Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / The Psychology Of Adolescent Criminality. Ep 5. Emotional Neglect And Youth Offending

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The Psychology Of Adolescent Criminality. Ep 5. Emotional Neglect And Youth Offending · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: All rise and welcome back.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I would like to offer you episode five in the series The Psychology of Adolescent Criminality.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, so far we've covered a number of aspects of this, but I think perhaps one of the most important and the most difficult to talk about is what is not seen in family life.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this has to do with emotional neglect.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is something that happens in some families, and it is very difficult to speak about, not because it's rare, but because it is often just not recognized.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a child begins to change, they become more volatile, more distant, and more oppositional, and over time this behavior begins to cross lines.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at first, it might just be dismissed.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a phased teenage attitude, and they will grow out of it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if the behavior doesn't fade, it escalates and eventually it reaches a point where something happens, something that can no longer just be explained away.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And even then, the question is often asked in the same way.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where has this come from?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Inside the Consulting Room.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we are going to look more at what happens inside families.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't about blame, and it's not about suggesting that parents cause criminality, but it is about recognizing something important.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as I have said so often, children do not develop in isolation.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: They develop in environments, and sometimes those environments contain things that are difficult to see, even from the inside.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the consulting room, certain patterns emerge repeatedly.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: In many, not in every case, we begin to see high levels of parental conflict, emotional unpredictability in parents, periods of separation or complete breakdown, experiences of domestic tension or abuse, and very often something quieter, just emotional absence.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some while ago a thirteen year old boy was referred following repeated aggressive incidents at school.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: They seemed mild at first, but they gained a kind of momentum, and one day he directed his aggression towards a teacher.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: His parents were separated, and the separation was described as amicable, but over time a very different picture emerged.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: The child described being present during arguments, hearing things said about one parent by the other, feeling caught between two very conflicting emotional worlds.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I asked him, When this is happening, what do you do?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he told me I just stay out of it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is this, he's not out of it, he's inside it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what we see in the behavior isn't random aggression, it's unprocessed tension, internal conflict, emotional overload, and it finds expression outwardly.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Children in these environments often carry things that just aren't visible, loyalty conflicts, a fear of upsetting one parent, and a need to manage their own emotional experiences alone.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so they adapt.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: They become quiet, compliant, or reactive.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: A fifteen-year-old girl presented with repeated involvement in theft and group-based offending.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: At home there was a history of domestic instability, not always overt violence, but conflict, raised voices, insulting language between the parents, and emotional volatility.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: And she described a very familiar pattern when it starts, she said, I just leave either the house or the room.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well she leaves physically, but emotionally she's gone nowhere because it's inside her and she's been living it for years.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I ask her about the offending and whether or not she sees a link.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And she says it's easier out there.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that what she means is that they're out there with her peer group, there are rules, there's a hierarchy, there's predictability.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: She kind of knows that she has a place.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: But inside the home, there is tension, uncertainty, and emotional threat.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say at this point that when children and young people offend, very often what will happen is a what's called a mass referral.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: The police will automatically refer the child and family to the multi-agency services hub.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And their job is to look for certain factors because what they do is they read the behavior that may be called the criminal offense, but then they ask questions.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: How did this come about?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is this young person being exploited?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is this young person a victim themselves of some kind of abuse?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: What is happening at school?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they also ask, what is going on inside the family?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they do this because they join the dots.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So behavior that appears reckless may actually be an attempt to find a world where children feel more stable and more stable than the one they're living in.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think the quietest contributory factor in this is emotional neglect.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because not all difficulties allowed, some are almost invisible.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: A child may have the trappings of what seems like a caring home.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: They may have good diets, good food, good education, a good structure, but they don't necessarily experience emotional attunement.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or grown-ups demonstrating curiosity about the inner world of the child, they maybe don't have a sense of being known.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fourteen year old involved in repeated low-level criminal behavior, says at home everything appears fine.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: No conflict, no disruption, or at least that's what he told the social workers.