Take the BCI Pop Quiz #2

							It is All a Matter of Interpretation To further your understanding of how to put love into action and to give you more practice putting "Beyond Consequences" into action, I've created another Pop Quiz for you. Breathe...this isn't like the pop quizzes you had when you were in school. It won't be graded and you won't get into trouble if you miss the correct answer! Have fun with this and use it as a tool to liberate yourself from thinking in the old traditional fear-based way:
1. At her older sister's band concert, an 11-year-old begins tapping, wiggling, and making unnecessary noise. Dad puts his finger to his lips to signal his daughter to quiet down but his daughter becomes louder and more defiant.
			This 11-year-old is acting like a three-year-old. This is completely unacceptable at her age. She is being self-centered and needs to be taken out of the concert immediately. Her dad needs to tell her to calm down; that she must sit outside the band concert until intermission and maybe, just maybe, she will be allowed to come back in at that time.
			This child is not supporting or respecting her sister. Her dad needs to pass her a note telling her this and that if she doesn't straighten up, her consequence will be to make her sister's bed for the month so she can learn what support looks like.
			Dad needs to recognize that the 11-year-old is bored and perhaps overwhelmed, even at this age. The dad can quietly and gently pull her onto his lap and cuddle with her. This will help the 11-year-old calm down and will, in turn, create a sweet daddy/daughter cuddling time as they listen to the music together.
			This is clearly a bio-chemical issue. She probably has ADHD and should be evaluated with a strong emphasis on looking into medications such as Ritalin or Adderall.
2. A mother is picking up her three children. When the 15-year-old daughter gets into the car, her three-year-old sister starts whining. The 15-year-old gets aggravated, starts arguing with the three-year-old, and proceeds to turn up the radio. The music and the arguing gets louder and louder. Little sister calls her older sister "stupid" and in return, curse words starting flying out of the teenager's mouth. The girls’ six-year-old brother stays out of the conflict.
			Mom needs to warn the girls that if the bad words don't stop, they will both get their mouths washed out with soap.
			Mom needs to administer consequences that have REAL leverage because this is now a safety issue with mom trying to drive: no TV for the three- year-old and no cell phone for the 15-year-old for a week.
			This is a "teaching moment" so Mom needs to take quick and decisive action to lecture her teenager about being a better example for her younger siblings. They all need to work together as a team--a family that works together, stays together. If the teenager doesn't learn this now, by the time she is 18 years old and out of the house, it will be too late.
			Mom recognizes her own dysregulation and pulls over because she can't drive safely at this point. Mom turns off the radio, takes some deep breaths, and lovingly reminds the kids that when they yell, she can't drive safely. This is a safety issue and mom makes this very clear. She reminds them all (including her son who is still regulated but almost forgotten at this point) that she will take time to be with each of them individually throughout the afternoon. The teenager needs a voice, so mom listens to the teenager instead of lecturing her. She begins to understand that the teen was using the radio to calm herself, not realizing that it was dysregulating everybody else. Mom suggests the teen listen to her iPod, giving her the ability tune out her younger siblings on the ride home.
3. A nine-year-old girl was living with her father because her mother was dysregulated and unstable most of the time. Her father had to leave for a three-week overseas business trip so the girl went to stay with her mother. While on the phone with her father, the girl tells him that she had tried to kill herself by drowning herself in the bathtub.
			The father is losing control of this situation and needs to stop his daughter's manipulative behavior immediately, even from a distance. He needs to apply logic and love by telling his daughter that the money budgeted for a birthday present will now have to be spent on getting her psychological help.
			The father recognizes this as a fear response to his being gone for three weeks. The daughter doesn't know how else to ask for help because she is scared of discussing her fear of her mother with her dad. This behavior is a form of communication. The daughter is also afraid to discuss this with her mom because her mom and dad do not have a good relationship and her mother might react negatively. In the daughter's mind, this is the only way she could ask for help.
			The dad needs to call 911. The daughter has to be put in a 72-hour locked psychiatric ward immediately to make sure she doesn't hurt herself.
			The child needs to go live with a relative who can be there for her 100% of the time. It is evident that neither the mother nor the father can provide a consistent and stable home for this child.
