Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Director of Transformative Parenting

When Michael and Sara came to my office the first time things weren’t looking good. They had been married for just over eight years and had three children whom they loved, but they were both very unhappy. Both agreed that when they met things just felt “right”. They felt that they had known each other for a long time and that they really understood each other. They got married about a year after they met and Sara became pregnant with their first child not too long after that. It wasn’t long before they started fighting. Both were often under a lot of stress — working, raising children, and paying the bills. They started arguing over everything from who was doing the dishes to how often they were having sex. There was a time when each considered the other their best friend and planned on being together forever. Right now, however, their level of frustration was so high that they spoke of the possibility of divorce. In the room, Michael seemed distant and withdrawn. He said nothing he ever did was good enough for Sara and he had just given up trying. Sara seemed anxious and scared. She said Michael never helped her out around the house or with the kids, and she was frustrated because she thought he just didn’t care anymore. They sat as far apart on the couch as they could and they hardly looked at each other.

What goes wrong in marriage?

Michael and Sara are typical of a lot of the couples I see in my practice. They came together originally with a strong sense of knowing that they were right for each other, that they were “The One” for each other. No one gets married thinking it will end up in unhappiness or divorce. So what goes wrong in marriage? There are many factors.

Part of what goes wrong is cultural. In American culture in particular we have made independence and autonomy somewhat of a religion. We place so much emphasis on our independence that we’ve lost much of the wisdom about what it means to be dependent in a healthy way. I am not arguing against our freedoms. I appreciate them as much as anyone; it’s just that we’ve taken the idea of freedom to such an extreme that we see depending on others as weak or co-dependent.

Developmental psychology has shown that true independence comes from a healthy and secure bond. When we feel secure in our relationships, we thrive. The scientific study of this phenomenon is called Attachment Theory. When we do not feel secure in our relationships, we become preoccupied with this insecurity and it affects everything we do. This is true for having a successful marriage as well as for raising children. If we help our children internalize feelings of safety and security, they will naturally move towards learning, growing, and being more self-sufficient. They can do this because they have what attachment researcher Mary Ainsworth called a “secure base” to come back to.

The same has to be true for a marriage to be successful. The problem is that our culture — and even many of our therapy models — put an emphasis on individuation. Research has shown that usually when someone seeks individual therapy for marriage problems the result is divorce. That is because most individual therapies in our culture focus on making you a more autonomous person, not on helping you to be more secure in your relationship.

Another thing that goes wrong in marriages is that we become less open and vulnerable with each other. When we begin a relationship, we share our hopes, dreams and fears. This place of open communication and sharing is critical to a relationship that thrives. Over time, as we experience hurts, big and small, with each other, we slowly close our hearts and become more guarded and less open. It’s not that we don’t care about each other; it’s that this person we have chosen has more power to hurt us than anyone else in the world because he or she is that important to us. We don’t want to feel enormous hurt, so our brain tries to protect us by numbing out and walling off our feelings.

The situation can begin to feel hopeless — but it’s not. We just need to learn how to do things differently.

Moving to “take care of” each other

One of the rules of attachment that I learned from my mentor Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”) is that the attachment part of a relationship is never about being “equals”. It is about one who is taking care of and one who is being taken care of. This is easy enough to see when we are talking about parenting a young child. We understand that our main job is not to be a child’s best friend or to make him happy all the time, but to take care of him. We are meant to be in the alpha position. A mistake many parents make is that they stop being in the alpha position as their child grows older. When the parents are not in this position, the child will move to be in the alpha position himself —  bossing his parents around or telling them what to do. It’s important to understand that being an alpha parent doesn’t mean being an authoritarian, it means being confident in parenting from a place of taking care of your kids.

This concept applies to marriage; it’s just a little different. There is a part of our marriage relationship that is about relating as equals. We love and respect each other as equals. However, the attachment part of the relationship is about how we move to take care of each other. This means that when one partner is in need — feeling sick or down, anxious or insecure —the other partner moves into the alpha position to take care of his or her partner in that moment. Likewise, when the other partner is in need, they reverse this position. This is meant to be a flow. When things are in relatively good shape in a relationship, it doesn’t take any extraordinary effort. It feels natural to move to take care of a partner in need.

When this is dynamic is working correctly, we learn to trust our partner. We know that we can emotionally rely on him or her. Our partner can even make mistakes, get it wrong sometimes, and that’s OK. We know that in general, when we reach out from a place of need, this person is there for us. It is when we really know this that we have a relationship that works. If we don’t know this, the relationship will not work.

The problem I see over and over again in my couples work manifests in two different ways. In one, both partners in the couple are in a position of need and no one is moving forward to take care of the other. This can be because they are both tired and stressed by the responsibilities and pressures of being parents. The other problem I often see is where one partner in the couple is always in the “taking care of position”, often because that’s where he or she feels most comfortable. These partners may not even be aware that they are doing this, but they don’t feel comfortable being taken care of themselves because it makes them too vulnerable. And then, over time, they feel burned out and resentful because no one is taking care of them.

How marriages are saved

Marriages are saved when we get past the surface content of arguments and get to the heart of the matter — when we focus on creating a secure bond between the two partners. We could spend months or years trying to work on the behaviors, the symptoms, we see in the marriage — he won’t do the dishes, she is being critical — but we would never get to the underlying disease.

When couples are able to have a secure base of a relationship that they can trust, a partner they know is really there for them, they are able to be the very best versions of themselves. They are not enmeshed or co-dependent. They know they can be close with their partners; but they also know they can go do their own thing, have their own friends and interests, and always have their primary attachment relationship to come home to.

Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples

The most established attachment-based couples therapy is called Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for Couples. This is not to be confused with an energy based healing technique also called EFT. The co-originator of EFT for Couples, Dr. Susan Johnson, is a Canadian therapist who created a three-phase, nine step system of couples therapy that is very effective and relatively short-term.

In clinical studies, EFT for Couples has been shown to have an outstanding success rate. Over 90 percent of couples report significant improvement and 70 to 75 percent move completely from distress to recovery. Perhaps the most impressive statistic is that when a two-year follow up is done with these couples, they report that their situation is actually better than when they ended therapy.

Instead of focusing on content, the EFT therapist focuses on identifying the negative cycle the couple has entered into, repairing damage that has occurred within the relationship, and helping facilitate a more positive and lasting bond between them. Couples who were constantly in conflict stop fighting and arguing all the time. Furthermore they report feeling a closeness and connection greater than ever before.

How Michael and Sara went astray

In the first couple session with Michael and Sara, we uncovered many clues about what was not working in their marriage. Growing up, they both had difficulties with their parents, and it was clear that these difficulties were carrying over into their current relationship. We also uncovered clues about what each of them needed and where each of them was feeling insecure in their marriage.

It seemed clear as day to me that these two were meant for each other and that they truly loved each other, but that the negative cycle had become so prominent in their relationship that they were operating most of the time from a place of fear and insecurity — not from the feelings of “knowing” that brought them together. In fact, it was the intensity of how important they were to each other that made all of the ways in which they were not tuned into each other’s needs seem much, much worse.

Sara became tired and stressed from the work of being a mom and felt that she needed more help and support from Michael. She thought he would rather surf the Internet or stay late at work than help her out around the house. Michael started to feel criticized and thought nothing he ever did was good enough for Sara. He became more emotionally withdrawn from the relationship. The more he withdrew, the more angry and anxious (and critical) she became. This made Michael withdraw even more. It was a vicious cycle and neither one of them could find a way out.

As we began what turned into a six-month process of weekly therapy sessions, I let Michael and Sara know that I was certain we could not only stop the vicious cycle, but that it could be replaced by a truly positive and secure bond. It was clear to me that this is what they both wanted, and they wanted it from each other.

“Aren’t you just encouraging co-dependence and enmeshment?”

No. What I am advocating is a healthy attachment bond, something every single one of us needs. As I teach in my parenting courses, there is no such thing as too much healthy attachment. Co-dependence and enmeshment are things that happen when the bond is unhealthy and insecure.

When you have a secure bond in your love relationship, you are able to be truly autonomous and independent. This may sound counter to what we are taught in our culture, but it’s true. When you have a healthy bond, you feel more secure in doing your own thing. You can have your own friends and interests and still know you have your “secure base” to go home to. You can do this because you trust your relationship.

When you are insecure in your primary relationships nothing works quite right, and it affects all aspects of your life — including your health and your work. It’s as if you have a really big computer program running all the time in the background that you’re not even totally aware of. It makes all of your other programs run slower or perform poorly in other ways. This is because attachment needs are the most important needs of all human beings.

“But what if we just aren’t right for each other? Things haven’t been good in a really long time.”

