children: your joy or challenges?

The boy with his mother and grandfather shot across the road at the signal lights, hoping to catch the light before it turned green. Halfway through the road, the boy slipped and fell, and the grandfather who was following them, picked the boy up like a rag and slapped him tightly across his cheek. The screaming boy was dragged along by the mother. After reaching the end of the road, the boy sat down mutinously, refusing to move, and continued bawling.

The lights turned green and spurred by the honking traffic, I moved ahead. But the boy’s sorrowful face kept dancing in front of my eyes. Here was a boy who was hurt; and the grandfather, in his anxiety to cross the road, and perhaps for the boy’s safety, gave in to his anger and vented it out on the already hurt boy. Was the boy at fault? Did he fall on purpose? For that matter, were the elders doing the right thing, darting across the road like that?

Children have a reason for their actions and their thoughts; and these reasons spring from their little minds’ logic, which is just based on their feelings. If the feelings are negative, their actions show it, and vice versa.

Rudolf Dreikers, a social psychologist and an authority on handling children and their behaviour, is of the opinion that there is an underlying cause for the child’s misbehaviour, and has firm faith in a child’s rationality. However, if the child’s behaviour is based on misplaced goals, adults need to intervene. He lists out four reasons for a child’s misbehaviour:

Attention Getting: If a child cannot get attention for their positive behaviours, they will seek it with inappropriate behaviours. If your reaction is feeling annoyed or irritated, then this is the child’s goal.

Power and control: This is normally indulged in by children who feel inferior. Once the behaviour is repeated and catches the adults’ attention, the defiant behaviour escalates. This results in a power struggle. If you feel angry when your child misbehaves then power is his goal.


Revenge: This behaviour results from the thought of getting back at adults for the way they feel they have been treated (mistaken thought: unfairly). This usually happens after the first two methods for getting attention and power have failed. You will probably have feelings of hurt when revenge is your child’s goal. Do understand that the child is acting from a platform of being hurt.

Helplessness and Inadequacy: At this stage the child no longer cares what happens. The child acts passive, lethargic, rejects social control and refuses to comply or participate, and may even request to be left alone at this juncture. The adult also feels inadequate or incapable at this stage. Your feeling helplessness, escape or avoidance may be your child’s goal.

Having listed out the goals of misbehaviour, he also points out the ways by which we can handle misbehaviour effectively. Once we recognize the inner goal, we can help the child learn more appropriate goals. We need to thus understand the child’s goal by observing the behaviour in detail. We need to confront the child with the four goals. Use “Could it be questions…

Could it be that you want special attention?
Could it be that you want your own way?
Could it be that you want to hurt others as much as you are hurt by them?
Could it be that you want to be left alone?

We need to use Logical consequences, rather than reward and punishment. Logical consequences are results that a child faces when it immediately follows an action by the child.
It is a consequence that is directly linked to the action and the connection is perceived and experienced by the child.
He learns to perceive that he has a choice, and accepts the relationship of his choice to what followed (consequences).
It is different from punishment, in that the latter portrays the power of personal authority.
There is no element of moral judgment in logical consequences, and also allows a child to choose whether he wants to repeat an act, based on the consequences he experienced.

Encouragement is also vital to make the child aware that he is good and acceptable as he is, and not as he should be. We need to keep improvement in mind, not perfection.
We need to understand the difference between praise and encouragement. While praise recognizes the person, encouragement acknowledges the act.
Bringing up children is a lifetime commitment: if you decide to grow with them, there is no limit to the heights you can reach on the mountain of joy; but if it is a chore, then, the depths can be equally deep: the choice is yours...

Mohana Narayanan
January 2009

The flip and the flop!

Scene One: It was her daughter’s sixteenth birthday. It was right in the middle of her board exams, but the stress level was manageable. So she decided to host a party with a few friends. But her daughter’s best friend refused to come. The reason: she was prone to falling sick, and she did not want to take any chances. She offered to call her mother and ask that the friend be sent for just a while, but she was not allowed to. It is her decision and I need to respect it, she told her mother They have a right to decide, she told her mother.

