James Lehman, creator of The Total Transformation
Program, examines the effects of acting out behavior on parents
and the family, and reveals how to calm the storm in the home.
Q: A child’s behavior problems
can cause disturbances in a family beyond the relationship
between the parent and the child, can’t they? I’ve had friends
whose marriage suffered when their child started acting out. Is
that common?
James: One of the unseen costs of an acting out kid is all the
different ways that the child’s behavior affects the family.
Unfortunately, the effects on the family aren’t viewed by
society, the courts or the school system as really relevant. So
there’s not a lot of support built in for the family. They’ll
determine that the family is “sick,” and then the family has to
go to therapy. But I’ve met many families who were feeling the
effects of behavior problems, and the family wasn’t sick. The
problem was all the repercussions from the kid’s behavior.
Picture what happens when you drop a
stone into a pond and you see the ripples. Now picture that stone
being dropped in again and again so that the ripples keep
expanding and expanding. A child with behavior problems is like
the stone in the pond. Every time he acts out, it’s like another
stone being dropped into that pond. The ripples get bigger and
more frequent in the family. He can’t solve problems any other way
than acting them out. His main skills are defiance, manipulation
and dishonesty, because he doesn’t know any other way to solve his
problems or to deal with the realities in his life, which are,
admittedly, often very painful. But no matter how painful his
problems are, a child still has to take responsibility and learn
to solve them.
Marital conflicts emanate from child
behavior problems almost always. One parent blames the other. What
happens is that parents tend to look at each other through the
“window” of the child. Instead of looking directly at each other,
they look at each other through the kid’s behavior. When you’re in
pain and uncomfortable and you look at somebody else through that
kind of pain and discomfort, it distorts how they look to you. And
it distorts how you feel about them. So you often find one parent
blaming another or thinking the other parent isn’t doing it the
right way or not doing enough.
When this acting out occurs, it can
start to push parents toward the edge of their relationship,
testing how strong it is and how solid they are. Ideally you would
like to think that it bonds parents together, but it doesn’t
happen that way. The behavior tends to split the parents.
Q: And the more split the parents
become, the more problems develop in the family around that
division. When this is going on, it’s easy to become overwhelmed
by all the chaos in the family. How do you get through that
chaos and get to the root of the problem?
James: What parents need is a process by which they can be unified. I
recommend that parents agree on certain principles and look at
the actions that come from those principles. If our principle
is, Johnny has to take responsibility for his behavior, then
let’s all act that way and not worry about all the other issues
that ripple out from that. Johnny has to take responsibility for
his behavior, so let’s focus on that one thing. Let’s teach him
problem solving skills. If there is a crisis, let’s handle it
responsibly and productively. Responsibly means nobody gets
hurt. And productively means that everybody can learn a lesson
from it.
Once the family starts to deal with
the child’s problem, the problems secondary to his behavior start
to settle down. Whether the secondary problems are the parent’s
communication, the other children’s safety and behavior or the
financial strain that occurs when you have a kid who’s acting out,
those things tend to subside, once you focus on the behavior
problem.
So parents need to be able to
communicate and not look at their relationship through the child.
Rather, begin to look at your child through your relationship. See
yourselves as a team. Parents find that the behavior calms down
when they start working more like a team. First, because they find
the common solution. They find something that works and that’s
helping their child. Second, the family stressors go down. They’re
able to deal with the normal stress of taking kids to soccer,
taking kids to guitar practice or whatever they normally do. And
they’re not dealing with the stressors of crisis, calls from the
school, going down to the police station, or trips to the hospital
or the emergency room.
When I work with parents and talk to
them about being a team, I find they get really in touch with
that. They're eager to find a way to enjoy each other’s company
again. Because they realize their kid is like a loaded gun in
their midst, firing whenever he wants. And they know that nobody
can live peacefully with that. No marriage can work really
strongly when that’s going on, because people are fatigued, angry,
frustrated and afraid. The outcome of changing the child’s
behavior is that parents communicate better. They feel better
about their marriage and they feel better about themselves. I’ve
seen it happen hundreds of times, and it can happen for you.
The Ripple Effect of Defiant Behavior: When Parents Pay the Price reprinted with permission from Empowering Parents. For more information, visit www.empoweringparents.com
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James Lehman, MSW was a renowned child behavioral therapist who worked with struggling teens and children for three decades. He created the Total Transformation Program to help people parent more effectively. James' foremost goal was to help kids and to "empower parents." |
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