Obviously I can’t address your particular relationship in this article, but my belief and my experience are that the majority of the couples I have worked with were right for each other; they just got off track at some point. We are usually drawn to a person for the right reasons; but as they become more and more important to us, the potential becomes greater for our old patterns and issues to surface. We are drawn to this person because we have wonderful feelings of being known, of being “home”. But at the same time, our closest intimate partners will bring up everything in us that is unhealed from our past. This unhealed material can contain within it the keys to our personal transformation if we are open to it and willing to do a little work.

The key is for both partners to be willing to get beyond the surface issues to what is underneath. This process has an amazing track record, even with tough cases and couples who haven’t gotten along in years.

How things changed for Michael and Sara

I worked with Michael and Sara for about six months, meeting weekly for about an hour and a half. We spent time at the beginning understanding more deeply the negative cycle they had created together and how they had created it. We got to know more about the roles each of them played in the cycle, roles that were partly due to their histories and partly due to their own unique ways of coming together in relationship. Michael and Sara came to see fairly quickly that they were not each other’s enemy, the cycle was.

Over time, we uncovered the places where they had inadvertently wounded each other in their relationship. This is what we call “attachment injuries”. These injuries are sometimes obvious, but often they are hidden. One partner may have no clue that something they said or did years before was affecting their relationship in the present day. Such events often plant the seeds of mistrust and insecurity in a relationship.

What’s helpful about identifying these events is that they usually hold big clues about what the partners need from each other. We used these clues to help Michael and Sara build new, more secure ways of relating with each other. Often this takes time, but it is remarkable when it happens. The good news is that with EFT for Couples, we have an exact roadmap of the process by which this change can occur.

By the time we were nearing the end of our therapy process, Michael and Sara were not the same couple that had walked through my office doors those many months before. They smiled more, they held hands, and they were clearly no longer distressed. They said they still had arguments from time to time, but the arguments didn’t seem as extreme and they recovered much more quickly from them. Sara said that their fights used to feel like a matter of “life or death”, but that now they both understood that this was just the old cycle making an appearance. Michael reported that usually these days when they were getting close to “going at it”, one of them would make just the right remark, usually a funny one, that would deflate the situation right away.

It was clear that these two had escaped their negative cycle and were on the road to a much more secure and fulfilling life together. I couldn’t help smiling, thinking about how courageous they had been to make this change together, and what wonderful benefits it would have not just for them, but for their children.

Summary

Today, marriage (like parenting) is much harder than it should be. Cultural forces, along with our emotional wounding, conspire to keep us from the deep and loving connections we all need to thrive.

Also similar to parenting, marriage can be one of our greatest catalysts for personal growth. Whatever is unhealed in you, whatever needs to grow, will be brought up by these closest of relationships.

The key is to be open and vulnerable about your feelings, to get out of the negative cycle and take conscious action to create a secure bond. This is impossible when we are acting out of fear. Creating change requires courage and integrity.

I have come to believe with all my heart, personally and professionally, that a person’s husband or wife or love partner has 1,000 times more ability to heal the wounds of the other than I do as a therapist. That’s why I am so passionate about attachment-based couples therapy. When you can get both partners in the room and help them create a more secure bond, things that seemed impossible can start to happen. This is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and your children.

Some next steps

1-    If it feels right, share this article with your partner and schedule some time to talk it over. If that doesn’t feel possible yet, share it with a close, trusted friend first.

2-    Consider purchasing Dr. Sue Johnson’s book Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. The first few chapters are a much more thorough explanation of the ideas in this short article, and the remaining chapters are outlines of suggested conversations to have with your partner.

3-    If things feel too difficult or complicated to handle on your own, consider finding an attachment-based couples therapist in your area — such as an EFT for Couples practitioner. You can find them at www.eft.ca. It can always be helpful to have a safe guide through this most important of journeys.

Todd Sarner, MA, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist and Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Consulting & Education practice in Mill Valley, California. He did his original EFT for Couples training with founder Dr. Susan Johnson as well as completing a yearlong advanced training. In addition to his couples work, he does individualized parenting consulting and education in person and on the phone as well as conducting live and online parenting classes and courses. Todd was asked by leading developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”) to be one of the first interns in his professional training program, and he is currently a Faculty Member of the Neufeld Institute.  You can reach Todd by emailing him at todd@transformativeparenting.com or by calling him at (415)289-6515. His parenting website is: www.transformativeparenting.com

One of the most troubling things I hear when I am out and about these days is how many parents are forcing their children to say they are sorry for their behavior. Sometimes it’s because the child bumped into someone accidentally at the store. Other times it’s because the child did something the parent sees as rude. And sometimes it’s for more serious offenses like harming another child in some way. In all of these cases, big and small, I often want to take the parent aside and say, “what is more important to you…that your child says they are sorry or that they feel sorry? From my perspective, as a parent and as a professional, I am much more concerned with whether they feel sorry.

The Root of Good Intentions

One of the oldest debates in history about children (and humans in general) is are children born inherently good or inherently bad? If you take the position, as people have over long periods of time in the past and some do today, that children are bad, then they need to have goodness instilled in them from the outside. We have to shape them into model citizens through any number of methods, including leverage at times and force at others.

If, however, you take the position as I do that children are inherently good, this changes entirely how you interact with them. You see this goodness as something that is in there already, you just might need to wait a bit for it to blossom and might need to water it from time to time. As one of my main mentors Dr. Gordon Neufeld has said, you see yourself as a child gardener, not a child sculptor.

What we know now about the human brain is that there is overwhelming evidence for the gardener model. Attachment science tells us that the most important thing to human beings is being able to feel deeply and securely connected to the ones we love and to be loved and accepted for who we are, not what we do. People learn and take the lead from people they are attached to. Our brains are wired to  be empathetic and to  also imitate the behaviors that we see in those we love.

Empathy and the Young Child

For the young child, however, it takes a little time for the capacity to do certain things. Before a shift in brain capacity that occurs usually between five and seven years of age, a child has a limited ability to reflect, to be empathetic, and to regulate their actions. The capacity for these things is a byproduct of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that is not full “online” in the very young child. It’s not that we might not see these characteristics at times, but more often the young child is a creature of instinct, impulse, and imitation.

What this means to us as parents is that we are meant to understand that our children are limited in what they can do in these years and that we are meant to compensate for this and to set a good example as much as possible, modeling the behavior that we hope to see eventually in our children. By compensate, I mean that in the short term we do things like apologize for our children when social norms require that someone say they’re sorry.  And as Dr. Neufeld says, we also do more to control the situation that our young child is in rather than control the child. In doing this, we help buy some time until their development in this area kicks in.

Social Expectations

As I mentioned before, there are situations in which our concern for doing things that are socially expected cause us to do things like ask our child to say that they are sorry. This is understandable, especially in situations where your child does something to another child (or an adult) that causes them to be hurt. However, as parents we must resist the pull to make our child apologize if their apology is not naturally surfacing, because to do so might do more harm than good. One, it gets in the way of their own “sorry” being able to find it’s way to their lips. Secondly, it could have the effect of making the child feel ashamed of not feeling sorry in the moment. This is totally natural (the not feeling sorry in the moment) because of the brain development issue I mentioned above and because as human beings one of the first things we do when we’ve done something wrong is to go on the defensive. Our brain can essentially “shut down” in a way because it’s anticipating being in trouble. So if we have an urgent expectation that our child is “sorry” and they’re not feeling it, this can make them feel bad about themselves and teach them that they can get out of these situations by simply mouthing the words.

It’s easy to see how in some ways these social expectations about manners can get out of control. I am really impressed when I go to places in the US where the culture is much more polite than I have experienced growing up in California. However, I’ve also noticed a phenomenon in these places where some people go through the motions of being polite (“Thank you, you have a nice day, Sir”) but there is a real edge about how they say it. You sense underlying anger or resentment but they are saying the right thing. I’m afraid we’re creating a culture of this insincere or disconnected politeness when we force our children to say things they aren’t feeling.

The Sand Incident

When I am discussing this topic with clients or in classes, I often bring up an incident that happened with my son Benjamin when he was about 4 years old. It was a rainy day but the rain had let up so we went to the lagoon near our house. After playing and running around the lagoon together for a while we went to the playground. There were two different areas in this playground and we were alone on our side. On the other side, there was a mother with her 2-year-old looking daughter.

I needed a break, so I sat down on a bench about 10 feet from where my son was playing in the sand. One of the first things he did was to cheerfully throw a big scoop of sand into the air with a little sand shovel. I gently said, “hey Benny, don’t throw sand in the air like that, ok?” to which he replied, “OK!”. A few minutes later, the mom on the other side of the playground got a phone call on her mobile phone and she started walking over to our side of the park.