Hopefully, the correct answer to each of these questions was obvious for you. If not, here they are: (1) C (2) D (3) B Each of the above examples and their correct answers are true stories. The love-based interpretations and solutions given were all successful and helped each child to move from a state of fear, stress, and overwhelm, into a state of love, safety, and security. If you enjoyed this "Pop Quiz," send me your examples and I'll continue this series for you! Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, and Dare to Love P.S. Check out my Ask the Expert Interview with Sherrie Eldridge, as she speaks out adoption, adopted children and how their parents are drawn closer. http://www.asktheexpertinterviews.com

Take the BCI Pop Quiz

						It is All a Matter of Interpretation To further your understanding of how to put love into action and to give you more practice putting "Beyond Consequences" into action, I've created a Pop Quiz for you. Breathe...this isn't like the pop quizzes you had when you were in school. It won't be graded and you won't get into trouble if you miss the correct answer! Have fun with this and use it as a tool to liberate yourself from thinking in the old traditional fear-based way:
1. In preschool, a four-year-old boy does fairly well in class until it comes to Circle Time. When it is time to sit in a circle, he becomes demanding and insists on sitting next to his teacher. He refuses to make eye contact with anyone and sits turned away from his classmates.
		A. The child is being defiant. He must learn to be respectful and join in the circle. If he chooses not to sit in the circle like all the other children, he will lose 10 minutes at recess and sit in Time-Out. B. The child has ADHD and needs to be put on Ritalin immediately. C. Circle time overwhelms this child. The direct eye contact with the other students is too much and the child is trying to buffer this by sitting half in and half out the circle. He is trying to find safety by sitting next to the teacher. D. He needs to be given a choice to either be a "big boy" or be a baby. He should be told that if he can't act appropriately during Circle Time, he will be sent down to the nursery to be with all the babies. That way, it is his choice.
2. A 19-year-old young man still lives at home but has become so despondent he refuses to get a job and hides away all day in his basement bedroom, refusing even to come upstairs to join his mother for dinner.
		A. This young man is being lazy and sees mom as a "freeride." Mom needs to tell him to get a job or she needs to kick him out ("Shape up or ship out"). Tough love is needed in order to get him to growup. B. While he is 19-years-old chronologically, he is much younger emotionally. He is terrified of growing up and not ready to handle life as well as most 19-year-olds can. He is in a complete state of overwhelm; he is hiding in his "cocoon." Mom can start by going down to his room with dinner and eating with him, strengthening their relationship and working to calm his nervous system. She can offer her support and talk about ways to take babysteps into the "realworld." C. He is clinically depressed and needs to be admitted to an in-patient unit immediately before he hurts himself. D. There is nothing mom can do. He is 19-years-old and an adult. Mom needs to ignore him and move on with her life.
3. A seven-year-old girl, who enjoys reading as a calming activity, becomes upset in the classroom when her teacher sets a boundary and says, "no," to one of her requests. She runs out of the classroom, without permission, and runs into the library. She immediately starts pulling books off the shelf and piling them into a stack. She then runs to the corner of the library, sits down, and starts reading the books.
		A. This child clearly has problems with authority. She needs to learn to respect adults--NOW! Otherwise, she'll be so out of control by the time she is 15-years-old, she'll be in juvie. Immediate punishment needs to be administered in order to help her understand the importance of submission. B. This child's parents have spoiled her. She thinks she can do anything she wants to do, when she wants to do it. Since her parents are too easy on her, the school must step in and teach her rules and boundaries. The next time the class goes to the library, she will not be allowed to check-out books and will have to sit and watch the other children. She'll learn there is a time for books and that time will be determined by the teacher, not her. C. This is a severe safety issue. She was running around the school unsupervised and the teacher didn't know where she was. This child needs to know that unsafe behaviors will NOT be tolerated. She needs to be taken directly to the seclusion room in order to keep both her and the other children in the school safe. D. This child has a history of being rejected. When her teacher told her "no," she immediately had a traumatic reaction and slipped into a state of fear, believing she wasn't lovable or didn't deserve to be on this planet. She couldn't go to the teacher for comfort as the teacher was the source of the fear, so she turned to books in order to get regulated. Her ability to properly ask to go to the library was overridden by her need to survive.
