Frustration…..How To Deal With It

Frustration......How to Deal With It

We decided to dedicate this week’s Mom’s Group for Mom’s of Children With Special Needs to FRUSTRATION. But you know, it applies to every parent and spouse. Who among us has not felt frustrated by our child or a lover or a friend? 

We asked for examples of frustration. There were so many.  I will  focus only on one here. Almost every one of us were frustrated by our kids not brushing their teeth. That was a surprise to me. I thought I was the only one who had a child who refused to brush. In retrospect, I think it is a sensory issue because most of our children have these sensory issues, and brushing hurts in a way, and feels intrusive in another way. One Mom said she wished her child had all her teeth! Due to overcrowding, some permanent teeth had to be removed and she was given a partial dental plate. But sometimes she doesn’t wear it, and the mother would be so frustrated/put off by that. Our children with Special Needs somehow don’t really care how others perceive them, whether it be odd clothes, bad breath, or social faux pas. But it does frustrate us, who keep giving them advice and direction, all the while trying not to be intrusive, even though we are. One mother told us she keeps a toothbrush in the car for her and her children and they brush at red  lights on the way to school making it kind of a game and easing the tension around this important self care task. On and on, the examples became comical to us as we related to each and every one of them. One mother said that she realized with relief that her children were not the only ones who were weird. Our fear that they will be excluded socially or be rejected and isolated drives our “nagging”behavior and intrusiveness.

But what is a mother to do? Well, first of all we need to heed the saying from AAA....H.A.L.T.... for us and our child. Don’t get too Hungry, too Angry, too Lonely or too Tired. These, or even one of these, is a set up for children to meltdown, not listen, act out. And for we mothers, they can rob us of the stamina and patience we need to deal with a dysregulated child. 

We can reach out to a friend or someone who will understand, we can take a short time out for ourselves ( a bathroom trip, or go to our bedroom to breathe and self talk, calming ourselves); ask a spouse or partner to take over for a bit while we pull ourselves together. Probably there are other strategies you have come up with, which I would love to hear about.

But then there is the repair routine created by The Circle of Security team. (The Circle of Security Intervention by Bert Powell, Glen Cooper, Kent Hoffman, and Bob Marvin

The first is when we are upset and our child is upset, we need to calm ourselves and remember that we need to be bigger, stronger, wiser and kind. And remember our child needs us, no matter what.

Secondly when we are calm enough and our child is still upset, we need to take charge so our child is not too out of control. Sometimes it is helpful to change location like taking a walk outside or going to a designated “time-in” spot where we are together until feelings begin to change. 

We help our child bring words to his/her feelings. (“You seem really upset. I wonder if you are angry? You don’t like it when I say no to you. Does that make you feel like I don’t care about you or what you want?”)

Then we can acknowledge our feelings.(“When you throw things at me, I feel scared and worried”).

Stay with your child until s/he is calm enough. Stay in charge and stay sympathetic.

When both of us are calm enough, we can use words to help the child talk about the feelings and needs s/he is struggling with by listening and talking together.

Then we can talk about new ways of dealing with this problem when it comes up in the future. It is helpful for children to have more options of how to deal with difficult feelings. This bodes well for dealing with future issues.

And what the Circle of Security says is that “bottom line it is the relationship (and only the relationship ) that will build my child’s capacity to organize his/her feelings.” Ruptures in relationship are rooted in a need to reconnect. When we remain in charge as someone who is bigger, stronger, wiser and kind, feelings will settle and he relationship can be repaired.

There is no such thing as a relationship that does not have rupture. The key and strength of the relationship depends on the repair, the quality of the repair. So when we feel like we have blown it, we can use this repair routine and reconnect lovingly with our child. 

And one last thing.....some of our children have really annoying habits. Often they are self-soothing or sensory integration issues. Our children have little control over them. Shaming them only makes them feel badly about themselves. We need to soothe ourselves and have compassion for them whenever we can.

Bless you for what you do for your child!

Tell me YOUR stories.

Shame and Judgement

Looking for writing inspiration this morning, I found an article in my local Sunday paper by Darlena Cunha, ‘Well Off, And Then Suddenly Broke”.  She who wrote about being well off in 2008 and then during the financial/housing crash in ‘08 found herself poverty stricken with new born twins. She resorted to getting Medicaid and assistance from the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) to feed her premature twins.  She writes poignantly of the shame and humiliation she endured using her coupons. The stares, the pity, the verbal condemning remarks, have stayed with her for years, even after she and her husband crawled out of the hole of poverty. The line that struck me, was “Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgement.” 

