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The avoidant parent and the violent child. Stop negotiating with the volcano! · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from a Children's Consultancy, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: This series, The Avoidant Parent, The Effects Upon Children, is now moving in a direction which describes certain things in more detail, and I appreciate that some of them may be hard to manage, or not so much hard to manage, but certainly hard to listen to.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if that is the case and if what I'm describing in any way resonates with your own experience or is similar to, although I'm describing patterns, not cases, I want you to think about whether or not it might be a good idea to seek some external guidance because we are in the territory, sadly, once again, of possible safeguarding concerns.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about how children adapt.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the last episode, I focused specifically on the child that learns not to need, how they learn to suppress their own emotional states and their needs because frankly there isn't room.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that's one that's one style that develops, but sometimes another might be a child who makes their needs absolutely impossible to ignore.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: They shout, demand, threaten, destroy, attack, and they oppose almost everything that's asked of them.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: They may physically attack a parent, a brother or sister, intimidate, damage property or create such instability that the entire household becomes organized around preventing the next explosion.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the child who then becomes regarded as the family crisis.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Their behavior may be dangerous.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: It may require immediate boundaries in the form of professional intervention, in many cases, safeguarding and sometimes police involvement.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, then the focus becomes here is this here is this child who or young person who represents a threat.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: A threat not only vocalized, but a threat that is acted upon and who has caused harm within the family.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: We do have to pay attention to that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: We can't just simply say, oh well, it's because, because you know, explanations and excuses are not the same thing.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we do have to pay attention to the behavior, but we cannot do that in isolation.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so frequently I see that we can't just look at the child's aggression in isolation, because then we fail to ask an essential question.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, how did this child learn that they must create a crisis before anybody responds?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said in the previous episode, I described the child who adapts to parental avoidance by becoming compliant and self-sufficient.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: But avoidant parents do not produce only compliant children.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Within the family, okay, one child may disappear emotionally, but another acts out everything that they that can't be approached, thought about, contained, or expressed.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: One child essentially, through their behavior, is saying, I must not make things worse.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the other is through their behavior saying, I will make this impossible to ignore, to such an extent that children or young people will threaten, if you don't do what I tell you to do, you know what will happen.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's you know, if we if we look at that from the outside, and we think, how can it possibly be that a young person can realistically say that?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they do, and sometimes sometimes it's noise, but sometimes it's it's what precedes the next dangerous sort of volcanic eruption.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now the angry child might begin with ordinary emotional need.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: They want attention, reassurance, comfort, recognition, and very often they want clear boundaries.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: They will want grown-ups who say, no, no, we don't do that.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's really evident that when a child when a child or young person acts out in this way, the question is, well, where where are the boundaries?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And some parents will say, There's nothing I can do.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: He or she has complete control.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand the statement, but it's not true.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: If if they have, if if if in your view they have full control, when did you start giving it to them?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is the question I would ask.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what the avoidant parent does is delays, dismisses, and avoid, or just withdrawals.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Withdrawals.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the child then ups the ante, so to speak, the demand is increased, and eventually shouting aggression, destruction, and only then does the parent respond.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've heard of cases where a parent will leave the house.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, like in the moment I can understand that.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes maybe not a bad thing to do, but what does that say to the child?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so a dangerous lesson is being both taught and learned.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And ordinary communication achieves very little, but escalation creates something.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this doesn't mean that the child consciously decides to become aggressive, nor does it mean that aggression should be excused because it has emotional meaning, as I've said.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it means that behavior develops within relationships.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, research into coercive family processes has long shown how a child's escalation and a parent's withdrawal or capitulation can reinforce one another.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The child demands, the parent avoids, the child escalates.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: The parent eventually gives in, leaves the situation, or responds with sudden rejection.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: The immediate confrontation ends, but both participants have learned something.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: The child learns that escalation is effective, hence the comment, you know what will happen.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: The parent learns that withdrawal or capitulation brings temporary relief, and it is only temporary.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The next conflict begins, though, from a more dangerous position.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because the avoidant parent commonly manages the child in one of two ways.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: The first is rejection.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: The parent describes the child as impossible, manipulative, and violent and you know inherently bad.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: They may become increasingly cold, punitive.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: They withdraw affection, they refuse to speak to the child and exclude them from ordinary life.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: They may say, I've had enough of you, you ruined everything, there's nothing wrong with you, you're just choosing to do this, or things like you've always been like this, ever since you were, etc., etc.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's be clear: the child's behavior is undoubtedly difficult and may very well be frightening, but rejection does not provide containment.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It simply amplifies the child's state.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it confirms the child's deepest expectation, which is when my feelings become difficult, the parent disappears.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: The child then becomes even more enraged.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: They pursue the parent from room to room.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: They shout through closed doors, they kick closed doors, they provoke, threaten, or destroy because any response appears preferable to emotional disappearance.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: The parent experiences this escalation as proof that the withdrawal was justified.