Ben continued playing and I was watching him from the bench. What neither of us really noticed is that the mom was walking to just behind the slide that he was playing next to (because she wasn’t talking, she was just listening). Next thing you know, Ben forgot my instructions from a few minutes before and he threw another big scoop of sand in the air. This time, the sand went in the face of the mom.

She was livid. She immediately turned to Benjamin and with anger on her face and in her voice said, “you threw sand on me!”. I could see how frightened Ben was and I hurried over to help him. I knew my number one job was to make sure he was OK and I scooped him up and gave him words of reassurance (“It’s OK Benny, it’s alright. I’m here.”). The social aspects of this situation were not unimportant to me, but they paled in comparison to making sure my son felt safe. However, I did know that this woman was upset and I turned to her to express my sincere apologies. I said, “I am really sorry. Ben usually knows not to throw sand and I am sorry that happened”.  I tended to the social requirement and expectation and I was truly sorry.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough for the mom. She turned again to Benjamin and in a very angry tone and said, “Are YOU sorry? Do you SAY sorry?!”. Here she went to far. My big Papa Bear protective energy came out and I gave her a look that in no uncertain terms said, “Back off!”. I knew this was frightening my child and I knew that he already felt terrible for what happened. I said to her, “I told you that I am sorry and I will talk to my son about it later. Have a nice day.” She walked away in a huff, probably thinking to herself what a bad father I was.

I took my son over to the bench and sat him on my lap. He was very upset and asked for his mommy. I don’t take this personally. I know that my son and I have a great relationship, but I also know when he is really upset or hurt he wants his mommy. I told him, “I’ll take you home to mommy in a minute, but I want to make sure you’re OK.” He shed some tears and I held him and let him know that everything would be alright.

After a few minutes he looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said, “I really didn’t mean to do that. I forgot.” I said, “I know, Benny, I know”. Then, a minute or two later he tried to say something else through his tears, “I really didn’t mean to. I really am…I really am…” And I knew what he was trying to say. “You really are sorry, huh?” I wasn’t trying to make him say it, I just knew it was there. He replied, “yes. I am sorry.” That, I knew, was gold. That was my son truly feeling sorry from his heart, not just saying it to make that mom or myself happy. He felt it. He meant it. I took him home to see mommy. Being four years old, I knew that I couldn’t always expect the sorry to be there so readily, but I was happy to see it in this case. I cannot remember a time that he has thrown sand in the air since.

Our Goal

Our goal as parents should be, as much as possible, to create the conditions and the environment for our children where they feel safe enough to feel their feelings and not to be shamed for things they don’t know yet how to do. In addition, we do everything we can to model the proper behavior and manners that we hope to see in our children.

Over time, the best scenario is that will notice and recognize when our child does show signs of having mixed feelings about things or that they are sorry about something. When we see it, we make room for it and we affirm it. Like the gardener, we water the seeds of good intentions, of politeness, and over time we see it grow. Many parents I know personally and professionally have never once told their child to say sorry or thank you or bless you or excuse me, and yet their children say these things all the time. It is so much more meaningful this way.

Todd Sarner, MA, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist and Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Consulting & Education practice in Mill Valley, California. He does individualized consultations with parents in person and on the phone as well as conducting live and online parenting classes and courses. Todd was asked by leading developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”) to be one of the first interns in his professional training program and he is a former Faculty Member of the Neufeld Institute. You can reach Todd at (415) 289-6515 or by emailing todd@transformativeparenting.com. His website is: www.transformativeparenting.com

Aggression was showing up in many different ways in the Perry household. Ron and Sheila’s 3-year-old daughter Mya was not usually a source of worry, but some days when she felt really frustrated she would take things out on her mother. Sometimes she would hit her or kick her. A few times Mya bit her mother on the arm. Sheila was alarmed by this behavior and by the way she reacted to it—which included yelling at her daughter and sending her to her room.

Things were also difficult at times with their 6-year-old son, Jason. He would come home from school some days full of aggressive energy. Jason was more verbally than physically aggressive (calling people names and saying hurtful things) and would throw enormous tantrums. Sometimes, however, he would push his little sister around. For a little while, it seemed that giving Jason a time-out was helpful, but eventually that stopped working at all. In fact, it seemed to make things worse.

Sheila and Ron came to see me after attending a talk I made at Jason’s school. It was clear that they were really loving parents who were doing their best, but who were themselves incredibly frustrated. The situation with their children was taking a toll on them, individually and as a couple.

Introduction

Aggression, in all its forms, is one of the most problematic behaviors for parents. It’s also one of the most difficult to write about in a short article. My goal here will be to help you better understand the origins of aggression, what we do as parents that makes it worse, and what you can do today to start lessening aggressive behavior in your child. This article is my way of explaining the developmental view of aggression as articulated by one of my main mentors, Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”).

What do I mean by aggression? Aggression can show up in many ways, including hitting, biting, kicking, tantrums, passive aggressive behavior, yelling, and even depression.

The Roots of Aggression

To understand what to do about aggression, we must first understand where it comes from. The root of all aggression is frustration. There are hundreds of things that can frustrate your child, big and small. Examples are not being able to make something work, not being able to be with (mommy or daddy or grandma or best friend) whenever the child wants, not being able to make a little brother or sister go away, not being able to have whatever he wants whenever he wants it, and on and on. The main concept here is that aggression is the result of frustration that becomes too much for your child to bear.

The root of all frustration usually has to do with attachment. Attachment theory is the science of understanding how human beings value, above all else, being able to hold close and keep close to those to whom they are attached. Most of what causes frustration in children (and adults) is the inability, in any way, to feel close to the ones they love. The child who is frustrated by the presence of his or her little sister, for instance, is usually frustrated at seeing the little sister as somehow coming between himself and his attachment figure (in most cases, mom or dad).

It is important to understand that the younger or more sensitive your child, the more likely you are to see this frustration. For the young child, this is due to several factors. A child under 5 to 7 years old has not yet developed the ability to adapt to frustration, meaning his or her little brains don’t know how to process it. Simply being exposed to aggression can cause the young child to act aggressively. Another factor is that the younger child doesn’t yet have the ability to stay connected to you as consistently as an older child can. This can refer to a girl or a boy, but let’s say it’s a boy. He has less ability, for example, to feel connected to you while away from you. Separation from those we love is frustrating for all of us, but the young child has a harder time dealing with it. More difficulty connecting leads to more frustration which leads to more aggression. The preschool years are actually the most naturally aggressive years in a child’s development.

The sensitive child can be more prone to aggression, for some of the same reasons. His sensitivity can result in his being more easily wounded, more sensitive to disappointment and frustration. The sensitive child is more cautious about connecting deeply with others because it potentially sets him up to be hurt, so at times he may resist deeper connection.

Frustration usually, but not always, leads to aggression. So where else does it go? What can we do as parents to lessen the aggression? We’ll look at those questions in a moment, but first I want to address the things that we do that actually make the situation worse.

What Makes Aggression Issues Worse?

When you understand the roots of frustration from an attachment perspective, you understand that many of the parenting methods and techniques being forced upon today’s parents are making things much worse.

The number one recommended form of discipline being taught to modern parents is giving time-outs. If what I am saying is true—that the root cause of aggression is frustration and the root cause of frustration is attachment needs—then what sense does it make to give children more separation when they are already frustrated? Yes, sometimes tempers reach such heights that we need to take a breather and collect ourselves so that we can act effectively with our kids, but it is important that children don’t feel that we can’t tolerate their presence or that we want them to go away.

We must understand that most of the parenting tricks and techniques we are sold by “experts” (or were subjected to as children ourselves) are based on using separation against a child—using the principles of attachment in a harmful way. These may work at first, but they stop working over time and can lead to disruption in the connection between our child and us. With the aggressive child, it can also lead to much more frustration. This child learns over time that being connected to another person leads to trouble.

Understanding how these dynamics work is important for many reasons, as you can see. Another reason is that when we identify a child with his anger (see him only as angry or aggressive) and we don’t see what’s really going on—that he is simply frustrated and needs our help with it—we fundamentally misunderstand what is going on and successful intervention becomes almost impossible.

What Can You Do to Lessen Your Child’s Aggression?

Now that you understand more about what is behind your child’s aggressive behavior, you have a way to figure out what to do. You must utilize the power of attachment for your child’s benefit, not use it against him.

The place to start here, and for most behavior issues, is to focus on deepening your connection with your child. Spend more time focusing not on behavior, but on strengthening your bond. This can seem counterintuitive to some parents in a culture that teaches us that we must immediately jump on a child’s behaviors so that we can extinguish them at once; but that philosophy is getting parents (and their children) nowhere. For the time being, let go of any need to control your child’s behavior and just focus on understanding his frustrations and needs. What he needs more than anything is you.

