Parenting with Love

Q: My wife and I try to understand and use loving ways. But our child will not listen and uses our loving way to play us and get what he wants so our stress level goes up. As long as he gets his way, he is happy. But once he does not get his way, he starts to fight for control and becomes defiant and aggressive toward us.

A: Many times, we set our intention to be loving and to use loving ways, yet our definition of what love is, has been misaligned. A few words I typically use to define love are acceptance, tolerance, and allowing. Let’s define (or redefine) what each of these words looks like for this particular question.

Acceptance means that your child is going to struggle and he is going to want his own way. Acceptance means that you can offer comfort and understanding, yet your child may not be able to receive this from you.The definition of unconditional love means to give without expecting anything in return. Thus, love is about offering your love yet accepting that your child may not be happy when he doesn’t get what he wants.

As a parent, we have the responsibility to tolerate the entire spectrum of feelings our children have. When we were children, most of us grew up in homes that offered only conditional love. We became programmed to think that it was our job to make our parents happy. Our stress levels increased when we couldn’t do this for them. We then bring this same belief into our role as parents. When our children don’t respond positively to us, we immediately have a stress reaction and feel ineffective (you stated, “…so our stress level goes up”). This is a false, erroneous, and highly ineffective parenting interpretation.

Unconditional love would correct this false belief as you put love into action by allowing. Allowing lets your child be upset without affecting your emotional state. It is not about being detached and just saying, “Whatever, he’s not happy. That’s his issue.” Being a loving parent means simply holding the space for your child to be unhappy, allowing him to be human, to experience a range of feelings, and allowing him to be in his own process, while staying connected and in a trusting and loving state.

When we don’t allow and instead, become stressed out, our children interpret this to mean that they aren’t lovable and that they simply aren’t okay. One of the most important needs we have as children (and adults) is the need to be significant, or simply, the need to be all right. This need is exaggerated and intensified in the internal programming of a child who has suffered trauma and fear earlier in his life.

Your child gets triggered by these feelings of not being all right and turns to more drastic measures such as aggression. Aggression is the quickest way to find significance (negative significance is better than none at all). My first book, Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control, Volume 1, has an entire chapter on dealing with aggression that would be extremely helpful to you in this situation.

Remember that being understanding and loving doesn’t mean your child is going to be happy. It is not our responsibility to make our children happy. In fact, we can’t make anyone happy. (That alone should calm your stress level).

Our children need us to establish boundaries yet they need these boundaries held without us adding our own stress into the mixture. When your child is not happy, being an understanding parent and using loving ways, means allowing him to be unhappy, without increasing your stress level.

If you are needing more examples of what this looks like and how to actually do this, I invite you to attend a Beyond Consequences Live training. In these trainings, I use intense role-plays and numerous examples to give you this “experiential knowledge.” These are free trainings, simply with a copy of one of my books. Information is available at: www.beyondconsequenceslive.com.

My new book, Dare to Love, is now available and it gives numerous examples in a series of questions and answers to help you implement authentic love. This and additional parenting resources are available at: www.beyondconsequences.com/store.html.

Every interaction you have with your child has the potential to be a healing moment. When struggles arise, allow yourself the privilege to allow, tolerate, and accept the moment, despite your child’s reactions. Remember, the only people who don’t have problems are those underground. It takes trusting and understanding the power and potential of these problems.

Press on in love and relationship,

Heather T.Forbes, LCSW
Parent and Co-author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control Vol 1 & 2

Disrupted Circadian Rhythms

Q: My foster son is 14 years old and has been in our home for 2 years. Since being with us, he has been sporadic in his sleep habits, but in the last year, it has gotten worse. His eating patterns are chaotic and he just seems completely out of balance. I’m trying to keep a regular and predictable schedule for him but this just isn’t working.

A: For any teenager, and especially for teenagers with traumatic histories, their circadian rhythms are disrupted. Circadian rhythms are the daily rhythms in the body that keep you balanced at a physiological level. They help you wake up and calm you down around sleep, they give you indicators as to when to eat, and they provide several other sensory experiences.

Circadian rhythms are naturally disrupted during the teenage years. For your foster son with a traumatic history, these rhythms were disrupted even before becoming a teenager due to environmental stressors, which means that now, during his teenage years, they are intensely disrupted.

