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When Behaviour Speaks · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, this is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist with some interesting background noises going on.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like setting the scene for something something dramatic.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not intentional, but nonetheless welcome.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: This forthcoming series is entitled I Wish My Parents Would.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this introduction is about when the behavior becomes the child's voice.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: There are things children wish they could say to their parents.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you'd listen to me.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you'd stop asking me to choose.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you would notice me before I had to shout.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you would stop calling me difficult.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: That you would just let me be the child.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, perhaps most painfully, I wish you could love the child I actually am.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And children don't necessarily think or say these things in a coherent way.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes children just don't have the language, and sometimes the feelings themselves are too frightening.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes children remain silent because they're frightened of what might happen if they tell their truth.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: They may fear upsetting a parent.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: They may worry that they won't be believed.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: They may have learned that certain subjects are not welcome within the family.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or they may feel responsible for protecting the very adults upon whom they depend.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: But what can't be put into words doesn't just disappear.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It finds another way out.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: It may emerge as anger, defiance, or aggression, or it may be anxiety, withdrawal, dependency, or silence.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: A child may begin refusing school, struggling to sleep, complaining of unexpected aches and pains, or becoming increasingly controlling.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Another may become remarkably compliant, helpful, undemanding, and apparently mature.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: That child might get praised for coping.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the child who causes no difficulty is the one working hardest to conceal it.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Behavior isn't a secret code in which every action has one simple meaning, nor should harmful or dangerous behaviors be overlooked merely because we're trying to understand them.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Children do need boundaries.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: They need adults to keep them safe and others safe.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: But a boundary is most effective when it's accompanied by curiosity.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: We need to be able to say the behavior can't continue, whilst also asking what might be happening inside this child.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Too often, the first question asked is how do we stop the behavior?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, another question I think needs to come before it, and that is, what is the behavior trying to tell us?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that, of course, is something that I know a good deal about.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout my work as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, I've repeatedly seen how experiences that remain hidden elsewhere begin to emerge in the consulting room.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They don't necessarily arrive as a clear expectation, and it's hardly likely that a child is going to sit down and say, I feel emotionally responsible for my parents, or I no longer trust a particular parent because their promises have been repeatedly broken.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, the child may tell a story.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: They may create a game in which somebody's always left behind.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: They may draw a family in which one person is missing, or they are very tiny.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: They may repeatedly change the rules of a game so that they can never lose.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: They may destroy something they've just made.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: They may become silent whenever a particular subject is mentioned.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or they may test the therapist, sometimes quite forcefully, to discover whether this adult would also become angry, withdraw, give up, or disappear.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the important thing here is that within a sufficiently safe relationship, behavior gradually begins to acquire meaning.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we do is we see patterns, and those are evolving patterns.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The child hopefully will discover that difficult feelings can be noticed without becoming catastrophic.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Anger can be survived, sadness can be shared, and confusion doesn't have to be immediately resolved.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I remember my on the ceiling girl, as I as I called her, that before she even put a foot across the threshold, she was swearing, complaining, loud, angry, and highly, highly emotionally volatile.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And none of this behavior was directed towards me.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was around me.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: She brought with her everything that she'd been trying so hard to contain.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this would go on for a good 20 minutes, and I would listen and I would nod.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I would, I, I, I wouldn't ask questions, I wouldn't say anything, I just heard it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And little by little she would come down.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I might just say, okay now.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then she would become, because I'd received everything without question, without correcting.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And over the months, and it did take months, she didn't need to be on the ceiling, so to speak.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: She would arrive in a state that was much lower level, and she was able to think.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: When she arrived initially, she just wasn't able to think, it all came pouring out.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she learned, I think, that how she was, what she was experiencing could be both tolerated so that we could look at the meaning, what we what it was telling us.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what happens.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Slowly, things that could only be demonstrated through acting out begin to become thought about.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, it may even be spoken.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is the purpose of the series.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wish my parents would attempt to bring the child's voice into the foreground.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, each episode will begin with something a child might wish to say but cannot.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And these voices will be composite and anonymized.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: They will not represent any one child, but they will reflect themes that have appeared repeatedly across many, many years of clinical work.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll look at the child who becomes increasingly loud because quieter attempts to be noticed have failed.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: The child caught between two parents who feels that loving one may be experienced as betraying the other.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: The child who stops talking because every feeling is met with advice, reassurance, or connection, sorry, correction or dismissal or denial.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: The child who has become known throughout the family as the difficult one.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The child who no longer believes promises.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the child who has learned to take care of the adults, but also the child who fears that love depends upon being successful, compliant, or different from who they really are, only able to show that part of themselves that is in their experience deemed to be acceptable.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make something very clear at the outset.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: These episodes are not intended to blame parents.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've said so many times, and I'll say again, parents are not trained.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Parents do their best.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most parents don't consciously set out to silence, burden, or emotionally confuse their children.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: They bring their own histories into family life just as we all do.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But a child's distress may awaken a parent's guilt, helplessness, or fear.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It may touch experiences from the parent's own childhood that were never really understood.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what looks like indifference may sometimes be emotional avoidance.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: What sounds like anger may conceal anxiety and fear.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: What appears to be excessive control may arise from a profound fear of losing control.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding this does not remove adult responsibility.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a really important distinction.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Explanations are not excuses.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: The two things can coexist.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: If we can explain, then we can move beyond accusation and interchange.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the aim is not to identify a villain, it's to understand the relationship and to recognize the parents that keep both children and the parents trapped.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Children don't need flawless parents, which is good because they don't exist.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: They need adults who are willing to remain curious and open.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Adults who can sometimes pause before reacting.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Adults who can consider that the behavior directed towards them may not be the whole story.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: They also need adults who are able to repair after getting it wrong.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And adults who can bear to hear something difficult without making the child feel responsible for their response.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think perhaps the most important message in the series is that listening to a child involves a whole lot more than hearing the words.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: It means attending to changes in behavior.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It means noticing what happens repeatedly.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It means thinking about the child and what the child expresses through their body, play, relationships, and silence.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It also means resisting the temptation to decide too quickly what the behavior means.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because very often, I'm reminded of something that I encountered some years ago, and I think it's still present even today.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it was apparently advice for mothers with newborn babies, and the babies had to learn to cope.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so when they were crying, uh the the wise position would be let them cry, they will learn.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: They will learn what exactly.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: That they're attached to a family environment that might abandon them.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: The other one is if you give in, they will win.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: It makes no sense.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And people come up with these kind of rationalizations because they just don't understand.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, actually, I think some of these things are well intended, they just don't make any sense.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think we have to remember certain things.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: A child who says I don't care may care so deeply that appearing indifferent has become their safest form of protection.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Across the series, we're going to listen to what children may be communicating beneath the surface.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about excusing everything they do or about blaming parents, but to make the child's internal experience more visible.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we also have to look at the child's experience through the eyes of the child.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: If we look only through our eyes, we are missing huge amounts.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: You see, the thing is when behavior is understood only as a problem to be removed, the child becomes quieter without becoming better.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Compliance can be mistaken for recovery, silence for calm.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the distress simply moves elsewhere, less visible.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Every child is asking in one way or another, can you see me?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can you hear what I feel?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: You that that will you remain with me when I'm difficult to understand?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And can you help me find the words for something I've only been able to show you?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Children who cut themselves, children with eating disorders, most often have never been heard.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: They are restricted, they have no control.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: That finds expression through self-harm, self-restriction, because that they can control.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be difficult, but every example I give is based on clinical and personal reality, the child's personal reality.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this is I wish my parents would.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back with the first episode soon.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.