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The child experiences the withdrawal as proof that escalation is necessary.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Each person's response confirms the other's fears.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: The cycle maintains itself.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: The avoidant parent may also respond by externalizing the problem.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of rejecting the child directly, they locate the cause somewhere else.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the behavior is very often blamed on the other parent.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in my world, that's not how it works.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is both parents.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the other parent will play a part.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: But this level of acting out is something which has to be looked at from within the family system.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: It could be the other said that the other parent is said to be too strict, too anxious, too controlling, incapable of managing, maybe enabling the child.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's all manner of explanations, and I'm not suggesting that any of them are untrue, but once again, we have to look intelligently and forensically.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes this is this is the parent who the parent who might be the target is the one who's been left to maintain routines, set boundaries, communicate with school, and you know, essentially behaving and having to be a single parent.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it could be that the avoidant parent appears calm because partly because the the the other party might be carrying the conflict as well, but in a different way.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: The responsible parent becomes increasingly exhausted and distressed, and their distress is then used as evidence that they're the source of the difficulty and a damaging division developed.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty horrible to see how these kind of self-maintaining systems leave nobody feeling good, and in the background we have another child who is being silent because that's the best that they can possibly do.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the other thing that tends to happen is this sort of splitting where one parent avoids confrontation and retains the child's approval, the other establishes to or attempts to establish limits and becomes the target of the child's anger and violence.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the avoidant parent may then undermine those limits, rescue the child from consequences, or privately agree.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: But but it should be said that the avoidant parent is very often plays a major part because they are the ones who have in their own way, because of their avoidant personality style, has been avoiding confrontation, not just with the child's needs and actually containing them and setting boundaries, but avoiding the conflict and finding ways to navigate around it because they can't do what we call reality confrontation.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: The child learns that boundaries can be split between the adults.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: The parent who says no becomes the enemy.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then things like avoidance from, you know, perhaps the other parent becomes the sort of person who carries or who ends up being targeted more specifically.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: So children require limits that are calm, proportionate, and reliable.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And a parent who repeatedly evades the child's anger simply ends up paying for it.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody else is likely to absorb it.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it could be the other parent.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Most often it's the other child.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: In some families, the angry child begins to attack the compliance sibling.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is not uncommon.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they will cause the kind of physical harm which moves away from what people rather conveniently call sibling rivalry, oh well, that's what they're like, into things like actual bodily harm, where physical damage is sustained.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you see, the thing is the compliant child is a particularly vulnerable target because they may be less likely to retaliate, complain, or ask for protection.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven forbid they ask for protection.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly if that protection doesn't come, then why would you bother?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: They've already learned that their role is to cause as little difficulty as as possible.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: So they surrender, whether it's possession, space, and parental attention to prevent another explosion.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they may, through their behavior, start monitoring and regulating through their actions the angry child's mood.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: They may avoid certain rooms, they may avoid being on their own.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: They may change their behavior to remain safe.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Adults may praise them for being understanding.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: They may say things like, Well, you know what your brother is like.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't wind him up.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or you're being the sensible one.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this apparently sensible child is being required to carry an intolerable dysfunctional family responsibility.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're expected to manage the aggressive child because the adults haven't done so.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just imagine being inside a system where the grown-ups are supposed to be in charge.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're the youngest member of the family, and the grown-ups aren't in charge.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: The elder sibling is.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: How scary might that be?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And their compliance becomes essentially part of the family's safety plan.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that just is not acceptable.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there may also be complicated feelings between the children.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: The angry child may experience the compliant sibling as the good child, the one who receives approval for being quiet, who is doing well at school, who is trying their level best to manage.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: But then, of course, that in the angry siblings experience may evoke shame, envy, or a painful sense of comparison.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the compliant child may in turn feel anger that they can't safely express.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's a scary thing: such children who contain anger that can't be expressed safely or voiced because the family system does not accommodate that, turn the anger inward.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Think about where that might go.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: When we see adolescents who are self-harming, self-medicating, or restricting where food is concerned, well, these are all methods of control, self-control, ways of managing the unmanageable.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, you know, in the same kind of family, and it it it sadly it happens, but then in that family, the other child becomes the problem.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it's a very, very distorted and dysfunctional situation.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they may resent the attention that the aggressive child gets while and then feel guilty for that resentment.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: One child is allowed to occupy all the emotional space, the other survives by occupying none.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, we're not dealing with sibling rivalry or just difficult behavior, we're dealing with safeguarding.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: If one child is repeatedly threatening, intimidating, or physically attacking another family member or the vulnerable child, then protection is a must.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: The aggressive child's distress does not remove the other child's right to safety.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: The family may minimize what is happening.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: They may say he doesn't mean it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: She knows how to avoid him.