Scene Two: It was her good friend’s fiftieth birthday. She was uncomfortable attending the party, as her friend’s family treated her like a pariah, and she no longer felt tolerant enough to accept this unwarranted treatment. She gave her honest reasons for not wanting to attend, expecting her friend to understand the indignity she suffered every time, and asked her to attend a party she wanted to throw for her at her place. The friend took first-hand offence! She was accused the mother of being self-centered, of not respecting her best friend’s wishes, of ‘punishing’ her for all the past misdeeds that had happened in the relationship! She was asked for proof of the relationship: attend the party…. So that I do not have my family gloating over your absence! She offered to clarify this issue with her family later (after being pushed to a corner? When she had not done it all this while??)

Whether she attended the party, or whether the daughter’s friends came over, is not the issue here. What comes to mind is the start difference in the attitude of respect of boundary and validation of feelings in the relationship. Here was a teenager, who chose to respect, albeit her disappointment, her friend’s decision not to attend an important day in her life, even though the reason given was something that could be worked around. And yet there was this matured, grown-up individual who took absolute offence, choosing to weigh her friend’s disturbing state of mind and feeling absolutely awkward, against her own feeling of happiness at ‘reaching a milestone’ in her life. To ice the cake, the proof of the friendship would be her presence at the get-together, swallowing the uncomfortable feeling of being treated like someone the cat brought it, with the one-liner: they do not matter–I do!

The nurturing of a relationship depends on the acceptance level of both the parties, in allowing space in the relationship. I hope this little girl maintains this respect in all her future relationships: after all what else is there in a relationship if respect for the other person is missing, if the hurt of the other is not validated?

Mohana narayananan
March,2009

Desiderata

I guess it is only natural that mankind craves for approving nods for his thoughts and actions. The social stamp of approval goes a long way in increasing one’s performance, and also his self-image, which in turn boosts his self-esteem. So it is no wonder that when, as a practicing counselor, my clients call me back to tell me that they were on the road to recovery and that the simple external and conscious measures they were following was helping them immensely, it gives me a wonderful sense of satisfaction.

As counselors we never give advice; that is left for the domain of ‘well-meaning’ friends, spouses and relatives, and why, even the shopkeeper at the end of the road! I mean, what else is available freely if not advice? (Not taxable either!) We as counselors believe in the client becoming responsible for his life and actions, and help him in coming up with suggestions for solving the issue on hand. This way, they are also responsible for the outcome. We gently prod the thought process of clients who come so wrapped up in the issues that bog them down that a dispassionate outlook and a rational line of thinking is practically impossible for them at that stage.

The questionings and the lessons of self-analysis and behavioural changes through various therapies sets them going on the road to a better life. Obviously then, no miracle happens; it is a combined journey that they take together, and the therapist and the client decide when the latter can walk on his own, without holding the hands of the counselor.

This lady who was coming for counseling sessions to me for the past six months called me this morning to find out whether she could come and meet me for five minutes. It was not a counseling session she said, she just wanted to see me. When she came, I expected her to start from a negative position, which was happening all along. However, I was in for a very pleasant surprise. She had been away for more than a month, and during this time, the fact that she was able to hold fort on her own, without breaking apart, and the fact that she was able to confront situations head-on, gave her a tremendous sense of confidence and well-being. “Maybe I never did all my homework you assigned, but I found that whenever there was a situation that I used to buckle under earlier, now I found that I was able to rationalize issues and arrive at a decision based on the actual event, and not read anything excess into it,” she said. She sounded so proud of being herself, that she had started loving herself all over again! I was glad for her: glad that a person who had initially been so full of worries, playing blame-games, unable to handle issues that were of earth-shattering magnitude to her, and one who was ready to be a door-mat rather than stand up for herself and love herself, was today able to stand in front of the mirror and tell herself: “I love myself for what I am, I respect the person that I am now, and I have a right to be here in this world!”

All of us need to realize this: I am a very important person in my life: It is not being selfish. Only if you love yourself enough, will you take care of yourself, physically and emotionally. An emotionally healthy person will live life to the full, will be happy being in a state of acceptance, and thus spread this spirit around. Imagine what the world would be like then !!!