Providing for your child’s greatest need, the need for connection, does not mean that you set no boundaries or limits with behavior. In fact, the child’s need for these things is also great. Even the most connected parents have children who get frustrated. This is just part of life, and the way parents can best help their children process frustration is to set firm but loving boundaries with them. What this means is that we set very clear and consistent boundaries with our children, but that we also make sure we communicate to them (in our words and in our actions) that we understand their frustration and we are still connected to them no matter what their behavior.

When we set firm but loving boundaries for our children, it helps them understand and accept their own frustration. When children (and adults) come to accept the things they cannot change, we call this adaptive behavior—one of the most important necessities of human growth. When we accept these things, really fully accept them in our heads and in our hearts, this is often marked by tears. It’s good to think of tears as the body’s way of flushing out frustration, so we’re no longer holding it inside where it has the potential to be expressed as aggression.

When parents come to me, on the phone or in person, to get answers on issues of aggression, one of the first questions I ask them is, “Does your child get his tears out?” By that, I don’t mean yelling and screaming tears. I mean the tears that you have after you really let it all out. These tears are best facilitated by firm and loving boundaries.

I should probably mention that sometimes tears are not enough. Sometimes when your child is really full of frustration, there are a couple more things you should keep in mind. First, sometimes a child is so full of frustration we need to help lessen the main sources of frustration so that he can process it. For instance, if playing with a certain friend leads to a lot of frustration with your child, maybe you need to suspend those play dates for a while and let him spend that time with you instead.

Sometimes when your child is very full of frustration, he needs to get it out in more physical ways. Giving your child healthy examples of how to express frustration and aggression can be a gift that all too many children don’t get. In our home, this means we have a “frustration bag” (a child’s punching bag that came with boxing gloves) that our son pulls out of the closet when he is frustrated and needs to get some of this energy out. It also means that I regularly play-wrestle with him to help him get some of it out. This varies from child-to-child; you will need to figure out what helps with yours. The good news is that children usually give us clues (your child is always kicking? Help him “get out his kicks” in some way; don’t invite him to punch something).

The most important things when it comes to dealing with aggression in a child, according to Gordon Neufeld, are not letting his behavior disrupt the connection between you and not taking it personally. He is just frustrated and he needs your help.

“I admit that I don’t always handle my children’s aggression very well, but don’t I have to address this behavior immediately and forcefully so they learn it’s not OK?”

It is fine to communicate to your child that aggression is not OK, especially when he is hurting another person; but too often the child gets the message that he is not OK with you (not just his behavior) and that the relationship is in jeopardy. Your child is frustrated and overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to handle his feelings. Just telling him to stop it doesn’t help. Shaming him or using separation against him makes it worse. When your child is so frustrated that he is erupting into aggression, it is not the time to “teach him a lesson”. He is not open to a lesson. What I am suggesting is that we take a more proactive stance and try to lessen his frustration before it turns to anger, and that we show him over time what he can do to work through his feelings in a more positive way.

“But what about when my child hits a sibling or a friend?”

Obviously, this is not something anyone ever wants to happen and, again, it’s fine to make clear to your child that this behavior is not OK. But most important in the moment is to take control of the situation. Make sure the hurt child is all right, make apologies if necessary, and don’t try to teach a lesson in the moment. Wait until things have calmed down and then discuss it with your child, being careful not to shame him. When you are connected, he will hear you. The younger the child is, the more you have to be in control of the situation. Aggression won’t happen nearly as much if you act proactively.

Back to the Perry’s

Ron and Sheila were able to transform the aggression problems in their household in just a few weeks. Some change happened almost immediately.

When they came in, we spent a few sessions talking about the fundamentals of attachment and parenting practices that were relationship-friendly. I helped them see that this was the all-important first step—that we had to shift the culture of their home (which too often included separation-based discipline and unhelpful parental reactions).

Part of this was helping them arrange “special times” that they could each spend with each of their children. This helped deepen the individual relationships and lessen sibling rivalry and aggression in general.

Then we spent a couple weeks talking about limit setting in a loving and firm way. This had been a challenge for both parents. They tried to make things work for their kids, tried to make them happy and avoid conflict, but when the children ended up “acting out” anyway, they would get angry and resentful.

We set up individual strategies for helping each child with aggression issues, and Ron and Sheila were thrilled at the changes they saw. Not only did the aggression lessen considerably, but they also felt more confident as parents and less reactive.

Summary

Aggression can be a difficult dynamic for parents to work with. It can trigger our own frustrations, make us worry, and cause social concerns and fears. Aggression in children should not be seen as a horrible behavior to be snuffed out as soon as possible through any means necessary, but as a symptom of a relationship issue and of our children’s inability to know how to process their difficult feelings in a positive way. It is our responsibility and duty as parents to help our children navigate this. If we don’t, who will?

Seeing aggression through a developmental lens and understanding a child as frustrated, not as “bad,” and not identifying him with his behavior, should fundamentally change how we see and react to the difficult situations.

Most importantly, we should not make things worse by letting our connection to our child be lost in the moment or by giving him more frustration (by way of separation—time outs, 1-2-3 magic, etc).

The key to helping our children adapt to frustration is to help them have their tears and by being firm and loving with limits.

Some Next Steps

1)    Start with the fundamentals. If your child often acts aggressively, concentrate on lessening some of his frustration if possible and concentrating on deepening your relationship. Spend more time with him and back away from separation based discipline. See increasing your child’s sense of connection and security as your main goal.

2)    When there is a difficult incident, you can name the behavior as “not OK” as long as you make sure you are also communication that your relationship still IS OK. “We’ll talk about this later, but it will be OK. I love you.” Do not try to teach the child a lesson in the moment. Take control of the situation now and teach your lesson later when you’re on firmer ground.

3)    Work on setting limits with your child that are firm but loving. One without the other might not work.

About the author

Todd Sarner, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Consulting and Education practice in Northern California. He does individualized consultations with parents in person and on the phone as well as conducting live and online parenting classes and courses. Todd was one of the first interns in Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s professional training program and was an original Faculty Member of the Neufeld Institute. You can reach Todd at (415) 289-6515 or todd@transformativeparenting.com. His website is: www.transformativeparenting.com

Carl and Mary are the loving parents of a seven-year-old boy named Billy and a four-year-old girl named Lila. They came to see me for parent consulting because they were increasingly having a hard time with resistance behavior from both of their children. They explained that Billy hardly ever would do as he was told these days and that they were running out of ways to gain his cooperation. It was common to hear Billy scream “NO!” and “I don’t have to!” when asked to do everyday things around the house. Lila wasn’t as difficult but seemed to be becoming more and more like her brother. Almost every day she refused to get in the car when Mary told her it was time to go to school to pick up Billy, and at night she had started to refuse almost everything they tried to feed her for dinner. Carl told me that he thought this was happening because Mary was too “soft” with the children and needed to be stricter. Mary said that Carl just made things worse when he came home from work and started raising his voice to get the kids to do as they were told. They both expressed frustration and confided that the stress of the situation was starting to affect their marriage. They were desperate for help and just wanted to do what’s right for their kids.

Introduction

It can be very frustrating to be the parent of a child who is resistant to our guidance and direction. Occasional resistance is normal and healthy, but it can sometimes get out of control. Like so many other dynamics, our reactions to resistance can actually make things worse and cause greater frustration both for our children and for ourselves. It is my goal in this article to help you better understand where most resistance actually originates so that you are able to transform this dynamic in a positive way in your home.

Resistance — what it is and what it isn’t

The best way to explain what resistance is may be to explain what it isn’t. Often when parents see the behaviors that Carl and Mary experienced in this case, they think their child is being “strong willed” or trying to manipulate them. This behavior has very little to do with either. Most often, resistance is an instinct and an indication that something is wrong. We call this kind of resistance counterwill.

Counterwill is a word first coined by Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank. He explained that counterwill is what happens when you perceive someone else is trying to coerce you into doing something. This is different from will, which concerns doing what is necessary to achieve your goals. When we talk about a child being “strong-willed”, we usually mean that we are experiencing counterwill.

Counterwill and Attachment

My mentor, leading developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld (Hold On to Your Kids), explains that counterwill is an instinct that is directly linked to your relationship to your child and that this instinct is meant both to keep your child safe and to help him develop his own individuality over time. Understanding that counterwill is actually very healthy for your child can change how you look at resistance and lead to more successful (and less stressful) parenting.

