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When Your Kids Push Your Buttons:
The Newsletter
by Bonnie Harris, M.S.Ed.
Issue 21 - Internal Wounds
Contents:
- Purpose
- Discussion of key points
- Questions and answers
- Stories
- News of upcoming events or announcements
1. Purpose
Thanks to all of you who responded to our survey. We learned that many of you prefer plain text and many the full HTML version — so we are sending it both ways in a brand new format. If you cannot receive HTML settings, the newsletter should default to text only.
Let us know how you like it and if you have received it the way you want it. For those who have not yet responded, we are compiling a database and would like address information for as many of you as possible, so just hit reply to this newsletter and send us your information.
This newsletter focuses on some of the key points in my book with new thoughts and practical applications. I answer readers’ questions and give stories of how these new ideas effect their parenting lives. Hopefully it will help the "swimming upstream" struggle we face in changing our parenting from what many of our friends, relatives, teachers and a good deal society expect from us.
What I ask in return is your help in spreading this message. Please forward this to any friends or family you think might benefit, encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter and to buy the book, When Your Kids Push Your Buttons: And What You Can Do About It (Warner Books, 2003).
Thank you.
Your questions and stories:
In order for this newsletter to be rich and interesting, I need your questions and stories. You can ask a question from your daily parenting life or you can ask me to elaborate on certain ideas from the book or any previous newsletter. Depending on the number of questions, I may or may not be able to get to all of them in the following newsletter. Your question might be the basis of the discussion of key points or might be in the question and answer section. Please make it as short and succinct as possible and give your children's ages. Many readers assume I have more questions than I can answer, so they don't ask — this is not true unless I tell you otherwise. Ask away!
Keep in mind that most readers think I have more questions than I can answer, so they don’t ask. This is not true unless I tell you otherwise. Ask away! And when something works, we all get a lot out of hearing your story.
Discussion of key points – Internal Wounds
I just came upon an old interview with Alice Miller I had read in Parenting Magazine. She is a Swiss psychoanalyst and the author of The Drama of the Gifted Child among many other books whose theories have formed the foundation of my work for many years. What she has to say has helped so many parents understand themselves and their reactions to their children. This interview speaks so much to the Buttons work that I decided to discuss it here.
In her work, Miller focuses on respect as a basic need and the damage to children when they are not respected. She says that if we cannot be respectful of our children, the lack of respect from our past is driving our parenting. The maltreatment of a child, Miller believes, is due to repressed emotions stemming from the parent’s own maltreatment. “When needs are frustrated, and the child is instead exploited, deceived, manipulated, or neglected, he is basically being abused for the sake of adults’ needs [and] his very integrity will be lastingly impaired.” Merely because we are out of patience or too tired does not give us the right to force our children to “behave” to make life easier for us. “To be overtaxed does not authorize you to abuse your power,” she says. The child’s psyche is not strong or mature enough to understand and make sense of feelings of being misunderstood, dismissed, betrayed, lied to, or hurt by the most important person in his life, so he represses the feelings. “He must ‘forget’ what happened.” But his body doesn’t forget. The feelings get locked away to emerge in physical or mental illness or similar treatment of his own children.
Often the original maltreatment cannot be recalled, since it was not understood by the young child when it occurred. Or if it is recalled, the grown parent who continues the cycle “needs to believe, on some level, that it was ‘good’ for him, and thus good for his child.” It is very disorienting for a child who must trust her parent, to be told something that contradicts her own emotional experience: What are you so upset about? Stop crying. Don’t be mean. Why would you be upset about a thing like that? or the subtler You don’t mean that. The child must negate her own perceptions in order to believe her parent. This is repression. Her feelings have not been understood, much less respected, so they must be pushed aside. Punishment negates a child’s experience—it should never be considered for her own good. Any form of discipline that aims for blind obedience and ignores the needs of a child will reap personal loss later in life.
Miller continues to say, "If we want to confront our past, our "failures" with our children can actually be an opportunity to recognize the cruelty we suffered, to protest it—and to change our behavior. Because once we can feel that pain, we are unable to hurt a child." This can be done through the process of defusing our buttons and is what I refer to as "reparenting." The good news Miller presents is that any abuse can be survived successfully if the child has "an enlightened witness," someone who is honest and protective who can show the child that how she is being treated is wrong. When the child is able to "recognize the abuse for what it is, she will not be driven to repeat it with her own children." When parents can admit mistakes and change their methods of parenting, children are able to understand that their feelings about the bad experience were logical. Miller adds, "You can't avoid making mistakes. But you can spare your child a lot of pain if you can show her that your rage was not her fault, that its origins had nothing to do with her personally."
