Author: murrayof

As part of my practice, I offer groups for children or adolescents.

Alongside work with parents, work with young people has been central to my experience. Over the course of my sixteeen years of running groups, I have moved toward a style sometimes referred to as a process group.

The purpose of the group is multi-faceted, and somewhat different from member to member. However, one aim is to provide participants with the opportunity to experiment and learn socially, and interpersonally.

How does the group provide this opportunity? One way to think of it: The social stakes are low.  Typically, you don’t have pre-existing relationships with other members of the group. This lowers the social stakes. If you make what feels like an interpersonal misstep, you won’t experience the consequences at home, or at school with friends. Group members are less constrained by these concerns, and it’s possible to have what I call a heightened conversation.

This provides an unparalleled opportunity to learn about yourself, and your impact on others.  Social missteps become rich opportunities for gaining self-awareness, as the group is able to offer valuable perspectives. Healthy interpersonal risks occur frequently, and when successful in our low-stakes environment, the experience can be internalized and eventually brought outside the group.

This type of group might be particularly appealing to a young person who wants to develop interpersonal awareness, or social skills, but would not benefit from a didactic, pragmatic approach.

Please contact me if you have questions, or if you or someone you know may be interested in being a member of such a group. I’d be happy to talk to you about it.

Children generally desire autonomy. Some children are more eager for it than others. As parents, we are excited to see our children demonstrate what they can do. We want to watch them grow, and applaud them.

For example, we look forward to the day when they can responsibly cross the street on their own. We want to raise them so that they can eventually navigate the wide-open world of the internet safely.

There is no rush. Our child’s deepest wish is to be safe.

Some children are especially hungry for autonomy. What I notice frequently is that children that demand more and more autonomy often don’t get any more peaceful or content when they get it.

To make sense of this, sometimes I imagine this child on a spiral staircase that does not have railings. They run up for a while, then look way down to the ground and anxiously exclaim “Oh my god!,” and then usually run up some more.

The core paradox is that while children want to grow free from your constraints, they also want you to hold them and keep them safe. Perhaps when they are granted too much autonomy – even when they have insisted on it, they are unhappy because they don’t feel held and safe.

If that is the case, don’t join your child in rushing their childhood, especially when there is a question of safety. Childhood will pass, savor the good parts while you can.

Our children push our buttons. It’s not up to us. Whether we are aware of it or not, they will find them.

Why? How?

Hold on. First, let’s be clear about what it means to push someone’s buttons. To push someone’s buttons is to activate a formative emotional wound. We’ve all got them, you can’t grow up without collecting at least a few.

Why do our children push our buttons? Because they are so effective at commanding our attention, and attention is as good as life itself.

If you had not given your close attention to your child when they were an infant, they would not have survived. After cutting the umbilical cord, your attention was their lifeline. Now that they are older, they may not need your attention for survival quite the way they used to. But there remains a deep, rich, and special association with your life-giving attention.

How do our children find our buttons?

-Trial and error. -Adaptation.

Let’s use an analogy. Imagine a monkey, loose in a complicated laboratory. In the laboratory, there is a panel covered with buttons. The walls have buttons all over them. There are even buttons on the floor. There are thousands of buttons.  The monkey is in the laboratory day after day, after day… The thing is, most of the buttons in the laboratory don’t do anything especially interesting. However, a few of them make a banana fly out of a chute right into the middle of the room.

How long do you think it will take for the monkey to find, and memorize which buttons make a banana appear? The monkey will stumble on it, and remember it due to the sweet reward. -And then they will keep pressing it. Some people might call the monkey manipulative. I’d just say that they like bananas.

When our children push our buttons, they win our attention. If they push the right button, they sense that we are still thinking of them, even as we attempt to go on to the next thing. Even though our buttons often draw out negative feelings, the attention to the child is still sustaining and affirming. It is wonderful to be held in your parent’s mind.

What’s the solution? I am not advocating that you cut off attention from your child when they push your buttons. The first step is usually developing better awareness of your own buttons. That awareness can earn you some space to develop some different responses,  including, but not limited to when your buttons are pushed.

 

This will be my last blog entry here. I set out to write ten entries so that visitors who are considering reaching out to me could get a sense for my style. -This entry makes ten.

This is a construct I use sometimes when I am training teachers or working with parents. It can be useful in developing self-awareness. It isn’t only relevant to parents, it’s also extremely relevant to teachers, and ultimately anyone who interacts with other people.

It’s especially about children though, because children can really test us. When you are newly responsible for a child, or a child is blossoming into their unique personality, sooner or later your patience will be pushed to its limits. Your emotions will get activated, sometimes intensely. What are you going to do with all those feelings?

Stage A. – Uncontrolled

This is the most primitive stage. Your child’s behavior is frustrating you. You are reacting, and your emotions are controlling your behavior. Your stirred-up feelings are spilling out in an uncontrolled manner. Your self-awareness is low.

Most people know better than to live at this stage, but almost everyone has visited it. Your child might be curious about your reaction, they might feel rewarded by your obvious deep connection to them, they might get further behaviorally activated, they might be frightened into compliance, with likely side effects.

Stage B. – Dispassionate

This stage is generally an improvement over Stage A. In this stage, you have learned to put your feelings aside, and approach your child during challenging moments from a dispassionate place of reason, logic, and inquiry. Your child is emotionally activated, hence the behavior challenge. But, your child sees that you are still calm.

This may help your child see that calming down is an available path, and you and your child may be able to activate the more logical parts of their brain together. When this is possible, reason can displace the panic response.

Stage C. – High Parental Self-Awareness and Self-Control

This is the most flexible, related, and effective stage. It is also the most complex, so it requires much more explanation.  I believe that most people have to spend time mastering Stage B, before they can practice Stage C.

In this stage, you have a well-developed understanding of your own emotional response. You have an articulate and agile understanding of your own emotional state. You know your sensitive buttons, and you know how to self-regulate.

With these abilities, you can use your own emotional self-awareness as a tool in understanding your child, and as part of your intervention. We are highly social beings, and our decisions are guided by our emotional intelligence. When appropriate, you can bring your own emotional state into the conversation.  Your child can gain insight into your inner world, and how you experience emotional changes. Your capacity to articulate your emotions will provide a model for your child to develop the vocabulary and capacity to think about their own feelings, and the feelings of others.

It’s okay to tell your child that your patience is low right now, and that it’s no fault of theirs, but that banging on the pots and pans is too much for you at the moment. Perhaps you can also tell them how your patience got depleted. Conversely, you can find a moment when you are feeling very ready to play and explore, tell them so, and ask them “what should we do!?”

However, I am not simply talking about articulating your feelings to your child. You can also choose to embody, experience, and express your feelings to whatever degree you feel is helpful to your child in the moment. -And to the degree that it is helpful as a social and emotional teachable moment. The metaphor I find most useful is imagining your emotions as a river running within you. You can observe the river, and take stock of its condition. You can let it flow past. You have the option of reaching into the river a little, or a lot, if it will be helpful to your child.

For the sake of clarity, the degree to which you reach into the river is the degree to which you choose to embody your emotions.

At this stage, you can also use your emotional self-awareness as a thermometer for the feelings of your child. As the incredibly social, mirroring creatures we are, our feelings always tell us something about the feelings of those near us. -Especially people we love.