We know from developmental psychology and attachment theory that the bond between parent and child is the most important factor in a child’s development and behavior. When children are attached in a deep and meaningful way, they want to follow their parents’ lead and will not, for the most part, be resistant.

A critical key to understanding how this works is that the connection between parent and child, their attachment, is not always “on”. By this I mean that if your child (especially a young child) is currently very focused on someone or something else, you do not necessarily have his attachment energy. The relationship is not active in the moment. A child is not meant to take direction from someone to whom he is not currently attached, so you are much more likely to experience counterwill.

This often confuses parents like Carl and Mary because they have such positive relationships with their children. They assume that this means their children should listen to them because they are great parents. The fact is, children are wired not to listen in certain situations.

How counterwill keeps our children safe

Like I said before, children are not meant to take direction from those to whom they are not currently attached, and this is meant to keep them safe.

There is a beautiful intelligence about how a child’s development is meant to unfold. When children are deeply attached to their parents this bond allows us to transmit our rules and values and guide them in a positive way. At the same time, attachment protects our children from outside influences and incompatible messages and values by preventing our children from listening to those to whom they are not attached.

This has wide-ranging implications. If a stranger walks up to your child at the park and asks your child to do something, your child is meant to say “NO!” because there is no attachment. It also means that if she is not attached to her teacher, she will not listen in class. Counterwill is meant to serve a child’s attachments by protecting her from outside influence.

So when a child like Lila is very attached in the moment to her toys, as a four-year-old often gets, she is less likely to listen to something her mother or father asks her to do. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love them or isn’t attached to them for the most part, it just means she isn’t right now.

Counterwill also prepares your child for becoming her own person

The counterwill instinct also serves another developmental purpose. It helps a child prepare for her own eventual individuation by letting her practice having her own thoughts and feelings. There are a couple of phases in your child’s development where this is especially true.

In the preschool and kindergarten years, you will see much more unchecked counterwill. Part of this is because of the young child’s brain development. They haven’t quite developed the part of their brain that helps them balance things out and see things from multiple perspectives. This makes counterwill more severe because they are more impulsive than reflective.

Counterwill is also very present in the adolescent years. In this case, it is very developmentally appropriate because adolescence is meant to be a time of diminishing (but not total lack of) parental influence as a child more and more learns who she really is as an individual. This doesn’t mean that we back off totally as parents. In some ways our adolescent children need us more than ever. We just have to be more conscious of giving them some space.

The keys to transforming counterwill

There are several principles I teach parents in our classes and in consults for managing counterwill, and I want to address a few of the most important. The objective is not to completely get rid of all resistance in our child. That would be impossible and not very good for them. What I would like to do is help you make counterwill a much more manageable dynamic.

The most important advice I give parents is not to let counterwill cause disruption in their relationship with their child. It is common for parents to react very negatively when their child is resistant. The temptation is to take it personally and to resort to saying and doing things that make the resistance worse — including taking things away from the child or using separation based discipline like time outs or 1-2-3 Magic. As I’ve explained, counterwill is strongest when there is a lack of connection, so creating more disconnection will only lead to stronger resistance.

The second thing I recommend is that you strive always to “collect” your child before you direct him. This is probably the most common advice I give and is directly from Dr. Neufeld’s book and courses. Collecting means to connect with your child first. Do not assume the connection is there at all times. By providing some sense of connection and closeness before asking a child to do something, we can avoid a lot of resistance. With a young child, you might sit next to him and share in what he is doing. Get connected and then gently guide him to what’s next.

Lastly, I recommend that you find ways of helping your child to exercise his “will muscles”. Children (and many adults for that matter) do not yet have a well-developed sense of will and need to have the space and opportunity to practice building it. This means that you put your child in charge of something when you feel it’s appropriate, or let him make decisions about certain things — as long as you’re OK with the potential decisions. Dr. Neufeld calls this the “little steering wheel”. Think of those shopping carts at the grocery store that have a car attached in the front. Your child gets the feeling of being in control but you are really doing the steering. An example is giving your child the choice between two different foods you’re willing to prepare at dinner time. The child gets the experience of choosing, but you don’t have to cook something you don’t want to (or can’t).

“But sometimes I’m in a real hurry and I don’t have time to wait for my child to be ready to go”

I understand this and realize that in some instances you will not be able to do things the way I am suggesting. However, if you started paying attention to how much time you spend right now with the fallout of counterwill — the frustrations, the punishments, and the meltdowns — you would realize that you can’t afford not to change how you are doing things. Misunderstanding and disrespecting this counterwill instinct is not effective and, more importantly, is not healthy for your relationship with your child.

“Don’t kids have to learn to listen when their parents ask them to do something?”

Of course parents need to know that their children will, for the most part, follow their lead and do what they say when needed. It’s just important to understand that this works better when our children want to listen to us, not when we force them to listen. Children who are deeply attached to their parents want to follow their lead. In fact, it feels wrong not to.

How Carl and Mary transformed their relationship with their kids

I asked Carl and Mary to do an experiment for a week. I asked them to pay more attention to collecting their children. I suggested they especially pay attention to this around transition times (the morning, after school, before bedtime) and when they needed their children to cooperate. These transition times can be especially difficult, as the children are more prone to counterwill. Furthermore, I warned them not just to collect their children when they needed to direct them, but also to do so consistently throughout the day.

I also suggested that they find opportunities each day to let both of the children exercise their “will muscles” by finding appropriate situations where they could be in charge of something or help make decisions.

In addition, I invited Carl and Mary to be more aware of how often they were forgetting to collect each other. I told them couples often get into big relationship trouble when they start forgetting to greet each other warmly when one of them comes home. They smiled big, knowing smiles as they realized how much counterwill had played a part in their own relationship. Carl shared that every time he came home from work and was just “told what to do” he got angry and felt a ton of resistance himself. Now he understood why.

The results were nearly instant. After just a day or two, they noticed changes in their home. They weren’t butting heads with the kids as often and they were getting along better with each other. After a full week things were not perfect all the time, but they reported dramatic improvements.

Conclusion

Resistance in our children can be frustrating, but much of our frustration can be transformed when we realize this is often a natural function, an instinct, that is meant to help keep our kids safe and to help them become their own unique individuals over time.

When we are frustrated and reacting to counterwill in our children it is more difficult for us to do our jobs as parents. On top of that, when our children are stuck in resistance, things often get worse when we react to their resistance with reprimands and punishments.

Counterwill is especially difficult for us in our busy, fast-paced world because we have a lot to do. We want to feel like our children are on our team. The key to this is that we are the team’s coach — the one with greater wisdom and experience — and we need to take the lead with our kids.

Some next steps…

1- Do what Carl and Mary did and spend one week, as an experiment at first, focusing on the three principles I outlined in the article.

a. Avoid reacting negatively to counterwill in your child.
b. Collect before you direct.
c. Let your child practice making some decisions in his life.

If possible, get your spouse to participate with you. If this isn’t possible, enlist a like-minded friend with a child around the same age to do the experiment in their home at the same time.

2- Keep in mind the whole week that you are the “coach” and you are the one who is meant to take the lead and set the tone with your children. Stop yourself if you get in “reaction” mode.

3- Make an appointment with your experiment partner to check in after the week and share your experience. Talk about what worked and what you struggled with. Then discuss what changes you can put into place in your household to transform resistance long-term.

***

About the author

Todd Sarner, MA, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist and Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Consulting & Education practice in Mill Valley, California. He does individualized consultations with parents in person and on the phone as well as conducting live and online parenting classes and courses. Todd was asked by leading developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”) to be one of the first interns in his professional training program and he is currently a Faculty Member of the Neufeld Institute. You can reach Todd at (415) 289-6515 or by emailing todd@transformativeparenting.com. His website is www.transformativeparenting.com

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Josh and Sandy have two children: Jake, seven, and Tabitha, who turned four about a month ago. They love their kids and do everything they can to be great parents. When Jake was five, they started having problems with some of his behaviors. Sometimes Jake seemed not to be able to listen at all, ignoring anything his mom or dad asked of him. Other times he would get aggressive with Tabitha, wanting to play roughly or hit her. They asked their pediatrician what to do and he recommended using time-outs. He explained that when children misbehave, parents should give them one minute of time-out in his or her room (or in another designated area) for every year of his age.

Immediately, Josh and Sandy started using five-minute time-outs with Jake when he would “act up.” For a year or so this seemed to work most of the time, and they were thrilled. Jake either stopped the behavior immediately to “get out” of the time-out or he would behave better when he came back from his room. However, lately the time-outs have stopped working and things have gotten worse. When his parents threaten a time-out these days, Jake just says “I don’t care” and goes to his room and stays there. At the same time, his behavior is getting worse and worse. By the time Josh and Sandy came to see me for help, they were feeling frustrated and powerless.