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It only happens when he's overwhelmed, or we don't want him to feel blamed.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Understanding why aggression occurs is important, but understanding can't just become another form of avoidance.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Violence needs to be named, risk needs to be paid attention to and assessed.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: The affected child needs to be heard separately and taken seriously.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the aggressive child also needs protection, and that's from an escalating pattern that increasingly starts to control them and from becoming fixed in the family's mind as irredeemably bad, then becomes something which finds expression outside of the family home.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's another feature of this situation which can be particularly misleading.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: The avoidant parent may repeatedly seek help.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: They may talk to people about the situation.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: They will talk about how bad it is, how powerless they feel, and how, in fact, they are the victim of the child's behavior.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a paradox.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: What do they do with the responses they get?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience, the answer is often very little.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: See, the thing is, you can seek help, but you're not necessarily going to engage with it, because that would be exposing.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the parent might describe the child's behavior in great detail while resisting any examination of the relationship in which it occurs.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: They may welcome an explanation which locates the problem, so long as it's entirely inside the child.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: But when the intervention requires parental guidance, family work, consistent boundaries, or changes in their own responses, they disengage.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Recommendations aren't followed, and the other parent is kind of expected to implement everything whilst at the same time being attacked for being the apparent cause.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't make it up.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it happens.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Help seeking can therefore become part of the avoidant problem.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: A colleague of mine some years ago described certain people as help-rejecting complainers, which I thought is an absolutely perfect way of describing.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: The parent, though, remains busy looking for a solution while avoiding the changes that a solution requires.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's just window dressing.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't pay attention, and these situations become worse.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: The child is presented as the person who must change.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: The other parent is presented as the person who caused the problem.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Professionals are expected to repair it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when you think about it, you know, it's like, well, I created, I mean, this isn't what you're going to hear.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we look at it, one parent, or maybe both create the parent, they're both heavily invested in the problem.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: They both fail to look at themselves as being part of that problem.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: They then hand the problem to a professional who can in no way fix what's going on unless there's full engagement.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: There isn't full engagement, and then, well, that was a waste of time.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: That that that just demonstrates, you know, even even the professionals can't do anything.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're all useless.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I've heard that.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, it's a very narrow and particularly I'm trying not to say unintelligent.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oops, I've said it.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very unintelligent way of viewing the situation.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: When I use that word, I'm not using it as a criticism.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm using it as an accurate description.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: It lacks intelligence to look at a situation partially.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: There may be all kinds of reasons why that may be the case, but we as clinicians are charged with the responsibility of intelligent examination.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And by intelligent, I mean considered, informed, looking for what we can't see.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So but what remains unexamined is the avoidant parent's own position within the cycle.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes they can come across as being incredibly convincing.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the victim, I'm the victim.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, are you?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean though that the child shouldn't be assessed.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And to be quite honest, in situations like this, because the uh the the young person or the child's expression is going to find well, further expression outside the family home, it only becomes a matter of time before someone Is going to say, hang on a minute, there's something really difficult going on here.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Particularly if that same young person gets into trouble outside and police are involved, because then that automatically becomes a safeguarding referral.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or if there are difficulties at school which find expression through maybe attacking other students or being aggressive or physical towards teachers, there comes a point, and sometimes that point comes very quickly when people are going to say there's something going on here.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So while there might be a suspension or an exclusion due to the behavior, there will also be a parallel safeguarding investigation.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: These things they're avoidable, but they're only avoidable if the people who are grown-ups in the situation actually take notice, pay attention, and take responsibility.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Aggression and violence can also be associated with trauma, neurodevelopmental differences, communication difficulties, mental health problems, exposure to violence, and many, many other factors.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And again, assessment and diagnosis may be accurate and important, but a diagnosis doesn't remove the child from their relational environment.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: A child can have ADHD, autism, anxiety or trauma-related difficulties, and also be caught within a family system that reinforces escalation.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we have to be really careful of is explaining away the behavior that the child exhibits through a diagnostic term.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they have ADHD.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's all because of that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a that's a complete cop-out.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It may be that they have ADHD, but I'm sorry, that's not.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's once again, you know, we're back into the territory of unintelligent thinking.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what a convenient way of of dealing with things.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, well, they have ADHD.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: What can I do?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is what happens with children with ADHD.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Tell that to the judge when the child is facing charges of criminal damage or actual bodily harm or aggravated assault.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: A judge isn't going to have it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact of the matter is that if we look at these things properly, we have to look at the whole picture.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to be able to hold both realities at the same time.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is the case that the child has a condition, but that doesn't define the child.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: The child is a product of the family environment.