General Advice 1

I received the following e-mail:

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Dr. Childress

I have 3 kids ages 4, 8,and 13 years old, and I am the one going nuts. The 3 and 4 year olds fights all the time and the 13 year old feels like she doesn’t have to do anything at all. I feel like I am up against a wall, because my husband does nothing to help either. I am alone yet I am not.  Please help?

Mary

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Here is my response:

Hello Mary,

I'm sorry that you're feeling such stress in your family.  Professional standards of practice prevent me from commenting on your specific situation because of complex professional issues related to online therapy and the development of a professional client-therapist relationship.  But I can offer a general discussion of family issues.

In general, the foundational core of the family is the marital unit.  Any structure relies on its foundation.  If the foundation is strong and secure, then we can build a strong and secure family structure.  If the foundation is weak and insecure, then no matter what we attempt, the family structure will be weak and insecure.  

A strong and secure foundation within the marital core does not guarantee successful family relationships, but without it our further efforts will not be successful.  Once we have achieved the strong and secure marital core, we can then set about building family relationships of respect, affection, and communication.

The issue with children is not behavior.  Behavior is a symptom; the cause of behavior is the integration, or lack of integration, of brain systems.  In many cases, the behavioral problems of children involve the non-integration of three important brain systems; the Relationship Systems (there are two of these); the Emotional System (there are four primary emotions; anger, sadness, anxiety/fear, and happiness); and the Communication/Language System (communication is much richer than simply verbal language).

Regarding children’s absence of motivation, when there is a disruption in the Relationship Systems (often it is a disruption in Psychological Connection), the brain inhibits Goal-Directed Motivation (a motivational network involving Setting a Goal – Expending Effort – and Achieving Accomplishment).  The brain’s inhibition of Goal-Directed Motivation as a result of disruptions in the Relationship Systems often shows up as children’s poor performance with schoolwork and lack of cooperation with household tasks.

Furthermore, when there is un-metabolized pain within the Emotion System, the Exploratory Learning Motivation System (a different motivational system that is based in pleasure-pain systems of the brain) becomes pain-aversive and superficially pleasure-seeking.  The child often avoids putting in effort (because effort is uncomfortable) and the child will seek superficial pleasures (often in excessive TV watching or video gaming).

Regarding anger and the emotional system, emotional pain is metabolized through the Relationship and Communication Systems.  If there are disruptions within either of these two systems, then emotional pain cannot be effectively metabolized through the social field and it becomes expressed maladaptively.

The feeling of anger signals two things:  1) "this is important," and 2) "you hurt me so I hurt you."  Anger is designed to target outside threats (such as the predator in the jungle), and because of this it is a violent emotion.  It is too violent an emotion for use within the family or social group of companions.  Within the family or social group of companions anger should, at most, be expressed as annoyance and irritation.  Within the family or social group, the signaling of anger should be quickly translated to hurt (i.e., the signal function of "you hurt me so I hurt you") so that the pain of being emotionally hurt can be metabolized through communication and relationship rather than remaining in an expressive form of anger which will damage relationships because of anger's inherent quality of violence.

When children (or spouses) express anger, seek to translate the anger into emotional hurt; ask about and seek to discover the underlying emotional hurt, and then respond to the hurt with apology (if indicated) and nurturance.  Translating children’s anger into emotional hurt doesn’t mean that we must give in to the child’s demands.  We can still maintain our limits.  But translating children’s anger into hurt helps them discover the more complex social signal function of anger (rather than simply expressing the anger) and translating anger into emotional hurt helps children learn to communicate effectively about their experience within the social group.  Hurt draws nurturance, and nurturance heals.  Anger provokes further anger from others, and this anger creates more hurt.

Happiness integrates brain systems and promotes social bonding.  This emotion is our biggest ally.  We need to find and increase this emotion.  The positive emotion of happiness also signals "this is good - move toward this" and so provides us with a positive motivational pull and direction.  Find this emotion.  Build this emotion.  Within the marriage; within yourself; with your children.  If there are barriers to this emotion, begin to problem solve getting rid of these barriers.  Find this emotion, because the job of this emotion is to help us find the direction out of difficult situations.  

While the specific direction superficially targeted by the motivational pull of the positive-happy emotion may not be fully accurate, there will nevertheless be something in the zone surrounding the triggering of that positive-happy emotion that represents truth; that offers direction.