The Greatest Human Need

Before we explore the origins and potential dangers of time-outs, let’s set the stage by talking about what children need more than anything else for healthy psychological and emotional development. This will explain the basis for most behavior issues.

The need for connection and closeness with those we love is the greatest human need. A well-established area of developmental psychology, Attachment Theory, is dedicated to studying this phenomenon. One of the rules of Attachment is that most of our behavior as humans is determined by how well we are able to “hold on” to those that we love—how well we are able to feel deeply connected, even while apart. When we have deeply rooted connections, we thrive.

When we feel alone or disconnected, we want to be connected. We want not to be alone. At first, we seek “positive” attention from those we love. If we can get it, it is wonderful. However, if we cannot get positive attention, we will get attention any way we can—even if it is more “negative” attention. The fear of separation, of not being connected to those who are most important to us, is so huge, so primal, that any connection is better than none.

The Origins of the Time-Out

Time-outs are often introduced to parents as a “less harmful” alternative to spanking, a practice that was very common not too long ago but that has mostly become a thing of the past. This is good. It’s good that we don’t spank our children any more, and we should never go back to it.

As was the case with Josh and Sandy, many parents these days are introduced to time-outs by their pediatricians. In fact, the American Pediatric Association recommends the practice of “one minute for each year.” I am not questioning the intentions of these doctors—they are trying to provide parents with a helpful tool—but I disagree with the position that time-outs are not harmful.

Why Time-Outs are Harmful and Don’t Work

Children who are acting out are trying to tell us that something is wrong. They might not even know what it is, but their behavior tells us. Usually they are feeling disconnected or struggling with some difficult feelings. Using separation-based discipline like time-outs tells a child that when he is in need, we will answer his pleas for connection with the exact opposite of what he is asking for. The reason time-outs appear to work at first is that a child who is seeking proximity is very alarmed by the threat of greater physical and emotional distance. He’ll do anything he can to stop feeling this alarm.

What happened with Josh and Sandy is a perfect example. At first this threat works. Jake is so alarmed by the thought of having even more distance from his mom or dad that he stops doing what he’s doing. However, as time goes by Jake becomes desensitized to this separation and stops caring—because it hurts too much to want closeness and not get it. He puts an emotional wall around himself. When this happens often enough kids will turn to other people and things—such as friends, video games, or the internet—to get their needs met in a less vulnerable way. This makes it more difficult to do our jobs as parents.

“Sometimes when I am getting really angry with my child, aren’t time-outs the best thing I can do?”

I often say in my talks and in my consults with parents, that when we are at the boiling point with our kids and not seeing clearly, it may be true that somebody needs a time-out. It just may be the parent, not the child. It is not that all time-outs are all bad all the time; it’s just crucial that we understand their potential downside and that we become more conscious about how we use them.

One of the most important goals of parenting is to communicate the message to our children that even if what they are doing is not OK, our relationship with them is OK. Even if our intentions are wonderful, some of the discipline methods we are being encouraged to use these days (like time-outs) can result in a child feeling that your relationship is not OK—that they are not OK.

“But I’ve been using time-outs and they work. Sometimes all I have to do is threaten a time-out and the bad behavior stops.”

I hear this all the time from parents, and that’s why I told the story of Josh and Sandy. I know that time-outs—even just the threat of them—can appear to work at first; but they will stop working over time as your child becomes desensitized in order to avoid feeling the hurt of separation. This can cause real damage to your relationship with your child. This doesn’t mean you can’t repair this damage—you almost always can—but it will make things more difficult for a while.

My mentor Dr. Gordon Neufeld, author of the must-have book Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers, likes to talk about what time-outs would do in a marriage. What if your spouse threatened separation (like making you sleep on the couch) every time you did something wrong? You might be motivated at first to shape up but eventually you’d probably become resentful and stop caring.

Parenting Without the Time-Out

Let’s go back to Josh and Sandy. When they first came to see me for parenting consultation they didn’t know what to do. Time-outs had worked well for a while and they had become dependent on them. The problem was that time-outs stopped working and they didn’t like the way they were relating to Jake these days.

I started working with them on shifting their entire parenting approach. I explained that we are supposed to do most of our jobs as parents proactively, not reactively. We need to provide for our children’s needs for closeness and connection before there is a problem. If we don’t, we will spend our time figuring out the best way to react to their problem behavior. This is like reacting to symptom after symptom rather than addressing the underlying disease.

In this particular case, I worked with Josh and Sandy on improving a few fundamentals in their home. I encouraged them to shift their perspective from reactive parenting to insight and proactive behavior. I suggested that when things were not going well they ask themselves, “what is my child’s need here?” and, “what is going on with him right now?” Learning to read a child’s emotional state and needs is critical.

We worked on improving how often they were “collecting” their kids. This is a term Dr. Neufeld uses often in his work. To collect a child means to provide the connection and proximity she is seeking—preferably before she seeks it. It means that we need to connect with our children before we do anything else. For Josh and Sandy, this meant incorporating lots of new rituals, big and small. With two children and a busy schedule, they realized that sometimes they might have just assumed Jake was OK, when actually he needed some more connection. Sometimes this meant spending extra time reading with Jake in the morning before school. Sometimes this meant “special time” with Mom in the afternoon. Sometimes this simply meant surprising him with a big hug and kiss when he wasn’t expecting it.

Most importantly, I worked with them on being more conscious of communicating the message to Jake that no matter what happened, they loved him, and that their relationship was OK. At first Sandy was almost offended when I brought this up. She said, “Of course he knows we love him.” However, she soon realized that although this was obvious to her, at times it wasn’t obvious to Jake. He is a sensitive boy and needs a lot of attention and reassurance at times.

Being more proactive immediately made a big difference in their home, but they still wanted to know what to do when incidents actually happened. I told them that the guiding principle with incidents was to try to do no harm and to avoid the temptation of teaching a lesson in that moment. If Jake was doing something they found unacceptable, they should let him know it’s not OK in a way that is firm but loving. Then it’s usually best to take control of the situation, to change things up. When the situation has calmed down and they are feeling a strong connection to Jake, they can talk to him about what happened and why it was unacceptable—in a way that Jake can hear.

These days, they don’t have nearly as many of the kinds of incidents that used to lead to a time-out. But when they do have a difficult situation, Josh and Sandy have a completely different way of handling it. They are more confident and empathetic and they make a priority of not making the situation worse with more feelings of separation. They communicate that the behavior is wrong, but they also communicate that they are OK and things will be OK.

Summary

Time-outs are used by the majority of parents in North America and are endorsed by lots of well-meaning professionals. They are used in many of our schools. Don’t judge yourself for using them in the past; that won’t help you or your child.

If you are feeling frustrated and overwhelmed with your child and you just need to regroup, then maybe some form of time-out wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. You can give yourself a time-out and take some deep breaths, or have your child sit quietly while you’re in the room. Just have more consciousness about the situation and the language you use. Realize that by the time your child is acting out, something is really wrong and your child needs you to help make it right. Separation problems are at the root of most of our problems as humans. Don’t make them worse by using more separation.

What To Do Now:

1. Work on “collecting” your child more often, especially at transition times in the day—such as in the morning, after school, and after dinner. Provide some connection, even brief ones, when your children are not expecting them and definitely before there are signs they need it. Try this out for a couple of weeks to see what a difference it makes.

2. Help your child “hold on” to you emotionally through separation and through incidents. When she is going to be away from you, give her ways of feeling connected to you until you are reunited. Let her know you’ll be thinking about her with a surprise note in her lunch, or even something physical to hold on to like a bracelet of yours or a special token. And when you have an incident, communicate the message, “We’re ok and we’ll get through this.”

3. Work on growing your awareness, especially when incidents occur, of what’s going on emotionally for both you and your child. Take responsibility for your emotions and your actions. Keeping a journal can be very helpful for this. Parenting is a hard job, and it will bring up all of your unhealed emotional material. Working through these issues with compassion towards yourself will reap enormous benefits.

