Anxious mom, “something is gonna happen that he will not come back from. “ I’ve listened to variations of this statement often in my office. These parents are worried about the future of their child, and it’s not a career or who they will marry. No, I’m hearing the fear that they will be in jail or do something terrible. It’s not difficult to imagine in this day and age what that “something terrible” could mean. This fear has an effect on the actions of the parent. They make choices motivated by this fear. They want to see the behavior stopped, NOW. Can you imagine what mom and dad feels after everything they’ve tried and problem still persists? Not only it still persists, but now the child seems to be getting worse.
I had this new client, a young girl. Her dad said to me, “she has explosive anger”. Looking at this child you would never be able to tell. During the intake interview she was cordial, well spoken, and showed intelligence. I did see that she didn’t mince words when she described how people had treated her. She was very opinionated about what a teacher or a former counselor said to her, “they were mean to me”. I could tell in very little time that she had a critical eye to how people may think about her. It was a strong possibility that she believed people were a threat to her self-confidence. This is fear.
The mom in the first paragraph and the young girl has a common problem with fear. It is the motivating factor behind their actions. You see fear has a singular action, “WARNING, DANGER!” From that point on we have two choices, fight or flight. This is not the place you want to be making decisions from. I get a few adults and children, who have the flight response to fear. These are not ones I want to talk about this week.
Fight
Does anybody know what happens in our brains when we experience fear? If you said, “fight or flight”, you cheated cause I already told you that. Yes, that is what happens but what happens before that? I don’t like to get technical, because I don’t know how to, so I will lay it straight. We get dumber. Yep, our brains dumb down when he feel fear. It’s instinct. Why is it there? Well, you can Google it if you want to learn more about that. The fact of the matter is that it is there and we need to recognize the importance of it. You see instinct is faster than thought. Seriously, can you name a few instances where thinking, “Is this a bad situation?” would make it a bad day for you? So let’s be thankful for this instinct. Yet, not so great if it’s got no experience. Left to its own devices it could make matters worse instead of better. Can I give you an example?
When I was in my last year of college I was visiting the on-campus house my girlfriend at that time was living in. A few of us were in the kitchen making dinner. She was standing by the microwave melting some butter, still wrapped in aluminum. At that time, microwaves were very sensitive to metal. I was on the other side of the kitchen when the microwave started to complain about the tin wrapper and started to pop and blue flashes came from where the butter used to be. There was some real similarities to a well know 80’s horror flick, so her initial reaction was very understandable. She, standing literally next to the microwave ran away. I, on the other side of the room passed her on the way to the microwave to shut it down. Here is the point. That was not the first time I had seen a microwave do the electric blue and knew what to do. That was not the case for her. Her instinct was not experienced with the situation and did what it thought best.
Train
How do we train it? Take a note from the military. Do you know what many of the soldiers say when they report back about why they took a course of action; Soldiers, whose job is to put themselves into harms way; Soldiers, who all feel fear and would be worried if you did not? They will say they followed their training. That is why countries spend large amounts of money and time training their soldiers. When the fear hits and the instinct kicks in it knows what to do because it recognizes the situation and acts on it.
Parents, you have to realize the situation. You and your child are in a need of training. This takes time and energy because consistency and repetition will lead you to success. It doesn’t matter how smart you are and how experienced you may be with other parents’ children. You will still need a coach. A person who can keep your head straight when it’s spinning. Who will keep pointing you to the desired goal. All of this is because you’re the teacher of your child. The coach who keeps them moving even when they don’t think they can do it. Yes, I’m a therapist and I work with kids. I help them share their feelings and I talk about their angers and how unfair their parents are. Heck, that’s why you send your kids to me, “to fix them”. Guess what, I have them for 1 hr a week, possibly 2 hrs if you can convince me. I’m not very good with math but it’s fair to say, you see your child more than I do. So your influence is greater than mine.
There are plenty of great books out there with usable techniques. Do your research find out what you think fits your situation. However, as much as I like to read military non-fiction novels it doesn’t make me a soldier. So you still need to get a professional who can teach you the application of those skills and to help you stay focused when you don’t think it is working.
Weekly Wisdom
Intelligence: Knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom: Knowing not to put it in a fruit salad
From a Child’s mouth
“Teenagers know how to raise teenagers”
I spoke with a man outside of my office while at a local place of business. He asked what I did for work. After telling him, he was very interested on my take about a personal situation. This is not uncommon for people in my field.