Affection is always in order with children.  Affection prompts happy.  Random affection bursts given to your husband and shared with your children may help improve the overall family environment, even if specific issues still remain.

One of the most important brain systems is the Relationship System involving Psychological Connection (the technical term for this system is "intersubjectivity").  This system allows us to feel what others feel "as-if" we were experiencing it ourselves.  It's what allows us to feel what the actors feel in the movies (there is a wonderful little video clip related to the underlying brain neurons responsible for this system at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirror-neurons.html.  It is well worth watching to help understand this Psychological Connection System).

Just like we feel what the actors feel in the movies, children feel what their parents feel. 

But what happens when we're watching a movie that becomes too frightening?  What do we do?  We look away - we break connection.  

Through this system of psychological connection, children feel what we feel.  So what will children do when their parents are too stressed, too angry, too sad, too anxious?  All of these feelings are imported into our children just "as-if" they were feeling these feelings themselves.  What do children do when our feelings as parents become too painful for them?  They break their psychological connection with us, just like we will break our psychological connection with a movie that has become too frightening. 

When our experience as parents is too painful for our children, they break their psychologically connection to our brain state, to our feelings.  When there is a break in this psychological connection, the feeling becomes one of psychological loneliness and alienation, which is an extremely painful state for humans.  When children feel this psychological loneliness caused by a break in psychological connection with us, they don’t fully understand why they're in pain.  They don’t understand that their emotional pain is the result of a psychological loneliness caused by having to break psychological connection with us; they simply feel the pain...

“Something's wrong and I don't know what it is.  I'm loved, so it's not that.  But I'm just not comfortable, I'm just not happy.  It must be because of… <the child then attributes some meaning to the feeling, that it is because of this or that unsatisfying situation – some need for this or that thing – or that this or that person hurt the child’s feelings, etc.>

When we believe the child’s attribution of meaning, that the child is actually upset about this or that need or perceived slight, then we find ourselves in unproductive situations that never seem to satisfy our children’s distress and demands, because the child’s attribution of meaning to his or her inner distress is wrong.  The child’s emotional distress and vague feelings of an unsatisfied need is actually being caused by the psychological loneliness caused by a breech in the Psychological Connection System.

And, when this Relationship System of Psychological Connection breaks down, the disruption to the Relationship Systems triggers the brain to inhibit the full-functioning of the Goal Directed Motivational System, and the pain within the Emotion System makes the Exploratory Learning Motivation System pain-aversive and superficially pleasure seeking.

As parents, the most important thing we can give our children is a calm, relaxed, and pleasant brain state of our own, which will allow our children to remain psychologically connected to us.  We need to smile… often.  When we offer our children a calm, relaxed, and pleasant brain state of our own to connect with, they are not alone; they are psychologically connected to us; they belong; they are part of our social group; and the intact relationship systems of love and connection can help them metabolize their hurts and sadnesses through the intact and fully functioning communication and relationship systems of social dialogue.  

With regard to the functioning of the Communication/Language System, the mirror neurons of the Psychological Connection System respond to the intentions of other people.  We read other people's intent; what's motivating their actions.  The most important thing we can do as parents is to attend to what our intent is that is organizing our response.  There are four primary intentions:

The Intent to Understand

The Intent to Be-With

The Intent to Task

The Intent to Change

The Intent to Understand (a simple curiosity to understand the other person's experience from the other person's perspective fosters productive communication.  The Intent to Task and the Intent to Change shut down communication (although they can have other positive benefits).

Imagine having an argument with your spouse in which he approached you with a sincere Intent to Understand your feelings, to understand your experience, from your perspective.  Imagine how good that would feel... to have your feelings, your experience, sincerely understood by him.  

You may want to offer this Intent to Understand to your children and your spouse as a way of fostering improved communication and positive relationship.

The Intent to Be-With communicates value... that the other person is valued and valuable.  This is a wonderful communication to offer our children.  The Intent to Be-With is a very simple, and a very fragile intention, and it can be easily overwhelmed by an Intent to Task or an Intent to Change.  The ability to offer our children a simple delight-in-their-being can be one of the most beneficial intentions that organizes our responses to our children (and to our spouses).

I hope this information may be of some help to you.  I'm afraid I can't offer much more at this time because of professional limits on my ability to comment on specifics using online media.

Good luck to you and your family in finding more positive and affectionate relationships.


Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18857