***

About the author

Todd Sarner, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist and Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Consulting & Education practice in Mill Valley, California. He does individualized consultations with parents in person and on the phone as well as conducting live and online parenting classes and courses. Todd was asked by leading developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”) to be one of the first interns in his professional training program, and he is currently a Faculty Member of the Neufeld Institute. You can reach Todd at (415) 289-6515 or by emailing todd@transformativeparenting.com. His website is: www.transformativeparenting.com

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When Rebecca came to see me she was at her wit’s end and didn’t know what to do. The scenario she described was all too familiar. She is a dedicated and loving mom and tries very hard to give her 5-year-old child all the love and attention he needs. As wonderful as her boy is, she says sometimes he can be a “little terror”. He can be bossy and argumentative, often telling her what to do. This drives Rebecca crazy and she finds herself reacting in ways that make her feel bad about herself- taking things away from him and sometimes yelling back at him. Just the day before, after spending an hour making a dinner for the family that he normally likes, he refused to eat it and ordered her to make something else just for him. Frustrated and tired, she lost it and screamed that she would “throw away every toy in the house” if he didn’t eat the dinner she made for him. He ate his dinner, but the whole night was hard and Rebecca felt racked with guilt.

What makes a bossy child?

A fundamental mistake parents and teachers make with children who are bossy is to assume that they are confident or strong-willed children. This is usually not the case. Developmental science, specifically attachment theory, tells us that the root of most behavior problems in children has to do with their ability to feel connected to and taken care of by the adult caretakers in their lives- usually their parents. This could not be truer of the bossy child.

The relationship between parent and child is not a relationship of equals. It is not a peer relationship or a friendship. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean that we do not try to be loving and respectful of our children, but we are not meant to primarily be their buddies. Our relationship with our children is hierarchal, a relationship between one who is taking care of (the parent) and one who is being taken care of (the child).

What I see over and over again in my individual consults with parents and in my courses, are frustrated parents like Rebecca. They are great moms and dads who love their kids. Yet they try so hard to make everything work for their child, to be their friend and to not let them be upset, that they are not making their day-to-day decisions based on what the child needs, but rather what the child wants.

Children need us to be strong and confident and to take care of them, even if to take care of them means to upset them in the short-term. If I child does not feel like we are in charge, this makes them feel insecure and they move to be in charge themselves. It’s like they are saying to us, “if you’re not going to be the boss, I’m going to!” Of course, this is unconscious, and we make a big mistake if we take their behavior personally.

The other part of this equation is the sensitivity of your particular child. The more sensitive the child, the more likely they are to move to be in charge if they are feeling insecure.

What make the situation worse?

When you understand that bossiness comes from insecurity and not from confidence or rudeness or a strong-will, you can begin to see the solution lies in addressing this underlying insecurity. Unfortunately, most advice parents get these days falls in one of two camps, both of which can be problematic.

The first is behaviorism. Behaviorism say that when your child is “acting up” or otherwise behaving badly that you are meant to react to this behavior by doing something that will stop the bad behavior immediately and to teach the child a lesson. If the child is already feeling insecure, it won’t help this insecurity to make them feel wrong or bad or to punish them. The child gets the message that we don’t see what’s really going on for them and therefore we are not taking care of them. Behavioral approaches often work in the short term, but over time, they stop working and can make problems much much worse. Rebecca intuitively did not believe in the behavioral approach, but when push came to shove and she got really frustrated, she fell into this trap and started threatening to take away things that her son cares about.

The other camp is one for whom I have a lot of respect and compassion. It consists of moms and dads who are trying so hard to have a natural and loving relationship with their child that they don’t always understand the hierarchal nature of the parent-child relationship that I mentioned before. They will sometimes call themselves child-centered or child-led or even attachment parents, and they are some of the most dedicated parents I’ve ever met. Often they are driven by a need to not parent in the way they were parented, which may have been emotionally neglectful or abusive. I think the intentions of this camp are wonderful and I absolutely believe in the principles of attachment theory, but one of the rules of attachment is that it is, again, not a relationship of equals. This was how Rebecca usually tried to parent- she went out of her way to follow her child’s lead and to make him happy, but this leads to him sometimes not feeling taken care of.

Three Practices to Transform the Bossy Child

Transforming the bossy child sometimes takes a little time, sometimes takes longer, but can almost always be achieved. The important thing to realize is that doing this is not so much about what to do but more about who you are to your child. Are you passive with your child, always trying to make things work? Or do you have a deep confidence that you know what’s right for your child and make decisions based on that knowing, no matter what the consequences? This isn’t always easy, and none of us are perfect, but this is an essential part of the art and practice of parenting. There are 15 or 20 points I make with parents in consultations and courses about how to transform the bossy child and I want to highlight three of the most important ones here.

1) Read the need and take the lead

Parenting is not meant to be a reactive job. When we are reacting to our child’s behavior or moods or requests all the time we are by definition letting them be in the lead. We are meant to do most of our work as parents proactively- understanding our child’s particular sensitivities, anticipating their needs, and moving to take care of them. When possible, it’s best to meet their needs before they ask. For instance, if a young child is starting to drag their feet and you know they’re going to ask to be picked up, getting there first by warmly and enthusiastically saying, “Hey, I want to hold you!” can make a child’s eyes light up and feel like, “Wow, I wanted to be picked up and I didn’t even have to ask!” These children will more often feel satisfied and want to walk again on their own before the child that has to ask to be picked up. This sounds simple, but it is one of the most profound shifts many parents can make to help their child feel more secure.

2) Don’t use excessive threats or leverage

One of the most common practices we use as parents these days is to take away or threaten to take away things that our children care about. This might be a toy or this might be an experience- play time, reading time, a birthday party, or some other fun outing. This is sending a couple of dangerous messages. The first is that we as parents will use their care for something against them. This can cause children over time to just not care about things because they feel it will just be taken away and that will hurt. But it’s the second message that is most relevant to understanding how to deal with the bossy child. Using excessive threats and leverage communicates to a child that you are feeling powerless and not acting from a place of natural authority. This undercuts your power as a parent and contributes to their insecurity.

3) Limit how much you negotiate or seek permission

We are not meant to seek our child’s permission before we go to the store. We are not meant to negotiate with them about what we’re making for dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that we shouldn’t keep in mind our child’s likes and preferences, but in general we are meant to be the ones calling the shots. Sometimes I illustrate this by talking about how some other cultures see the act of feeding those they love. In parts of France or Italy for instance, children wouldn’t even think of telling their parents what to make for dinner. It is more a part of these cultures to understand that feeding those you love is part of how you take care of them. You take your knowledge of what is healthy and nutritious and combine it with your knowing their preferences and you provide for them in a generous way without them needing to ask. Too often these days, we follow our child’s lead by making them whatever they want, even if it causes us extra effort and strain. Think of how good it feels to you when someone anticipates your needs and then demonstrate this at home with your kids.

“But don’t parents have to teach a child that it’s not OK to boss people around?”

Of course we want to teach our children right and wrong, including issues like this. It is OK to communicate this message to our kids, but it is not very effective to try to teach them a lesson when we are having problems, including problems with bossiness. The more important goal here is to see the bossiness as a symptom of insecurity and to first address this underlying problem. When a child is feeling secure and we are in a position of natural authority, they are far more likely to listen to us and to learn the right way of behaving.

“I want my child to be happy. Are you trying to say that we shouldn’t ever give them what they want?”

No, not at all. We all want to be loving and respectful to our children and to make them happy. The message here is that it is our number one priority to take care of them and not to be their best friend because these roles are often incompatible. If we are pushovers or if we are overly harsh, this can lead to insecurity. We need to find the balance of being compassionate and firm and always in charge of their needs.

How the transformation takes place:

I worked with Rebecca over a few sessions on this topic and on some related issues. At first she told me what I was saying made sense to her but she also pushed me a lot for more “to-do’s”. I provided these practices and some others and she worked week to week on trying them out and seeing how her child reacted. I encouraged her to pay attention to becoming more proactive rather than reactive in her parenting. In some cases, there were immediate results. In others it took a little bit longer, but that is natural. Rebecca shared with me that she was parented in a very strict way that didn’t always give her the feeling of being loved. She was so determined to not be that way with her child that she went to the opposite extreme at times and then got resentful and angry when her child didn’t seem to appreciate her efforts.

I heard ran into Rebecca a couple of months after our sessions and she was smiling from ear to ear. She told me that she still had her hard days from time to time, but that overall things had changed significantly in their home. She had thought she was really aware of her child’s needs, which she was for the most part, but she told me she had become much more attuned to some of the subtleties of his behavior, especially when he was feeling tired or upset.

Summary:

Bossiness in children is very common these days and in my experience is becoming even more so. There are many factors that contribute to this, including the ones that I have explained here. The important thing to understand is that bossiness is challenging and frustrating but it is resolvable. As parents, we will always face challenges and frustrations. Rebecca still comes to see me from time to time to discuss some of hers. However, she is no longer feeling nearly the same level of frustration and guilt as when she first came to see me. She says she may get a bossy remark or two in a day, but that she is handling these situations with a great deal more confidence and that this seems to make all the difference in the world.