4. A 12-year-old foster child digs through the family garbage even though he is in a loving foster home that provides for all his food needs. There is food in the pantry and his parents always make sure he is offered seconds at meal-time.
		A. This boy needs Reality Therapy. He and his parents need to go visit Costco. His parents need to point out all the food that is available to them, even if they run out at home. The bigness of Costco will help this boy realize the amount of food his parents have access to so he knows he won't have to dig into the garbage anymore. B. In order to stop the nasty behavior of digging into the garbage, his parents need to give him a consequence. If he doesn't stop digging in the garbage, he won't be served dinner. He needs to learn that he can either eat the food from the garbage or the food served on a plate at dinner-time like the rest of the family. C. This type of behavior comes directly from a past experience of not having enough food. This boy is hard-wired to protect himself. In the past, the adults in his life were unable to feed and provide for him. He is continuing to live in a state of survival, despite being in his new home. When his parents find him rummaging through the garbage, instead of addressing the behavior, they should address the root cause of the behavior by saying, "Son, you're going to be okay. You're not going to die. I'm here to make sure you have everything you need." D. This child is doing this just to push his parents' buttons. He knows this behavior undermines everything they are trying to do for him and it is a way for him to push away their love and reject them. They need to do some intensive attachment therapy before he grows up to be Ted Bundy.
5. A three-year-old girl refuses to take a bath at night. Each night she goes into a complete meltdown and becomes belligerent. The intensity increases even more when her mother tries to wash her hair.
		A. Her refusal to take a bath is not defiance but fear. This type of extreme reaction is a communication of an experience in the past that scared her. It is a traumatic reaction. Mom can offer to sit next to her daughter while she is in the tub to keep her safe and if this doesn't work, mom can offer to get into the tub with her daughter (mom can wear a bathing suit if that makes her feel more comfortable). In the tub together with Mom, the child can have an experience of feeling safe and secure. Mom and child can also make this into a fun time with bubbles and toys and create a bonding time out of a chaotic moment. B. At this age, it is important to teach this child to start making better choices. To break the power struggle, mom needs to offer her three choices: 1) earn stickers for each time she bathes without a struggle, 2) sit in Time-Out and miss her TV time if she has a melt-down, or 3) if these first two don't work, mom will wash her down in the shower because hygiene simply can't be ignored. C. This child is being a brat. She needs a good swat on her rear-end to make sure she knows who is boss in this family--mom, not her. D. Let the child go without a bath until she is ready. Forcing the issue will only make things worse. The child just needs some space to decide.
Hopefully, the correct answer to each of these questions was obvious for you. If not, here they are: 1) C 2) B 3) D 4) C 5) A Each of the above examples and their correct answers are true stories. The love-based interpretations and solutions given were all successful and helped each child to move from a state of fear, stress, and overwhelm, into a state of love, safety, and security. If you enjoyed this "Pop Quiz," send me your examples and I'll continue this series for you! Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, and Dare to Love P.S. Check out my Ask the Expert Interview with Sherrie Eldridge, as she speaks out adoption, adopted children and how their parents are drawn closer. http://www.asktheexpertinterviews.com

Car Bashing

					Q: My adopted son, 11 years old, was getting very aggressive in the car. He was hitting his sister and yelling. We were about five houses away from our home so I told my son to get out of the car and walk the rest of the way home. He was not happy about it but got out and walked home. Once he got home, he kicked the car multiple times and dented the back of it. I was so upset that he caused damage that I had him go with me to get an estimate for the cost of the repairs. I needed him to understand that this was a big deal and the importance of working hard to stay in control. I told
him he needed to do some jobs for me to pay for the damage to the car. Was there a better way to handle this? A: I do believe in restitution and teaching our children to be responsible but let’s back up. We first want to ask the question, "What was driving his behavior?". We always want to look at what caused the negative behavior and in this case, what brought on the aggressive behavior. In many cases, it does become an absolute safety issue when a child becomes aggressive in the car. The parent needs to address it because it is never okay for anyone in the family to be put at risk. If a child is becoming upset and aggressive in the car, the parent should pull over and stop the car in a safe place. However, too often, the parent is scared herself and projects this fear onto an already dysregulated child: "You need to stop that right now, Billy!" The parent's fear then adds to the dysregulation and the chances of increasing the safety for the family are almost non-existent. A child with