“Some girls at school are picking on me,” she said. She proceeded to describe in detail the
challenges she was facing and expressed a fair amount of emotion as she did
so. Me being the wonderful father and
therapist I am, proceeded to quickly work out the solution to her problem and
noticed my typical calm and collected demeanor quickly escalate as I thought of
my, of course, perfect and innocent daughter :) being accosted by
these dissolute, villainous, and malicious hooligans (also 9 year old girls).
In the heat of the moment I had forgotten the invaluable
tools I frequently try to teach to parents I work with in therapy regarding
validating, reframing, and allowing a child to own their problems and the
subsequent solutions. As a result I felt
it would be beneficial for me, as well as those who may read this, to yet again
relearn those wonderful tools and recommit to using them. These tools are discussed at length in the
book “The Parallel Process,” written by Krissy Pozatek, LICSW.
- Listen & attune to the underlying emotion. I started out well with this, but once I couldn’t handle the emotion my daughter was describing I quickly jumped into “solve it” mode.
- Underlying emotion and tone is more important than content. Again, I initially did well with this, but then got caught up in the content (my poor daughter is being bullied and I can’t stand for that!). When we get caught up in the content we can be drawn in too far as parents, which may prevent the child from working through the albeit challenging issues.
- Mirror and reflect back underlying emotion. My daughter was hurting, and rather than empathizing and reflecting this, I got caught in my own emotional response and disregarded what she was going through and trying to express.
- Validate. I remember this ALL the time as a therapist. It is so simple to let a client know, “Wow, that must really suck.” But as a father, I was way too busy working through the ways I would fix this and make sure those horrible little bullies would pay for their nefarious ways!
- Keep yourself out of the problem. The whole point of this tool is to help the child be empowered by owning their problem and owning the solution to the problem. Far too often as a parent I jump to the “let me help” principle that, while good in some ways, can also send the inadvertent message “you can’t handle this, so let me do it.” So with the best of intentions, I essentially tell my daughter she needs to come to me with any and every problem because clearly she can’t handle it.
- Place the problem
back on the child. I eventually came
to my senses and did some of this. It is
okay at times to offer suggestions, but it is imperative to send the message
“you are capable and can work through this.”
We wonderful parents are far too often the problem solvers, and far too
infrequently the people on the sidelines loving and cheering our children on
while allowing them to be the ones playing the game.
- If child continues to push, then set a boundary. It never reached this point with my daughter, but as parents of students here at LRA, I would imagine it has at times with you and your child. If your child continually complains about life’s inequities and we find that they never seem to abandon this, we would do well to ask ourselves “am I perpetuating this in some way? Do I need to set a boundary with my child and tell them, YOU are capable and YOU can solve this?”.
So whether it be with your child here at Logan River Academy or Maple Rise,
or if it is with my 9-year-old daughter in her 3rd grade class, the
tools above can help us navigate the many tumultuous waters parents and
children are forced to navigate.
Hopefully we can all apply them more fully. Good Luck to us all!
Krys Oyler, LCSW
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