The
treatment process can and will be full of tremendous highs and devastating lows, as well as many possible overwhelming and difficult situations. One of the key concepts that occur within the process is that students and their families need to embrace the concept of change, as well as the inevitable struggles and difficulties that occur throughout this process. This personal recognition that a certain amount of failure is needed in order to achieve the required level of success. As this increase in awareness occurs resiliency is the outcome, and as we are better prepared to understand the process will be able to engage more fully, become more accepting of the process and have a more meaningful and monumental journey. The following article helps illustrate this process, and gives us several key ideas that if implemented, will act as a companion to the treatment process that is currently happening within Logan River Academy.
Travis Christensen, CMHC
Resilience:
How Adapting to Stress Can Make Us Better Parents
Published on May 19, 2014 by Nancy Rappaport, M.D. in We Are Only Human.
I'm going to tell you something that is hard to believe.
Psychologists can predict what kind of parents we'll be by how we talk about childhood.
Attachment between parent and child refers to the pattern of
communication and quality of relationship in which a child feels safe and
secure and believes that his or her needs will be met. Secure attachment
impacts a child's ability to self-regulate and to make less risky decisions
when he's older. The more that a parent-to-be has developed the ability to be resilient
to life's setbacks and has been self-reflective enough to work through their
own childhood experiences, the better parent he'll likely be and the less
behavioral problems his children are likely to have. Parents who understand
their own past are more capable of taking steps to foster the resilience needed
while raising their own children.
The adult attachment interview, developed by a team of psychologists in the
1980s, is a one-hour interview about an adult's childhood experiences. The
interview questions aren't so much geared toward what happened to us growing up
-- we've all had some sort of struggle -- but rather our ability to tell a
coherent, authentic narrative about our own childhood. Basically, whether or
not the words match the music.
The interview questions are fairly innocuous, but revealing. For
example, can you list five adjectives that describe your relationship with your
mother? Did you ever feel rejected as a young child? An adult's ability to
describe how she experienced childhood challenges can predict whether she will
have secure attachment with her unborn child when it is an infant!
Say, for example, Mary was injured in a car accident as a little girl, and
her mother was overprotective as a result. Mary later starts her own family and
transfers all of her fears to her daughter, who becomes so terrified that she
avoids going to school. If Mary had been able to understand the source of her
childhood fears -- her mother's constant worrying -- her own daughter may have
thrived.
What this all comes down to is a word that's been championed in
psychological circles in recent years, and for good reason: resiliency. Eighty
percent of children who have experienced trauma-- abuse or neglect, for example
-- will have disorganized attachment, which occurs because the very person
they're relying on to keep them safe actually produces contradictory emotions
of dependence and fear. This means that they don't have a predictable pattern
of relating and can be easily hurt or angered by relatively minor insults. As
these children grow up, they often struggle with self-regulation and
impulsivity, and they're not resilient.
This does not mean that parents who have had setbacks will not be able to make
their kids strong. I'm not suggesting that your children's behavioral problems
are due to your lack of a coherent narrative of your own childhood. Rather, I'm
encouraging us as parents to be reflective on our own experiences as youths, to
be vigilant for when we may be overreacting and to look for those opportunities
to teach our kids the resiliency skills they'll need to grow up. This doesn't
have to be done in a psychiatrist's office, but it does take self-awareness.
For example, I lost my mother to suicide when I was 4 years old and wrote a
memoir about the experience as an adult. I sometimes think that the process of
writing
In Her Wake was an extended attachment interview or an effort
to make a coherent narrative as a mother and daughter. It helped me as a mother
to have written my own narrative.
Below are some tips to being resilient while teaching your children
resiliency strategies:
1. Watch out for transference. Countertransference is when
something from one's own life clouds the ability to see a child for who he or
she is. All of us have, as Selma Fraiberg described in her landmark paper,
"Ghosts in the Nursery," unremembered experiences of our own
childhood that may impact who we are as parents. Often, this divides parents on
how to deal with the child. Something as simple as your child failing a class
or not wanting to play soccer can be very evocative. Classic signs of transference
include one parent being overly protective while the other is furious; a parent
believing he's the only person that can help the child; or a parent being
harder than she wants to be or finding herself giving long-winded lectures. If
this sounds familiar, it may be a red flag and time to step back and consider
the source of this behavior. If you figure out what baggage belongs to whom,
this clarity will allow you to be more helpful to your child.
2. Don't be a helicopter parent. Involvement is good, but
make sure you're allowing your kids room for mistakes and not doing everything
for them. It is incredibly valuable to be supportive while your kids figure out
how to problem solve, but also empathize with their feelings and allow them
choice. Kids learn resiliency from experiencing setbacks and discovering that
they can turn things around on their own and that difficulties are often
temporary.
3. Pay attention to ensuring your child has tools to manage anxiety.
A way to fortify your child is to make sure that he or she has
exposure to the skills needed to manage anxiety. Parents want to be aware of
the avoidance trap (any of us who've had to scramble at the last minute to file
our taxes understands this). Procrastination makes you feel better in the short
term, but if you can get over that initial avoidant reaction, anxiety usually
subsides. Children need to have some self-calming strategies in their
repertoire, such as distraction, positive self-talk, the ability to recognize
negative thought patterns and the initiative to ask for help and accept it. If
you've protected your kid for so long that he doesn't know how to handle even
minor pitfalls, this can be a problem. You want to find a balance of optimal
frustration where your child has the opportunity to gain confidence, but
doesn't get so frustrated that he is immobilized. Compliment your kids on their
effort, rather than the outcome, and don't treat your kids like wounded birds.
4. Think PLACE
parenting. PLACE was coined by child psychologist Dan Hughes and
stands for "Playfulness, Love, Acceptance, Curiosity, and Empathy."
You can read more about it here. I find this idea to be particularly relevant
when parents are in a crisis with their kids and want them to be reflective
about their behavior, whether it's stealing, kicking a best friend or always
feeling criticized. The underlying notion is first to pause so you're not
reactive, yet to be playful at a time when tensions between you and your child
are high. A moment of surprising humor may give your child the space to
recognize that he or she has crossed a line. When you accept your child's inner
life of thoughts, feelings and wishes, your child is more likely to share his
experiences. By staying curious and asking questions to understand why your child
is thinking, say, that it's a good idea to get a tattoo or date someone, you
may have better luck setting limits once you understand the process of the
decision. And finally, if you convey empathy for how much something means to
your child, he or she will be more likely to accept your decision if you have
to set a limit on behavior.
5. Have a support network. Parenting is a hair-raising,
joyous roller coaster, isn't it? To stay present to meeting the needs of your
child, it is so key to nurture yourself. Meditation, yoga or any form of
self-care is crucial, as is date night with your partner. Over the years, I
have seen that what allows our children to thrive is the support we can
mobilize to keep ourselves energized to sustain devotion, reflection, and loving
limits.
Learn how
Logan River Academy students show resilience in sports