The result is a son who needs to sleep at all hours of the day, eats in an unpredictable fashion, and simply operates in a disrupted physiological state. It is not a choice for him. It is simply how his body is operating at this developmental stage in his life; it is his inherent biological rhythm.

Parenting him will take understanding this biological principle. The next time your son has a hard time waking up at six o’clock in the morning, realize that his biological clock is telling him to sleep until noon. This is not resistance or defiance. It is simply how he is programmed at this stage in his life. Having this understanding will give you more patience and allow you to support him more as he struggles through life right now.

When trying to wake him up, tell him you understand how hard it must be for him. Many times we are so rushed in the morning that we focus solely on the logistics of getting ready, eating breakfast, and getting to the bus on time. Take a few minutes to connect with him, offer understanding, and allow him emotional space to be grumpy and resistant. As you focus on staying in relationship with him, he will have a greater ability to respond to you in a positive way when you ultimately have to say, “Okay, honey, we really have to get going now.”

Do some research on circadian rhythms and share it with him. Perhaps he will even sit down with you at the computer when you google this information. When he sees you taking interest in understanding him, it will speak volumes to him. As he begins to understand what is going on within his own body, he won’t have to feel as if there is something wrong with him.

Of course, as with most teenagers, he will be clever to use this in his favor. When you need him to get up and go to school, his response might be something like, “I can’t get up. It’ s my circadian rhythms!” This is where you have a brilliant opportunity to teach him how to not fall into being a victim to his biology. Through the power of his mind, he has the ability to overcome even the toughest of obstacles. As a foster child, I am certain he has had numerous experiences of feeling powerless. Empower him to take back his personal power and make his life work for him.

You mentioned you have been setting a schedule, which can sometimes be helpful. A scheduled external world can influence a child’s “internal world” to become more regular. There is however, a clarification I want to add to this. There is a huge difference between predictable schedule and rigid schedule. Too often, parents create a schedule for their family, yet set it into stone. This creates a rigid environment with little tolerance for the smallest variation. Rigidity is the first sign of death! So set a schedule, but in moderation allow for flexibility.

Yet, you mentioned that this has not helped. Your son may need to set his own schedule. Empower him to take charge of his body by having him set up a schedule for himself. If he feels as if he has some control over his daily life, he will be more motivated. No one likes being told what to do and when to do it, especially teenagers.

There are certain “must-do” events in everyday that he will not have control over (such as when to be at school, when to be at basketball practice, etc.). Yet, the other times of the day, help him learn how to plan out his daily life. Besides helping him to feel like he has some control over his life, you are teaching him a valuable tool that many adults have yet to master. Some teens may be too dysregulated to follow the actual plan, but you are at least helping them to begin the process and it is giving him time to process ahead of time his daily life.

Most importantly, when you stay in a place of understanding, decreasing the level of frustration you bring into your interactions with him, you are providing a healthier and safer environment within the context of your relationship with him. This is the most effective “tool” you have available. Your loving influence, wrapped with understanding, will help him establish more consistent rhythms within his body.

Press on!

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW
Parent and Co-author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control Vol 1, 2 and Dare to Love

Q: When trying to embrace my daughter (age 13) during stressful times, I began to realize that she has created crises over and over to receive that kind of love and attention. It ended up whenever I had a plan and it didn’t include her (work, coffee with a friend, etc.), she’d have a crisis (feel sick, kick the wall and insist on a trip to the E.R., lock herself in her room). Then, when I started to include her in everything, she’d sabotage it (push the table over in the restaurant, break equipment at work, ruin clothes in stores at the mall, etc.). I felt like I was being completely controlled and “trained” to focus only on her all of the time. How do you manage that in moderation?

A: There are several dynamics going on in the relationship between you and your daughter. First, let’s look beyond the behavior to determine why children “create crises.” The voice of this type of behavior is saying, “I need to feel loved and I need to have attention so I know I won’t be lost in this world!”

Behavior is the language of our children. As adults, we communicate verbally and miss the voice of our children because these behaviors interrupt the flow of our day and are often so nerve grinding, we can’t listen to them!