The Mental and Emotional Differences

The phone ring in the midst of my workshop was insistent, and finally, excusing myself, I attended to the call. The young girl at the other end of the line sounded very worried, and upset. My mother is mentally disturbed, and I would like to bring her to you for counseling, she said. I debated whether to correct her, on the usage of the term ‘ mental disturbance’ then thought better of it, choosing to talk to her when she came to see me in person.

A lot of us make this fundamental error in differentiating between mental and emotional disturbance. As a counselor, I have come across many who say that they are scared to tell people they are visiting a counselor, for fear of being labeled as ‘mad’.

I think the difference starts from a very academic point of view. Our brains are divided into two: the right brain, which is emotional, perceptive and intuitive, and the left brain which performs the logical, rational and thinking functions. According to personality traits, people are either predominantly left- or right-brained. This is not to say that one part of the brain functions less than the other, it simply means that one is more dominant than the other. So we have people who make decisions based on logic and reason, which might make them appear very business-like and cool and collected, as they use deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion. On the other hand, we have the emotional, highly excitable individuals, who make on-the-spot, sometimes rash or hasty decisions, based on their emotions and on purely what they feel.

There can be no judgement on which way is the better way. Certain situations warrant a left-brained thinking, and certain issues, right-brained actions and decisions. A balanced working of both sides of the brain results in a healthy thinking individual. However, if a person always allows the right brain to dominate, he or she will end up being a high-strung, easily excitable, edgy and impulsive individual, who would act first and think later. At the other end of this spectrum, we also have individuals who would be low in spirits, be low in self-esteem, who would be global in his or her approach, especially when it comes to negative events in life.

It is important to understand this difference, to know the distinction between a ‘mental’ problem and an ‘emotional’ problem. People who are more right brained will be more emotional, and thus are better candidates for manifesting emotional problems. Now, emotional problems are connected with feelings, thoughts, and mind-set of an individual. When we say a person has a ‘mental’ problem, it is more clinical and medical in nature. It could be a pathological problem, which may require medical intervention, and possibly a consultation with a psychiatrist. A mental problem could manifest in the form of, say, delusions, hallucinations, personality problems, or obsessions.

An emotional problem, on the other hand, is more concerned with how the individual views the world from his or her angle. This would be very subjective, and may result in a distorted view of a situation, especially if the person is the injured party! A continuous series of events in this vein may result in an emotional issue, of say, low self-esteem, depression, self-effacing thoughts etc., further leading to relationship problems. Here, if
the person is predominantly right-brained, the problem is compounded, for he or she would refuse any logical arguments or reasoning on his own for a situation.
A right-brained individual would also be interested in fine arts, be intuitive and very sensitive to larger issues of existence. However, these positive traits maybe clouded because of the emotional problems he or she may be undergoing.

This is where external support would be of help. If one approaches a psychological counselor, who is trained to handle emotional problems and ask the right questions and gently probe issues in the person’s life, it would help the person look at the problem from a different perspective. A counselor would not have ready-made answers to questions, but she would help the client think in the right direction.

Just as one would visit a General Practitioner for a physical ailment before going to a specialist, say a cardiologist or a diabetologist for a specific problem, so too, one can visit a counselor, who would be able to identify whether a problem is of an emotional nature, which can be resolved through a series of counseling or ‘talking’ sessions, or whether the client would require psychiatric or medical intervention.

It is important to mention here, that counseling is not the same as advising. In fact, that is one thing that a good counselor never indulges in. A counselor does not provide a solution to a problem. On the contrary, he or she helps a client tap the inner resources to help the client arrive at a solution on her own. It works on the principle of : Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Most problems are emotional, before they turn out to be of a medical nature. Maybe that is why some healers claim that most ailments are psychosomatic in nature. What is to prevent us then from reaching out to specially trained people who are willing to listen to us, without being judgemental, who would help us cope with the daily stresses, resolve issues, and help us lead a better and healthier life ?