Judgement and shame. How many of us have experienced this devastating dual experience and continue to experience it? People with chronic illness, people of color, victims of sexual assault, parents of children with special needs, children with special needs, the whole LGBTQ community.  The list could go on and on. I hear their stories every day. My heart aches for these people with bruised and battered souls and egos. I get angry, I get sad, I feel a certain kind of hopelessness. And then somehow I am in connection with them and I fall in love with their spirit and their ability to persevere despite their circumstances in the face of such adversity. Because they experience from a therapist, someone who gets it, a flicker of hope, of self love can begin. But what if they had experienced this understanding and empathy as children from their parents?

Two things come to mind. How do we raise our children to have compassion and recognize the universality of being human? And how an act of kindness can make all the difference in the world to someone suffering.

It seems that shaming and punishing somehow became an acceptable way of parenting our children and teaching them right from wrong. Maybe because that was how we were parented. Maybe because the church taught us this. Maybe because schools and teachers taught us this. For sure, shaming and punishment have been used for ages in homes, churches and schools, all places where children are being raised. 

You know what I mean by shaming and punishing, right? Examples: A mother saying to a 3 year old who wet her pants, “Shame on you!”. Statements  like, “What is WRONG with you?”, “You are a disgrace to this family.” “You are naughty.” “You deserve to fail.” “You are lazy.” “You will never amount to anything.” “You are a bad boy.” Even statements like, “Get over it.” are demeaning to children. I worked with a family who came in with their daughter and were upset because she had pushed a girl, hard, in the lunch room. The parents were admonishing her and trying to teach her that that behavior was unacceptable. I asked her why she had done it (pushed hard). She told me that the other girl had followed her in to the bathroom and was peeking under the stall. And she had done that more than once. The parents were of the opinion that my client should get over it and ignore it. I was appalled by the “peeking” girl’s behavior. I responded with concern for how humiliating that was for the child in my office. Did she tell the teacher? No, that would be tattling. I comforted the child and let her know I understood why she was angry and had taken matters in to her own hands. I told her she needed help dealing with that other child and she needed her Mom to go in and talk with the teacher with my child client in hand.  My little client started crying and climbed in to her Mom’s lap pouring out more stories of “abuse” by that child.The Dad later told me he never would have imagined that showing compassion in that situation could have been the “right” thing to do. He felt she needed to toughen up and not take everything so seriously. But in retrospect, he saw how comforted his daughter was and how it empowered her to speak up when someone is doing something hurtful to her. She did not have to endure that humiliation, and more by her parents. By listening and supporting her it helped her feel listened to and not shamed. The end of the story is that Mother and daughter had a helpful talk with the teacher, and it turns out the peeking girl was very troubled and got a referral for therapy herself. I talked with my client the next week about how the other little girl had some troubles of her own (i.e. compassion for her, not retribution) and she needed some help. So by letting us know, the other little girl hopefully would get to talk to someone about what was bothering her. Can you see the circle of shame here? And how we hopefully interrupted it? It does take time, but it gets at what is going on underneath.

Another case involved a sister pushing her brother over on a stool. When I suggested that the girl might be jealous of her brother and  she needed a “time-in” rather than a time out, the parent protested, saying, “But isn’t that rewarding bad behavior?” A “time-in” is when you keep the child close to you for the next little while, as you attend to chores. The girl needed attention from her Mom. Attention seeking is what children do and what they need. To admonish them and send them away to their room alone only makes them feel bad, ashamed, lonely, misunderstood and sometimes more revengeful. You can better believe she will get her brother back at a later time for getting her in trouble,  and she will be mad at her parents for the “punishment”. To talk with her about what happened, and her feelings of jealousy toward her little brother will help her move through those feelings. 

Shame and punishment beget shame and punishment to others and to oneself. The hardest aspect of this in therapy with adults is to curb the tide of self blame, self shame, and self flagellation. We internalize what was done to us and we do that to others (including our children), as well as to ourselves. In the story of the mother of twins on food assistance, shame was rampant. To end this cycle within ourselves, we need to learn to forgive ourselves for whatever we did or did not do and understand the context, which will surly help make sense of our actions. The mother was doing the best she could to feed her babies under the circumstances. The issue of forgiveness is huge....better leave it for a later blog.

One last thought. Don’t underestimate the power of kindness. If you see a mother struggling with her child in public, or you see someone with food stamps in line ahead of you, or you see a beggar at the store, a warm smile and a nod of understanding can make such a difference compared to a sneer, or a sound of exasperation, or eye rolling, or a shaming comment. And know that your children are watching you. They learn by our actions as well as our words.