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So please, you know, let's let's let's hold both those realities.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because genuine individual difficulties are inarguable.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the adults almost always have to change how those difficulties are understood and managed.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: There are children who have incredibly poor impulse control.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: However, we still see within the context of the family people positioning themselves so as not to trigger an event.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I understand that, and at the same time, we still have to help the child learn how to manage themselves.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the grown-ups who do that.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this happens in the consulting room every day because I have children who come to me who have these kinds of difficulties.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And my task is to face them with not just their behavior and its causes, but what the consequences are.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the the message there is what you're doing doesn't work.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why it's happening, we can understand, but what you're doing doesn't work.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this this gets worse and worse.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And children, in my experience and young people, very often when I approach them in that way, will will respond because it's it's a relief.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: What you're doing doesn't work.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know how to do it differently, but that's why you're here.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: I also sometimes see children and young people who with their parents, children who like this.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment in the consulting room I see any kind of behavior which I think is representative of disrespect for the parental boundary and behavior towards the children, I immediately intervene.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I will say things like, No, we don't do that, we don't talk to adults that way.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And children, and sometimes the adults look quite shocked because I'm not being angry, but I'm being very clear.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you don't do that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: If a child does that again, I'll say, I told you, you don't do that.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do that here.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really quite sobering because what a and I've never yet had a child just carry on.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, D do you understand?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll say, Do you understand why we don't do that?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of corrective intervention is okay, I'm not the parent, but the point is I'm behaving like one.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even though, yeah, I'm a I'm a very, very experienced clinician.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's something else that is therapeutically necessary that I do easily and all the time, which is I will I will behave in a corrective manager, sorry, manner.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say your behavior is wrong.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I will say, no, this doesn't work.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really uncompromising position.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: When the child turns around, which inevitably they do, then I will say, now that works.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: So here we have somebody who does things that don't work, but somebody who can also do things that do work.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Never has it been the oh no, that's not true.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just thinking, I can think of a couple of cases where, and this is over a very long period where the young people concerned voted with their feet.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it it was late on in the process.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Had I had I had the case earlier, that might not have been so.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is this behaving like the responsible adults who is saying, yeah, okay, you've got difficulties.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you still can't do what you're doing.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so therefore, we have to put something else in place.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there do have to be consequences.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: But grown-ups have to behave like grown-ups.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and saying, oh, well, I'll I'll take I'll take all of his electronic devices away, that'll do it.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, good luck with that, because it won't.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: So but adults need to be emotionally present without becoming over-permissive.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: They need to establish in establish boundaries without rejecting the child.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they need to protect the sibling without turning the aggressive child into a monster.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're really into the area of containment.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that the the avoidant parent doesn't do containment, they do avoidance for containment, and you have to get involved.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have to actually get your hands dirty and you have to confront things that are very difficult.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's your job.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Avoidance is not your job because you're neglecting the emotional needs of your children by being avoidant, and therefore, what you're seeing is the clear evidence.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we have to have is a combination of emotional understanding, but with an unambiguous boundary and an intelligent response has to be one that is informed.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the avoidant response usually offers only one element, and that is uh some kind of get-out of responsibility card element.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: They'll withdraw from the child's emotional state or gives in to the other child's behavior.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Neither response helps.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: The child who becomes the crisis is very often carrying something much, much larger than anger.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And their behavior very probably exposes the emotional instability that is actually there within the family and that everyone has learned to conceal, not because of them, but that's the environment they grew up in.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Once aggression and violence are present, interpretation is not enough.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: The family must understand the behavior, but interrupt the cycle and protect those who are at risk.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, I will widen the lens, we'll look at the avoidant family system as a whole.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: The parent who withdraws, the parent who carries everything, the child who explodes, and the child who disappears.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because these aren't four separate difficulties, they are four positions within the same family story.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: The final message here is very simple.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: If this story it's not a story, if this if this podcast speaks to you, then listen again and think about what you need to do.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: Not all situations like this are caused by parents who are avoidant.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: I should say that.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: So please don't think that if your situation uh resembles this, it automatically means you're an avoidant parent.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm not suggesting that.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about where there is evidence of it happening with a parent or a family system that is avoidant.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, very clearly and very frequently.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it far too often, and I've seen the outcomes, and they're not pretty.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to pay attention, you have to you have to acknowledge something here is very wrong, and it will not self resolve.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: As I've said so many times, children don't grow out of difficulties, they grow into them.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and I'll be back shortly with the next episode.