a trauma history of rejection and abandonment absolutely needs a loving approach over a traditional fear-based approach (like the one you took with your son). When your son was asked to get out of the car (even five blocks away from home), his core pain was triggered. In his view, he was rejected from the family and abandoned to be on his own, not just temporarily but forever. Most children with trauma histories have black and white thinking. They can't comprehend it is only a temporary disconnect. He did not learn a lesson about being nice to his sister or being safe in the car. The main lesson he learned was that he was not lovable or good enough and he re-learned the lesson of rejection and abandonment. He also learned that his family was not able to handle him and that he was not welcome in his family anymore. With this kind of perspective, it makes sense why he became so outraged when you got home and he then severely damaged your car. Most traditional parents handle this type of scenario in the way you did, yet their children do not react in such a dramatic way. The difference comes down to one word: TRAUMA. Your son is hard-wired differently and until deep healing has happened, he will continue to react out of fear and be exaggerated in his reactions compared to other children. Past trauma is stored within the body and it has to be discharged. When children get triggered, as in the case with your son, their behavior can be reflective of their attempt at releasing the trauma that has opened up. When your son was feeling like he was not lovable, a pocket of dormant trauma opened up bigger than he was. He was not given space to discharge it verbally, so he picked the physical route of discharge and hit the family car once he got home. At some level, we can have a new perspective and actually acknowledge that he did not hit you or another family member when he was that angry. This may be a big stretch, but when we understand that your son was overloaded and overwhelmed, he actually had great self-control in only hitting the car. Breaking the cycle to his reactive patterns and creating healing for him comes with responding differently as a parent each time he becomes dysregulated. Breaking this pattern will not come through logic and consequences. Telling him in the moment that he is not being nice to his sister or telling him to get himself under control will only ignite him and keep him focused on the belief that he is a bad child. Instead, address your child's emotional state, not his behavioral state. "Billy, you're not in trouble. I pulled over because you're really upset right now and it is always my job to make sure you're okay and to make sure everybody is safe. What's going on, sweetie?" You could invite Billy to come sit up in the front seat next to you and focus on connection and emotional safety with him. Your conversation with him has one goal: to answer the question of "What is driving his behavior?". Expanding on this question further would add sub-questions such as, "What is pushing Billy over his limit? Why is he feeling so insecure that he has to hurt his sister? What can I do, as the parent, to calm the chaos that is churning inside of Billy?". If you can't figure out what to say to in the moment with your child, simply look him straight in the eyes and say, "I love you. You're going to be okay. We are going to be able to work this out. There's always a way." As far as what to do with the car, I think it is our responsibility to teach children that their actions do make a difference. However, what typically happens is that the child gets blamed for the incident 100%. "Look what he did! He kicked in the car; he needs to pay for it." What happened with your son was a result of both your action and his action. This is a two-part system; a parent-child relationship is a dyad. Consider going back to your son and saying, "When I asked you to get out of the car, I was really scared. I didn't know what to do. I wanted you to learn a lesson and I wasn't thinking clearly. I didn't understand how badly that felt for you. It wasn't okay to damage the car but I was a part of it, as well. How about we both work together to find a way to pay for it and create something different between the two of us? I'm sorry." When you can change your perspective to that which is driving a child's behavior, it all begins to make more sense. This is not so much a new parenting technique as it is a way of looking at our children differently in order to understand their internal worlds. Any child that has such an exaggerated response is simply reacting from a very deep place of pain. Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, and Dare to Love P.S. Check out my Ask the Expert Interview with Sherrie Eldridge, as she speaks out adoption, adopted children and how their parents are drawn closer. http://www.asktheexpertinterviews.com

Perception Is Everything

						I have recently had several phone consults with therapists and case workers seeking advice on how to help children exhibiting difficult behaviors. Listening to their descriptions of these children has painfully reinforced to me how one's perception of a child is paramount. It directly influences whether the child has a chance for healing or whether he will be targeted as the "problem" before he even enters the starting gates. Traditionally, when a child misbehaves, he is viewed as the "Identified Patient" in therapy. The approach is to describe the child's behaviors and then determine how to "fix" or "change" the behaviors.