What to do now:

Practice integrating these principles into your life for the next month. Remember, don’t try for perfection, just try to head in the right direction. We’re not perfect and we all have bad days. Consider working on this with a friend or two who are experiencing the same dynamic with their child.

Make sure you are on the same page with your spouse and other important caretakers in your child’s life. Discuss these principles and talk about how you can better implement them in your home.

Consider keeping a journal of your feelings and experiences during this month (and beyond). This is one of the very best ways to process feelings and to discover new ideas and solutions.

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About the author

Todd Sarner, MA, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist and Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Consulting & Education practice in Mill Valley, California. He does individualized consultations with parents in person and on the phone as well as conducting live and online parenting classes and courses. Todd was asked by leading developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld (“Hold On to Your Kids”) to be one of the first interns in his professional training program and he is currently a Faculty Member of the Neufeld Institute. You can reach Todd at (415) 289-6515 or by emailing todd@transformativeparenting.com. His website is www.transformativeparenting.com

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Being a parent today can be pretty overwhelming. There is a whole multi-billion dollar industry out there telling us the latest tricks and techniques of how to parent. Books, videos, and TV “experts” show us how to deal with problematic behavior so that we can have “good” kids. We are bombarded with advice from friends and family who usually have good intentions, but their advice doesn’t seem to work or just doesn’t feel right. In the meantime, some of the greatest problems we see among the children in our culture are on the rise. With younger children, we see a lot of opposition and defiance, bossy behavior, and more. In older children and teens, we are seeing more and more violence and aggression, bullying, drug abuse, premature sexual behavior, and underachievement in school.

With all the experts out there, with all the books and advice, with all the resources we make available to our children, why is it that these problems are growing? The roots of the problem lie in the fact that we are increasingly looking outside ourselves to what others are doing, not to what our particular child needs from us as a parent.

The beginnings of the course…

The Power to Parent Course (originally called “Making Sense of Children”) was created by Vancouver-based clinical and developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld. Dr. Neufeld has worked with children and their parents for over 30 years as a psychologist, parent consultant, and educator. He was a professor of developmental psychology and parent-child relations at the University of British Columbia when he started a series of informal discussions after class with a group of students. The student wanted to talk specifically about how the material they were learning applied in the “real world” to parenting. Soon, these groups got bigger and bigger and they had to move them to larger venues. He then started teaching the course to the general public, usually as an eight-week group, and it has evolved over the last 20 year.

In 2004, Dr. Neufeld (with the assistance of co-author Dr. Gabor Mate) authored his first book, a summary of some of the ideas he taught in the Power to Parent course. “Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers” was the #1 bestselling non-fiction book in Canada the year it was released and has been met with critical and professional praise across the world.

A different approach…

One of the things that is different about Dr. Neufeld’s approach is that his work takes a developmental, not a behavioral, approach. What this means is that when a child is showing behavior or learning problems, the behavioral approach will often show us how to use techniques to try to address these problems. In this way, the behavioral approach is concentrated on the symptoms, not the underlying issues. The developmental approach is to try to understand the issues from the inside out and look at behavior and learning problems as often having to do with the child being “stuck” at a stage in their development. The idea is that once you understand the root cause and address that root cause, the symptoms will naturally desist.

Because this approach is different than most of what is taught and written about in the mainstream parenting literature, parents often wonder if this approach has some of the “how-tos” that they are used to. The answer is yes and no. While there are practical examples and stories that Dr. Neufeld uses to help parents learn how to handle common problems, the emphasis is on the “how to BE” not the “what to DO.” When a parent truly understands their child, their unique needs, and who their child needs them to be, the “what to do’s” flow more naturally and you don’t need to keep going back to the bookstore for more answers.

As the world has changed, parenting has become more difficult.

Many parents have the sense that the environment in which they are raising their children is different from when they were growing up and when their parents were growing up. They feel like parenting is becoming harder or they feel guilty because they can’t seem to handle things as well as they think they should.

The core reason that parenting can be more challenging these days is because we have lost much of the cultural wisdom that once help support us in our roles. In the past, we may have been able to count on extended family being nearby. We could also count on our “village” of family, teachers, and neighbors to function as extensions of ourselves. The world is becoming more and more overwhelming and kids are in many ways becoming more sensitive, needing us more than ever. The way our culture is encouraging kids to become independent of us at a younger and younger age is the opposite of what they need.

Attachment is the key (even if it’s not what you think it is).

The single most important concept to understand when it comes to raising children is that of attachment. Attachment is a simple but profound concept that explains the human need to hold close and keep close those whom they hold dear. Most of the literature that people are aware of in North America about attachment has to do with early-childhood physical attachment needs- baby wearing, breast feeding, and co-sleeping. These things are all part of attachment, and can be critically important, but are just the beginning of a child’s attachment needs.

In his work, Dr. Neufeld explains that physical attachment is just the first of 6 stages of attachment, the rest having to do with psychological and emotional attachment. In general, a child will be able to progress through one of these levels every year or so for the first 5 or 6 years of their life. The deeper their attachment to their primary caregiver (usually their parent) the more secure they are and the less trouble they have with learning and behavior. When a child’s attachment needs are not met, they tend to become fixated on getting these needs met and they get “stuck.”

One of the greatest misconceptions people have in our culture is when they claim that attachment is not the answer for their child because their child is “too attached”. There is no such thing as too much secure attachment. The problem with these children is that they are insecurely attached and they become “clingy”. Their insecurity causes them to constantly seek out their parents to get their attachment needs met. With these children, we need to help move them into deeper attachment so that they can feel the security of the relationship, even when the parent is not present.

How many of today’s most popular parenting practices are making the problem worse.

If we assumed that almost every problem our children have with learning and behavior had to do with feelings of separation and insecure attachment, we would probably be right most of the time. Separation anxiety can cause our children to act up and do things they would never do if they were feeling safe and secure.

And that is at the core of why many of today’s parenting practices make things worse. Techniques like “time outs” and “1-2-3 Magic” use separation from us as a form of discipline. What kids are usually saying when they are acting up is that they need to feel more closeness with us, so when we then threaten to send them away (as with a time out) it can initially lead to “good” behavior because they fear the separation. After awhile, however, it stops working because the child feels too vulnerable and starts hardening themselves against the punishment. We have to stop using methods that send the message that we will use what our children need against them and that our relationship with them is dependent on their behavior.

Attachment is not a relationship of “equals”.

In our practice, some of the most common problems we see these days are ones stemming from dedicated, loving parents whose parenting style is that of trying to be their child’s friend first, rather than their parent. This becomes a tricky area that can be easily misunderstood, so I will explain further.

What our children need from us is for us to take the lead and act with an air of natural authority. This doesn’t mean we are coercive with our kids or that we treat them with anything less than total love, compassion and respect. It just means that children, especially the more sensitive ones, need us to be in charge and create a space of safety that allows them to rest.

When we don’t take the lead, our children may turn to others (like friends or other adults) to take the lead, or they might move to take the lead with us and become an “alpha child”. An alpha child is one who acts as if they are in charge and even bosses their parents around. Although an alpha child looks like they are very confident, these are often kids who are incredibly insecure and deal with their insecurity by taking control of everything.

What you can expect from the course…

The Power to Parent Course is an eight-week course that each week combines one-hour of video instruction by Dr. Neufeld with one-hour of facilitated discussion with a professional who has been trained extensively by Dr. Neufeld to teach the course. The emphasis is on understanding our kids from the inside out, their unique temperament and sensitivities, and how we can be who they need us to be so that they will feel safe and secure and grow into their own unique potential.

Some of the topics include: dealing with resistance and oppositionality, addressing the roots of aggression, preventing being replaced by competing attachments, addressing separation problems and anxieties, raising children who are capable of deep and meaningful relationships, dealing with children who seek to dominate (instead of depend on) their parents, and how to use discipline that is effective but doesn’t harm your relationship with your child.

The course has been carefully designed to help parents get the most out of the material. The mixture of instruction and discussion over eight weeks helps deepen understanding and create positive change. More than anything, the Power to Parent course teaches parents that they are their children’s best bet and they hold the answers to their child’s needs.

For more information on the Power to Parent course, including upcoming dates and registration information, please visit: www.transformativeparenting.com

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About the author

Todd Sarner, MA, is a counselor and father who lives in Marin County, California. Todd is Co-Director of Transformative Parenting, a Parent Education and Consultation organization that also conducts professional trainings throughout the country. Todd is one of Dr. Neufeld’s most trusted students, having been selected to take part in the first year of his professional training program. Todd conducts trainings and classes in-person and online and also does consultations with parents on the phone and in-person. You can reach him at (415) 289-6515 or at todd@transformativeparenting.com