Your daughter is expressing that she is insecure in her attachment relationship with you. When you leave home without her, the acting out or sicknesses begin. Although I do not have her exact history, this tells me that she has experienced severe abandonment in the past. She is terrified of you leaving her…it feels like you won’t ever come back.

Her perception and fear of you leaving her is more than just an idea-it is her reality. Our thoughts become our reality. Try to relate to her fear in a situation in your life. If you were convinced, for some reason, that your husband would be injured in a car accident on his way to work, you would do EVERYTHING in your power to keep him from leaving the house. You might yell in desperation to get him to understand the seriousness of this issue. You might even feign an illness in your efforts to have him stay home with you.

This is your daughter’s story. Her fear of losing you is driving these behaviors.

Then, when you took her with you, I have a feeling that she was with you simply out of desperation on your part. However, even though she was with you, I suspect you weren’t really with her 100%. You didn’t want her there because this was supposed to be your time to take care of yourself and you felt like you didn’t have any other choice but to take her with you.

This is all understandable, and unfortunately, happens too many times to parents simply out of their own survival. However, we need to look openly and honestly at the dynamic that is created in such a scenario.

So you take her with you, all the while, the monsters of resentment, anger, regressive attitude of “whatever,” and intolerance raise their ugly heads. These stressors become barriers to your connection with her. You are physically with her, but not emotionally engaged and not paying attention to her from an intrinsic, core level within you.

Your daughter is very intuitive; she can sense the barriers of your resentment and your state of survival. If you are in a place of survival, you cannot be in a place of unconditional love for someone else. Your focus is on you, leaving no emotional space for your child and rendering you unable to respond to your child in an authentic and personal way.

Due to her intense fear of losing you, she needs you to connect with her at every level possible. This means connecting with her through your metacommunication (your tone of voice, timing of your responses, inflection in your voice, your physical touch, your body posture and body language, your facial expressions, your eye contact, etc.). It takes using all of your senses to fully be in relationship with your child in order to create security with a child who is so overtly insecure.

When you’re unable to do this, the result is that your daughter is left feeling even more unsafe, unprotected, and insecure. At this point, you are now in a public place and she is sensing your disconnect and, additionally, she becomes overwhelmed and threatened by being in a new environment. She shifts into a place of complete overwhelm and her behaviors are out of control. The mother /daughter connection is lost, so efforts to regulate her and calm her prove futile.

You become stressed and the public humiliation is making the hair on the back of your neck rise. Your thought process goes something like this, “*@%$ it, she’s ruining my time, again! I should have just left her home!” Disaster sticks once again.

There is a better way. Understanding this dynamic, let’s look at what can be done to create security for her. We know that children become secure when they feel accepted, approved, validated, and acknowledged. It will take having some experiences with her, just the two of you, to create this security.

It can be as simple as a “Girl’s Night Out” and driving down to have ice cream or something special in a quiet and calm environment, just the two of you. It isn’t about the ice cream, though. It is about your relationship with her. It requires you to be authentic and fully present with her.

She is old enough to be able to express her fears of you leaving her. Point out what would happen in the past when you left. Let her know that you now understand that these behaviors were signals of her being so scared of you leaving. Apologize for not “hearing” her. Commit to making it different with her. Help her to express her fears when you are both calm and regulated. It will help diffuse the ignition of acting out behaviors the next time you leave without her.

Validate her fears. Acknowledge how scary it must feel every time you leave home without her. Accept her reaction to your absence. Reassure her that you want to make this better for her.

The next time you have to leave, spend at least 15 minutes of one-on-one time with her prior to leaving. Set up a plan for her to call you when she feels scared. Make your time away from her short at first. Prolonged absences can be too overwhelming to her regulatory system. You can begin to build on these times away, but start slowly.

Remember that children heal through relationships. Therapeutic worksheets, behavior charts, and logical consequences don’t promote in-depth healing. It takes you being 100% present in relationship when you are with her in order for her to begin to feel safe when you’re not with her.

Be sure to check out our resources on our newly revised website to keep yourself refueled as a parent in this difficult situation! I’ve created our resources and our webpage to support you: www.beyondconsequences.com

Press on,

Heather T. Forbes, LCSW