Parents Are Our Other Client

Ideas for Therapists, Social Workers, Support Workers, and Teachers

Sandra Wieland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317565512
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Salute mentale in psicologia

Parents Are Our Other Client: Ideas for Therapists, Social Workers, Support Workers, and Teachers stands out among the vast literature on counseling children and families by finally giving therapists, social workers, support workers, and teachers the tools necessary to work with the single most significant influence on children: the parents.

This book:

• Explains in an accessible and readable format how parenting patterns are learned unconsciously during early childhood and emerge later, when people become parents.

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• Delivers a comprehensive and practical guide for professionals working to help parents see their children differently and change the way they interact with their children.

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• Clarifies why directing attention to the non-verbal areas of a parent's brain with techniques such as imaging is essential for achieving a shift away from early learned patterns.

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• Examines how a professional's own childhood experience influences the way he or she works with parents and how professionals can shift to more positive responding even with the most resistant parent.

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• Provides informative clinical illustrations based on current research and the authors' extensive clinical and supervisory experience.

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Chapter 1
The Parents and Us

As we start this conversation, we need to define who we are and whom we are working with. As explained in the introduction, this book is written for all professionals working with children—teachers, support workers, day care providers, social workers, pediatricians, spiritual leaders, counselors, and therapists. If you are working with children in any capacity, you will be working with parents. And that is very fortunate! If we can help parents create a more secure and positive relationship with their children, the emotional lives of these children will be changed far more than by any direct work we do with the child. Parents are the most important people in a child’s life. A positive change in their relationship with their child has the potential of creating more positive relationships for the child throughout his or her life.

This is not a book about parenting although undoubtedly ideas about parenting will come in. It is a book about child and youth professionals and how we can work with the parents. The type of work we do with parents—support or therapy—will depend on our field of expertise and the training we have. But in all interactions—support or therapy—there is the potential for a positive effect.

Who Are the Parents?

The Oxford dictionary defines ‘parent’ as “a person’s father or mother” (Parent [Def. 1], 2016). Webster’s defines ‘parent’ as “one that begets or brings forth off-spring” (Parent [Def. 1a], 2016); “the material or source from which something is derived” (Parent [Def. 2b], 2016). While not challenging these definitions, we would like to expand these definitions. A parent is someone who used to be someone else’s child and now has a child.

You may ask, why ask for this extension of the dictionary definition? Without this extension we miss a very important component of each parent’s ability to parent. In our conversations with parents we need to look beyond what they have learned (or not learned) from books, from talking with friends, from courses about parenting, about what children need, and about how best to interact with their children. We need to be aware of what these parents have brought from their time as a child to their present-day parenting. Most importantly, what did they experience from their parents—how were they parented? This is a teaching about how to be a parent that parents are often least aware of—it is ‘taught’ long before the individual is aware of being taught. And yet, in many cases the ways the parent was parented is the most influential part of how they parent their own child.

You will notice in the last paragraph that the active verb changed from ‘learned’ to ‘taught.’ ‘Learned’ implies a choice—we can read or not read a book, we can decide to listen to a friend or not. ‘Taught’ implies something done to us—we do not have a choice as to the parenting pattern surrounding us as we grow up. And being an infant, a child, or even a youth observing and experiencing a parenting pattern, we do not have a choice as to whether this parenting influences us—it does because that is how humans work.

If we do not recognize the parents’ early experiences of being parented and we do not address it in our work with them, their parenting is unlikely to change in significant ways. They may, indeed, learn new ways of responding, new ways of disciplining, new ways of supporting. But without some shift in processing¹ that early experience of being parented, parents are all too likely to continue with old, and possibly destructive, interactive patterns.

As we talk about parents, what we say applies to all parents whether biological parent, adoptive parent, foster parent, members of the extended family, or group home parents. We shall be talking more directly about adoptive families in Chapter 7 and at that point will talk about some of the extra complications that come into their relationships with their children. For our beginning discussions, let’s stay as simple as we can—and, as you will find, that is not very simple. We need to look at parents and we need to look at ourselves. We need to look at attachment and interactive patterns, we need to look at neurobiology and how we can best shift patterns already engrained in the brain. We need to look at our own reactions and what they mean and how they can help us in our work.

What Do Parents Bring to Our Work with Them?

What Parents Want

First and foremost, most parents want to be good parents. They may define² being good parents as providing a healthy and safe world for their child. They may define being good parents as having children who follow rules and succeed in school. They may define being good parents as having children who are happy all the time. Or their definition may include having their own needs met by their child.