Know that I know you are doing your best. Remember that you can change your whole life by simply changing your mind and attitude. Be well. And please tell me your own stories!

A Mother's Aching Heart

What Do You Do When Your Heart Is Aching and Breaking For Your Child?

In some ways I am so lucky and blessed to have my daughter be so successful. She is smart and articulate. She is wickedly funny. She is careful with her (my) money. She is responsible and honest. I love her politics!  And she is in college pursuing her passion. What could be the problem?

She is lonely. She has a hard time initiating with friends and waits to be called or texted. When no one does, she feels no one likes her and that she is all alone in the world. I don’t know what to say, then. If I tell her how awesome she is she responds with, “You are my mother. You are supposed to feel that way”. It doesn’t help her feel better at all. If I give her advice (oh God.....dreaded mother advice) like maybe you could invite someone to do something with you. She says she doesn’t know what to do and if she can’t even get a response to texting “Hey, what’s up?”, she doesn’t think anyone will respond to an invitation. She is isolated and doesn’t leave her apartment for days. 

Argh! My heart breaks for her. And she doesn’t want to come visit me or have me visit her. Without the structure of school, she is at loose ends. So I try to listen empathically. And then she reassures me that she is fine and will be okay. She knows my heart is aching for her.

I’m imagining that there are many mothers of kids with Special Needs whose hearts break and ache for their children every day. When they come home from school having been bullied, or mocked, or left out, or the last to be chosen on a team, what can we do? For them; for ourselves?  Our kids have to deal with a cruel world that misunderstands them and doesn’t support them in the ways that are needed.

 And  parents who have children with a chronic illness, or a mental illness.....how do they maintain an attitude of bigger, stronger, wiser and kind? How do we listen reflectively? How do we not  pathologize them or infantilize them. And how do we keep ourselves and them from being in a state of denial refusing to address the reality of the situation. How do we not give up on them? How do we face hopelessness? 

How do we explain them to judgmental, “well meaning” friends, teachers, acquaintances and relatives who infer or directly accuse us of poor parenting? How do we deal with our beloved child’s isolation; as well as our own?

I would love to hear from you readers about how you have dealt with this in your own situation. For me, I have run the gamut. At first, I worried silently. I loved her with all my heart, and yet I knew something was wrong. Her Dad thought I was being critical of her and seeing problems when they were not there. I think this is typical in many families where one parent senses something is off and the other defends the child, causing a rift between the  parents. This can go on for years and is so painful to both parents who have different views on what is happening and very different styles of dealing with their children.

After worrying silently, I went to professionals for assessments and evaluations trying to gain more understanding. This is an extremely costly endeavor and invokes such anxiety in parents and children. The parents are scared to death to find out something frightening and the child, no matter how young, is wondering what is wrong with me? Why am I going to all these doctors?

As a child therapist, I do my best to help families with this phase. I am able to use non -judgmental language, and accurate descriptions to help everyone understand what is going on. I must say that I have had mostly great experiences with this, probably because I have been there and know how to talk to the parents and kids with love and compassion about differences.

My next phase was trying to change the world for my daughter. I was in the school helping the school counselor devise empathy training to help the other kids understand her differences. The counselor told me she had done this in my daughter’s 6th grade classroom, and described to her classmates how kids with asperger’s syndrome have no sixth sense (social sense). And that can make them seem awkward or “strange”. But it is not their fault; just like it is not a blind person’s fault if they can’t see. And you wouldn’t make fun of a blind person or tell a blind person to cross the street without assistance, would you? In the same way, the child with a social difficulty needs help and understanding; not derisiveness or tricks being played on them. My daughter apparently raised her hand and said, “That’s me. That’s what I have.” (So asperger’s -like to do that). And several classmates apologized to her right then and there. She  stood up and said, “I will accept your apologies. But you shouldn’t make fun of anyone for any reason.” My heart swelled with pride, but it was also aching for her. She was so vulnerable.

And on it goes. I advocated for her. I tried to raise consciousness about kids with Special Needs. I fought the school system to get her accomodations. I wrote about anti-bullying in the newspaper. But I often cried myself to sleep and worried. I believed in her and knew she would be an outstanding human being. But when your child suffers, you suffer.

As I’ve said before, having other mothers of children with Special Needs to talk to has been invaluable. Finding self compassion has been helpful. And at some moments, I find this awesome connection with her. That makes my heart sing.

Please share your stories with me. It takes us reaching out to each other and saying, “I feel you. I feel your pain”  to bear an aching heart. Bless you for all you bear for yourselves and your children. We need each other and they need us.