Supporting change with respect and empathy
I work with children, adolescents and adults, helping them to bring about changes in themselves, their relationships, and their worlds that allow them to build the lives they want for themselves, lives with purpose and meaning, lives that flow from their values, lives that matter.
D was brought to see me because his parents were at their wits end with his willfulness. He is an 8-year old boy, bright, charming, charismatic, imaginative, wonderful, and stuck. I evaluated him and found that in addition to these many strengths, he also has quirks that make it hard for him to sit still, pay attention, monitor what he is doing, and shift course as needed during his day. As we have continued to work together, I have also been meeting with his parents to help them understand him and to help them be the type of parents he needs. His mother, L, struggles more with this than his dad, S. L was raised by authoritarian parents who did not spare the rod. In her world, you did what you were told, no questions. So, a little boy that flouts her requests and says “No!” is confusing and frustrating for her. S, the father, is more able to soften his stance and meet his son where the child is.
At our last meeting, we were talking about meeting D where he is and helping him to move more towards his parent’s expectations and requirements of him so that bedtime, brushing teeth, bath time, and all those myriad small, routine yet important things don’t turn into battle grounds. I was explaining to L and S that children like D have an active, rich, and compelling internal world. It takes them time and effort to unhook from this “playground of the mind” and re-enter the “real world.” They need time and support to transition. In addition, D has a strong drive for autonomy. He resists being told to do things and does not like being rushed[1]. Change can feel both unexpected (given his tendency to be distracted and hooked by his internal world) and almost threatening (given his immature and sensitive nervous system).
What D’s parents shared with me this week is that D is determined to turn over a new leaf with the start of school. While waking up in the morning has been an ordeal for him in the past, he has come up with the plan of waking up at 6 and watching a couple of episodes of his favorite cartoon show. He was able to follow through with his aspiration on the first day, but by the third day, he was slipping back into old patterns. His father was also worried that he may sleep in at the weekend and struggle to get back up to speed when the week starts.
To help them think about ways in which they can support D in his goal to wake up early so mornings are not a struggle, while also helping him to do this in a way that is not leading to burn out, AND doing all this without butting up against his strong drive for independence, I introduced them to a few important principles:
1. Collaborative problem solving[2], which involves making D a partner in the process and enlisting his ideas, vision and creativity to address the problem at hand: how to wake up early enough, but not so early that he runs out of gas, and how to do this consistently so it becomes a habit.
2. Declarative language[3], which sounds like, “hmmm, I wonder….” as opposed to imperative language which sounds like, “Do this now…OR you should do….” type of speech. I encouraged S and L to wonder aloud, “Hmmm, if we sleep in at the weekend, it may be even harder to wake up early for school on Monday,” or, “Hmmm, I wonder how early is early enough, so we don’t come home super tired after school.” Declarative language states a fact in a nonjudgmental, impersonal way to help prompt the learner to think in a way that we want them to think about a situation.
3. Gradual release of responsibility, which is the process used by skilled teachers (including the mom who is helping her child learn how to make bread) to pass the baton to the learner. First, we do together, then I watch you do, then you do, I watch!
4. Using a child-led process to initiate the process of change. In this type of approach, the adult enters the child’s world and tries to see things through the child’s eye. The adult (or expert), empathizes with and walks in the child’s (or novice’s) shoes and through these experiences, understands how to skillfully bring the child into the adult’s world so the child can begin to understand a more mature perspective of the situation. This is at the core of effective child therapy, play therapy, behavior change, and behavior management – to understand what it is like to be the other before you try to change the other.
D's parents are intelligent and highly educated people. S immediately grasped what I was driving at and started to talk about how he could slow things down and bring them down more to D’s level. L pushed back. She said, “I already know what the solution is. It feels disingenuous to act like I don’t know and “wonder” aloud. If I tell him what to do, he needs to do it!” What helped L to shift is this: an explanation that what works for her adult mind, with her 46 years’ worth of data from her lived experiences, and her two graduate degrees, could never make sense to a 8-year old, with the limited data and life experiences he has. The more she bends him to her will because she wants him to just accept what he is told, the more she risks losing him. Everyone sees the world through their experience. The most effective and meaningful growth comes from what we construct as our own meaning of an experiences. However much someone may love us and we may trust them, what they see, think, believe, and do can never be duck taped onto us and become part of us.
This is what it means to be a guide, a mentor, a teacher, a parent, a protector, a therapist, a sherpa: we walk alongside those we love, we try to see the world through their eyes, and we help them change the things they want to and need to change in their lives, on their terms, so they can have the life they want for themselves. We don’t dictate to them, bully them, drag them along, prune them so they fit in the box we have made for them, or abandon them because we don’t understand them. We do the work. This is the heart of the multicultural, developmentally respectful, person-centered, evidence-based therapeutic practice I aspire to.
[1] Check this out: https://eisforerin.com/2015/08/10/tendril-theory/
[2] Check this out: https://livesinthebalance.org
[3] Check this out: https://pdanorthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Declarative-Language-PDA.pdf