While this traditional approach is designed to be accomplished from a strictly objective perspective, the reality is that the perspective taken is the adult's. Herein lies the problem. The behaviors are viewed through the lenses of the adult, not the child. The behaviors are viewed as acts against the adults, against the rules, and against what is age appropriate. When these behaviors do include the emotional context of the child, the interpretation of how the child is feeling is again viewed from the perspective of the adult, not the child. Let us take an example of a description of a 10-year-old boy to give more definition to the idea that perception is everything: Traditional View
		This is a 10-year-old boy who is out of control. He lives with his mother and stepfather. He demonstrates defiant and aggressive behaviors towards his stepfather. The child works hard to divide and conquer his mother and stepfather. This child is demanding all of the time. He sabotages everything that his mother tries to do to make things better for her son. He is dangerously manipulative at home and at school. His history includes abuse by his biological father. His mother left him with his father who physically and sexually abused him. However, this was years ago and his father's parental rights have been terminated. This child has been in a safe environment with his mother for the past five years, yet he continues to be destructive and his mother is exhausted. The family is looking at placing this child in a residential treatment center. Would this be the best course of action?
New View The description above is not an objective description of this child. It is judgmental. It is saying in short, "This child is acting badly and he needs to change." Some would even go so far as to say, "This is a bad child and he needs to be shape up or ship out." Instead, from the child's perspective, a more comprehensive and accurate description would be as follows:
		This is a 10-year-old boy in need of healing. He is communicating his level of fear and pain through his behaviors. Due to a past trauma history that has not been processed, heard, or understood, he is insecure, scared, and does not feel safe in his world. His behaviors towards his mother and stepfather are showing that he is scared of his mother abandoning him to another father. He is working to separate the mother from the stepfather in order to ensure his connection to his mother. He is scared she loves his stepfather more than she loves him. From this child's perspective, his mother left him to the abusive hands of his biological father. His mother did not keep him safe and he is trying to voice this to his mother through his behaviors. Additionally, he feels very unsafe with his stepfather (because of his history of being abused by his biological father). While his stepfather may be a loving and kind person, the child's perception from his past tells him differently. His aggressive behaviors towards the stepfather are reflective of this fear of being hurt by him. The child's philosophy is, "I will hurt you before you hurt me. I will NEVER be vulnerable or helpless ever again." The mother has been raising a child with challenging behaviors for several years now, doing the best she can but without much success. She is tired, frustrated, and worn down. She is more than likely not even wanting this child in her home because she is feeling unsafe and scared his behavior will split up her new marriage.
With the correct perception, the answers about what to do and what not to do become clear. Sending this child away to a residential treatment center would only create more of what he is already fearing--abandonment. It would confirm his fear that his mother would choose his stepfather over him (as he would be the one sent away, not the stepfather). In short, this course of action would recreate the child's original trauma. This is an issue within the dynamics of the family, not with the child alone. First course of treatment would be to work with the mother to help her get back to a place of recapturing her desire to be a mother to this child, flushing out her guilt for what happened in the past, and allowing her space to acknowledge her feeling like an unsuccessful parent. She needs support, love, and validation, as well as education to understand what is driving her child's behaviors. This child needs help in processing the past trauma with his father. He needs to be able to express the helplessness, powerlessness, and hopelessness that occurred during that time. He also needs to have a voice about his current fears and have these received by his mother in order to create more security in their relationship. He needs empathy instead of blame. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Dr. Wayne Dyer: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." For this little boy, when we change the way we look at his behaviors, it changes everything. His acting out begins to make perfect sense. Perception is truly EVERYTHING. If we are going to effectively help our children, we must first see and feel things from their perspective. Once we understand what is driving the child's behavior, the "what to do" will unfold with clarity. Press on,
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW Parent and Author of Beyond Consequences, Logic & Control: Volume 1 & Volume 2, and Dare to Love P.S. Check out my Ask the Expert Interview with Sherrie Eldridge, as she speaks out adoption, adopted children and how their parents are drawn closer. http://www.asktheexpertinterviews.com