The other thing they want is for us to ‘fix their child.’ Fix their child in such a way that they will, indeed, be the ‘good parent’ they have envisaged. There will be some parents who are in our office or have invited us into their homes because they want to change, but they are the minority and they are not the parents we shall be talking about in this book.

Where Parents May Get Caught

At the same time as they want to be good parents, parents are caught in their own story. If their story is primarily a healthy one, they may be coming to see us about some stumbling spot—their child experiences a temperament very different from their own and, as a result, they are finding themselves in a struggle with their child (Thomas et al., 1968). Their child may have a learning disability or a mental health challenge and they want to learn skills for helping their child. Their child may have experienced a frightening or traumatic event and they want help for their child or for their child and themselves.

If, however, the parents’ stories are not healthy ones, they may be coming to see us to help them relate in a different way to their child. They may be coming to see us because someone else (perhaps, protective services) has told them they have to. In the former case—wanting help to relate in a different way—they are likely to be at least moderately receptive. In the latter case—being told they have to—they are unlikely to be receptive. Receptive or not, they are there and we are there with them.

We will meet all of these parents—those with healthy stories and those with unhealthy stories, those who want to be there and those who don’t want to be there—in the pages ahead. Each will bring challenges but each will also bring opportunities to make a difference for them and their children. That’s a confounding statement—“difference for them and their children.” Parents are not usually in our office because they want to be ‘different’; they are there because they want their child to be ‘different’—more compliant, less difficult, less anxious, less frightened or traumatized.

These parents who come to our offices with their children or allow us to come into their homes are in a state of distress. Whether they describe it as ‘worry’ or ‘concern’ or use stronger terms such as ‘anger’ or ‘desperation,’ underneath this terminology there will be powerful emotions.

Perhaps disappointment—not being the ‘perfect parent’ they had determined they would be, not having the ‘perfect child’ they wanted to have, not continuing with the exciting life they wished for. Perhaps fear—fear they have failed; fear something cannot be repaired. Guilt or even shame may be experienced—guilt they did something wrong; shame that they need to ask for help. There may also be the very strong emotion of disgust (Tomkins, 1963)—disgust with themselves, disgust that they are not the parents they wanted to be. In order not to experience these emotions of disappointment, fear, shame, and disgust with themselves, parents all too often, and not consciously, project these feelings onto their child. There is something wrong with their child—fix it.

Trained as professionals to help children, we may, all too easily, follow the parent’s diversion and focus on the child, not the parent. We have been trained to tune to the child and even when the child is not in the room (for example, during an intake interview or a developmental interview), our underbrain (not the unconscious but that part of the brain which holds the agenda for a particular session, the hypotheses we are developing, and the questions that need to be asked) is focused on the child. For those of us who work in agencies or institutions, we are going to need to complete a report about the child or the child’s situation. Yes, there will be references to the parent but the report is not about the parent, it is about the child and so, being efficient professionals, we focus there. For those of us who work in private practice, we are going to need to provide feedback to the parents and they do not want to know about themselves—there is a reason they project their disappointment, fear, shame, disgust onto the child—they want to know what is ‘wrong’ with their child.

There is another reason some of us follow the parent’s diversion. We chose to work with children because that is where our interest lies—not with adults/parents. Indeed, we may even dislike the idea of focusing on the parent. It is not so much that we do not know how, we do not even want to work with them. If only the parent had been more attentive, more sensitive, more aware, the child would not have been caught in a negative situation. If only the parent were more flexible, more open, the child would not be experiencing this level of frustration. We may feel antagonism, even anger, at the parent and not want to be in the same room as the parent.

But if we follow diversion away from the parent, we miss what could be our best resource for helping the child—the child’s attachment experience with his parent. Attachment (the child-parent interactive connection) has been described as a psychological immune system (Schore, 2012; Siegel & Hartzell, 2003; see also Chapter 4, this volume)—the more secure (steady and supportive) the attachment, the more resilient the child can be when faced with disappointments, threats, traumas. The more unbalanced (shifting, denying, disorganized or what is known in the psychological community as ‘insecure’ attachment), the less resilient the child is when faced with negative encounters.

In our training to work with children, we learn to establish a trust relationship with the child. Then the child will be able to tell us—either in words or in behaviors—about his experiences, his struggles, his pain or fright. As we work with the child and with his environment, the child starts to calm, experiences more regulated arousal, and becomes more aware of safety in his world. As we interact with the child and provide him with space to show us his story, the child experiences relief and a stronger sense of self.