3. Questions from readers:
Q. My son is 7 and he has always been very energetic and kinesthetic, he likes to run laps to "get his energy out". However lately he has been acting out, hitting me and his brother, throwing things and tantruming. Since reading your article "I've tried everything" I have confirmed that yelling, spanking and blowing my top don't work. But I still feel lost about what to do. I think the expectations I have set for him are in range, but I don't know. He has a lot of anger due to my separation with my husband, but I still want him to know that hitting is not ok. I have tried what you said about sitting with him until he calms down, but he refuses my presence. I have tried what you said about asking his brother "Are you ok, do you need ice?" and totally ignoring the hitter. Then he gets angrier and says, "you love him more." We have put him in counseling and he feels ok about going so I hope that that helps. I know he has to "keep it together" at school so when he comes home he "lets it all out". I think that I have fallen into the category of "giving up and giving in" and that is not where I want to be! I just don't know what to do. HELP!!!!
A. It's awfully hard to start trying new techniques, hoping that things will change and find that they don't. it's so easy then to give in and give up as you say. it's important to find what feels right to you and then stick with it. Your son is probably reacting to the change in you and testing you to see if you really mean it. After you have comforted his brother, do you go back to the 7 yr. old and acknowledge his anger, jealousy, etc. "You must have been so angry at your brother to hit him like that. Something must have really made you mad." And then find out his side of the story. Do not allow him to hit you. When he does, respond very firmly and convincingly with, "I will not allow you to hit me. And I hope you will never allow anyone to hit you. You are very angry with me. Tell me what you want to say." Your rule abo she gets ut no hitting is certainly appropriate but knowing who he is, he needs to physically act out his anger and frustration. Give him something he can hit. Get him some boxing gloves, keep him running laps. Is he in a sport at school? Maybe he'd like something like kick-boxing. And continue to acknowledge his feelings. If he says, "You love him more than me," respond to his hurt by saying how awful it must feel to think that way before you tell him how much you love him. Ask him to tell you some of the things you do that make him think you don't love him as much. I think it's great that he is in counseling so he can talk his dad not being there. That is a topic that is usually to hard to talk to the other parent about.
Q. I have two daughters, Meghan who is going to be 4 in April and Katelyn who just turned 4 months. Meghan has been a doll until about two weeks or so ago. I don't know what to do because we have always been so close. Everything I do she argues with me about, she challenges me on things and her eating habits are horrible. I am at my wits end.
A. You didn't mention how Meghan feels about her new sister, but around four months, babies "enter" the world. Katelyn is now looking and reaching out to her surroundings and perhaps is seeming like a bit of a threat to her older sister who is no longer your one and only. She was a new "toy" for Katelyn but now seems like old-hat, cries too much, and gets "all" her mother’s attention—the attention that used to be lavished on her. Nothing to be done about the circumstances. Meghan will deal with the frustration and learn to live with another member of the family, but you can certainly do a lot in the way of affirming her confused at best feelings about her sister. Make sure you don't get into blaming her for anything she does to the baby. Call Katelyn by name rather than referring to her as the baby, acknowledge how hard it is for Meghan to have to share you with her, and if she gets to forceful with Katelyn, instead of no and stop doing that, tell her what she can do. Would you like to hold her? See if you know what to do to get Katelyn to smile or laugh. If Meghan is feeling cast aside (her perception, not your intention), she will pay you back with her words and attitude. She is trying to gain control in an area where she feels she has none. There are 3 arenas where children have ultimate control and often use one as a defense against feeling powerless—toileting, sleeping, and eating. So give her more choices around eating issues, validate her feelings toward the baby and find small ways to help her feel more powerful.
Q. My intense daughter (age 7) howls and screams whenever disappointed or slightly upset. It is difficult for me to help her when she is so dramatic. I try to explain to her that it is easier for me to help her if she is calm. I am torn between being empathetic or just ignoring and not rewarding the drama. She has also told me that she has "fake cried" before to get a child in trouble. Yet, she is very sensitive. I want to model kindness and empathy but I don't want to give attention and encourage high pitched dramatics. What should I do?
Please let us know if the answers to your questions are helpful. If not, ask again and send me
4. Stories
My youngest (14) is having positive experiences at school at the moment but up until quite recently (and it will happen again I'm sure) he had been moaning a lot about how much work he has to do. He went on at such length that I got really frustrated (especially as I'd heard it so often before) and felt he was being very self-indulgent and that if he just got on with it he would have had the work finished in the time he'd taken to moan about it! I realised my button was being pushed and paused. When I listened empathically to how hard he was finding it and how overwhelmed he felt at the moment he calmed down, he got on with the work and finished it, not quickly but without a big song and dance and quicker than if I'd kept insisting he shut up about it. It was amazing how much less time it took to listen than to deal with his mood when I was insisting that he get on with it. We live and learn. My older son reckons he should get some kind of commission from the business for all the practice he provides me with and for being the inspiration behind it - he having been my 'difficult' child who sent me looking for help in the first place!
5. News
Just a reminder that When Your Kids Push Your Buttons is now available in a 6 CD audio set with a 7th bonus disk that contains pdf files of all the exercises. The cost is $29.95 —, just send a check to the address at the bottom of this message and we will mail you the set. Great for listening to in the car!
If anyone is so inclined, I would love more reviews of my book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Click here to Read Previous Newsletters.
Email Bonnie with questions or comments at bh@bonnieharris.com.
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© 2008 Bonnie Harris, LLC | P : 603.924.6639 | E : bh@bonnieharris.com