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in the consulting room he says no one talks.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not about anything really.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about an absence of care, but it's an absence of emotional connection.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: The deeper meaning is that he describes feeling unnoticed, unimportant, peripheral, and when he offends, people pay attention.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some people might call this attention seeking behavior.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I prefer to call it attention needing behavior.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because attention seeking sounds like a deliberate act, whereas attention needing signals the absence of attention that is so desperately needed.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the behavior becomes a signal, a disruption, a way of entering some kind of awareness.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And here is where this becomes challenging, because in many of these cases, parents do not recognize the impact of what is happening around the child unless they get a knock on the door.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some parents say, but we don't argue in front of them.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're fine, we've done everything for them.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And although these might be sincere statements, they don't make sense.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because children do not experience environments in the same way that adults interpret them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: They feel tone, tension, distance, and withdrawal, even when nothing is said.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there are several reasons.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: One of those is normalization.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Families are systems that develop relational patterns and responses, and some things, no matter how seemingly destructive, are normalized.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Another is defensiveness, because to recognize the impact can feel like accepting blame.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I have had plenty of parents talk to me about feeling responsible and guilty for the distress their children may be experiencing.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's something we call fragmentation as well, because parents may be holding their own stress, their own histories, and their own survival.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they can't always hold the child's experience simultaneously.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: There is a moment when a parent hears something from their child that they were not expecting a sentence, a description, or a feeling.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: One child said in a session when his parents were present, I'm frightened of you.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I don't say anything.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: His parents were deeply shocked and very distressed.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was the truth.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then something shifts, not always immediately, but perhaps enough to begin to see this isn't what I thought it was.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about fault, it is about recognition.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because without recognition, nothing can change.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some people refuse to accept even when the obvious is presented to them.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: There have been times, not many, when I have had parents who, despite my best efforts, will not accept what is being recognized, because to do that would be too challenging for them.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so those parents tend not to come back.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So when we recognize what's going on, there's a possibility then of change.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's unrecognized, children may act out the tension, seek regulation externally, and find belonging elsewhere.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: They'll go and live with another family, but it'll be made up of people just like them, disenfranchised.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes this behavior crosses into criminality, and this is very sad because a criminal offense results in a criminal record.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: This, as we know, has long lasting consequences.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't always the case that a first offense is going to result in some long-term activity which will become a pattern.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: But if the backdrop is one that neglects the child, then it the risk is very much greater.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Drugs, alcohol, theft, violence, knife crime, all of these things have their roots in the kinds of things I talk about.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's much easier to look at the child's behavior and point than it is to look at the environment that surrounds it because behavior is visible, but the environment often isn't.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the most important question isn't what's wrong with this child, but what is going on and what has this child been living inside that we haven't yet fully seen?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And more difficult still, what have they been experiencing that no one has yet recognized as real?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because until that scene, the behavior will continue to speak.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is the only language that the child or young person is able to produce.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about joining the dots.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those dots aren't visible.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if we're prepared to ask ourselves, well, we know what we can see, but what can't we see?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: This almost always will lead us to some kind of language.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that we are trying, and we're trying to do that without blame and judgment, is incredibly helpful.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I hope this has helped, and I will be offering you the final episode in this series, and in that I will be talking about those things that I believe that parents can do.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Very often we so-called experts are relied upon to find solutions, offer advice, guidance, intervene.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I believe that the greatest thing that we as clinicians can do is to teach parents, help them, because it's not that they're uncaring, or often that they're unwilling, but they just don't know.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we try and do, or I believe what we should try and do more and more, is to equip parents to do the job of being a parent in a way that's informed, is not prescriptive, but is thoughtful and which utilizes their own skills, because then what happens is that relationships within the family become richer and small people become bigger people who then have their own children.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if what we have managed to produce is healthy people, then that is priceless.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this.