But our interaction, whatever our role, with the child is not an ongoing relationship. It can provide a new experience of a relationship, and one that we hope the child will be able to internalize and hold and, as a result, come to believe more in himself and in others who are trustworthy. Through the relationship, the child hopefully gains an expanded window of tolerance³ so he does not move as quickly into hyperarousal or hypoarousal. The relationship, hopefully, gives him a safe space to experience and integrate enough bits of prior distress or trauma so he can move ahead without the distress or trauma shaping each new experience. The relationship gives him a positive experience of himself in which he can believe. Then the child leaves. But if the parent has not changed, the family does not change. And the child’s negative experiences are all too likely to continue.

The child may, because of the positive therapeutic, supportive, or educational experience, be more open to the parent, more responsive to the parent, less anxious, less scared. But what about the parent? Is the parent able to be open to the child? As the child settles, parents often settle, and they are able to engage in more attuned, supportive interaction with their child. As the parent is more consistently attuned to the child, the child will be better able to trust and thus go to the parent for support—a support that will be more consistently available. There will be a movement toward a more positive and secure attachment between child and parent. That is the fantasy—and sometimes reality—story of professional interventions with children.

It is the other stories that we are concerned with in this book. It is the stories where the distress of the parents blocks their ability to be adequately available to their children. And while the child and we may be able to interrelate, it is the relationship between the child and the parent that is the important one, the one the child is craving and the one the child needs for continued growth.

MARIE (21 YEARS OLD) —mother of a 6-year-old boy sits rigid on the couch as the 6-year-old puts his head on her shoulder. The professional meeting with Marie finds herself going tight inside—what’s wrong, doesn’t Marie see that Jimmy is frightened and unsure as to what he should do, doesn’t she see that he needs reassurance, needs some physical response from her? No wonder he is creating stories about a fantasy world in which there are two parents and several siblings.

But Marie is not here for therapy. She is completing school, working part time, and raising her son—far more than her mother ever did.

JOHN (45 YEARS OLD) —father of a 10-year-old boy—engages the school counselor in animated conversation about the contents of the office while his son flips through the pages of a magazine. The school counselor finds herself floundering as to how to redirect the conversation back to why they are here without cutting John off. No wonder the 10-year-old has rages.

John definitely is not here for therapy. He tells the school counselor he has his world ‘all together.’ Although it is a struggle to be a single father with two children, he is doing his best to raise his children, and they have wonderful times together. If his son would just do what he is told, there would be no problem.

JOCELYN (34 YEARS OLD) —mother of a 13-year-old girl—responds with minimal information or the statement, “That’s not relevant,” to all the social worker’s questions. Although the social worker knows it is relevant, he finds himself tongue-tied and really wanting to just end this session and get back to the activity room where the 13-year-old is willing to engage with the art supplies. No wonder Delia is withdrawn and verbally uncommunicative while being behaviorally intrusive with other children.

Jocelyn is only meeting with the social worker because protective services said this was necessary for her family to stay out of their files. We will be discussing the cases of Marie, John, and Jocelyn further in the pages to come.

JOAN (40 YEARS OLD) —foster parent of a 14-year-old girl who is now in her ninth placement in as many years—tells about how ‘attached’ she is to her new foster daughter. Joan realizes that this is the ‘honeymoon stage,’ but she and Annie have connected so well that she knows they will be able to survive the more difficult times. She feels a real connection with Annie and is so thrilled with this chance to make a difference for Annie. The professional suppresses the urge to list the problems ahead. Realism is going to be more helpful than fantasy, but the professional needs to work with Joan, not in opposition to her.

Joan is happy to meet with the professional, but the therapy is for Annie and not related to her. As she sees it, the professional will work to help Annie—and her foster placement will be the one to make the difference for Annie.

Although Marie and Jocelyn’s disengagement from their children and the therapist is most obvious, all four parents are clearly disengaged. All the children are experiencing some form of insecure attachment as a result of less than optimal growing-up environments. All the children may, indeed, profit from some form of intervention, either directly with the child or indirectly with the family, and their emotional distress may be able to settle. But if the relationship in which they are living (child-parent relationship) does not improve, their emotional distress is unlikely to go away. They will not have a chance to experience a positive and consistent sense of self in relation to their parent. Without this positive sense of self and parent, it is difficult for a child to achi...