, so this is not just some random happenstance. It's a child's creative endeavor to accomplish something. Now we are trying to tickle our brain to fi gure out what exactly the child gains or achieves from his choice of behavior (the repeated calling out for Daddy to help him with water, peeing and fetching Fluffy, then, ultimately, lying with him while he falls asleep). We know it must be something worthwhile since he repeats the strategy every night. We also know that all benefi ts to be gained come from the other actor on stage Chapter Three 47.with the child, in this case Daddy, and that benefi ts are social or relational in quality. What could that possibly be? Well, we only have to narrow it down to one of four possibilities since young children only have four goals they pursue. Dad's responses to Ethan serve as one of: Attention (a mistaken approach to achieving the crucial C of connection) Power (a mistaken approach to fulfilling the crucial C of feeling capable) Revenge (a mistaken approach to finding the crucial C of feeling as if he counts) Avoidance (via a.s.sumed inadequacy, learned helplessness. Th is is a form of protection used when we feel we don't have the crucial C of courage.) If you guessed that Ethan's goal is Attention, you are right. Parents often diagnose misbehavior as a result of the mistaken goal of attention. We hear parents say "He's just doing that to get my attention," but how do they know that for sure? I want you to have the definitive answer, not just a guess. Let's get the proof and ensure total confidence in your diagnoses.

To do that, we need to ask Dad the three diagnosing questions: 1. What do you do?

2. How do you feel?

3. How does your child respond?

Each of the four dances has characteristic answers that will allow you to make a proper diagnosis. To ensure accuracy, you must answer all three questions.

48.Now we will get a bit more complicated-let's look at each of the four goals one by one, and find out the answers to each of those identifying questions. I will provide you with a table summary at the end of the chapter that you should bookmark and keep as a handy reference guide while you are practicing the skill of making diagnoses in the weeks ahead.

With time, the need to refer to the table will disappear, and you'll be able to immediately diagnose the goal without any formal process, just as a bird-watcher improves her ability to "spot birds"

and identify them without having to pull out the Peterson's Field Guide to Birds of North America.

You'll come to know these dances very well. The better you are at spotting and properly identifying misbehavior, the faster you can grab the appropriate tool and nip problems in the bud. With time, misbehaviors of all kinds can disappear all together-forever.