Dear Jean:
My 17 yr old daughter is in
some ways holding the family hostage with her emotional outbursts.
These aren't unprovoked but are extreme when they occur and have
occurred from time to time since she was fairly young.
The
outbursts include shrill tantrums, usually aimed at her mother,
often (although not always) provoked by an exchange between her and
me (her father). These can last for an hour or more.
Provocation can be a request to do something--clear the
table, clean her room--but lately revolve around bedtimes and
computer use. The outburst usually is set off when she is no longer
asked but told she must turn off the computer, go to bed, etc. If I
provoke her, she becomes flooded with emotion, screaming and
following her mother around the house demanding that she do
something about the situation. This is the general reaction to being
told she can't do something she wants. She calls her mother passive
and me abusive.
I realize that her behavior fits the
outlines of adolescent behavior: the need for independence and
support and not always on the parents' schedule. And I realize that
my own reaction is not always the best--attempting to get her to do
as she promises [if I play now I won't stay up too late Sunday
before school doing the work I have to have done Monday.]
She often will not own up to small things: borrowing my
wife's clothing when she has been asked not to, taking her younger
sister's things, clothes, makeup, money. She has always had
difficulty accepting responsibility for her behavior and routinely
lies about even ordinary things.
The problems for me are:
--Getting my daughter to take some responsibility for her
actions
--Her temper: she becomes incensed when confronted even
in a quiet way about her behavior. For a time several years ago,
when my daughter was 12-13, she would follow my wife around the
house, screaming accusatively at her about whatever angered her.
We sought counseling when she began to push and shove her
mother and refused to leave her office, our bedroom or wherever my
wife would go to attempt to end the discussion. Sometimes my wife
would have to leave the house to get her to leave her alone. The
physicality of her temper has always worried me--pushing and shoving
things, doors, plates, etc. She has never actually hurt anyone, but
she does seem to me to be out of control during her episodes of
angry outburst.
The counselor specialized in diagnostic work
and found my daughter to be conscious of her behavior, easily
accepting most responsibility, and suggested that we work on the
family dynamic. My daughter refused to go with us after 2 or 3
sessions.
More recently we sought family counseling
when my daughter took some hundreds of dollars from my desk (we
don't leave her the opportunity anymore). My daughter did continue
to see a counselor for 5-6 sessions privately, but after the
counselor took a prolonged vacation, she refused to continue and
wouldn't attend a final session to take stock. She said
that the counseling was just an attempt to "fix" her when
we were the real problem. I felt having someone outside the family
to talk about things was potentially very good for her as an
outlet.
My wife and I continue to attend counseling
sessions for ourselves, although we frequently speak of issues with
the children. There is an ebb and flow to these behaviors, and when
others are more agitated she is more easily upset. I have learned to
be much quieter and unphysical in reaction to the flood of emotion
she experiences. I think one issue for me is not being too forceful
or insistent with her, but I often feel there is no effective
alternative since efforts to talk quietly nearly always cause
shrillness and agitation-tantrum-like.
I think she is
having a very hard time distinguishing between her old needs as a
child and her new needs as a young adult and the consequence is very
disruptive and often abusive. Her extreme, shrill reactions to
disappointment and hurt are very hard on everyone in the family,
especially her 14 yr old sister, who is beginning her own difficult
journey into adolescence.
I must say that my daughter gets
good grades, has great friends, takes more difficult classes in
school and has done some volunteer work. She is attractive and funny
and very smart. She's a great companion at the movies.
But
I'm worried about the anger, emotional flooding, lying and general
reluctance to own her own behavior. We need to survive this period
as a family, and my daughter needs to get past some of these
behaviors. I feel stuck, frustrated and worried. Is there a question
in all of this?
Jean
responds:
I wonder if you're not wanting my
general reactions to your description of your situation with your
daughter, reactions which conceivably could diminish a little, at
least, some of the stuckness, frustration, and worry--and/or send
you in a new direction for possible answers. In any
case, here are some reactions which I hope may prove
helpful:
As I read
your letter, my first reaction was that, indeed, the power struggles
you are getting into with your 17-year-old (and that
her mother gets into with her as well, it sounds like) are indeed
just that: power struggles that are quite typical between
parents and adolescents and which can be avoided by the parents'
withdrawing from them--refusing to engage.
However, as I read
on, your descriptions of the extremity of her responses caused me to
wonder if you aren't dealing here with more than what is typical in
adolescence. Her resorting to physical intimidation with her
mother, for instance, goes beyond what is normally expectable for
this age (preteen and teenage), and the fact that she's been
tantrumming most of her childhood is also of concern.
These speak to me of the desperation she is feeling
inside, a desperation she may have felt for some time.
So in
a way, I think it might be productive to formulate this as a
question: Why is this young woman, who, as we learn at the end
of your letter, has so very much going for her, nonetheless
feeling quite desperate?
My guess is that you may be onto something when
you say you think she's gotten her childhood needs confused with her
needs as a young woman. I would put this slightly differently,
however: maybe she is having an atypical reaction to having to grow
up, to adolescence itself. Remember that there are major brain
changes occurring during this period--the rate of brain
change/growth rivals that of infancy/toddler-hood. And there is a
lot of 'fine tuning' that can go wrong during this.
Suppose that in some way
you appreciated (recognized, were aware of, and even accepted
the necessity of) changes that the environment (human and otherwise)
was demanding of you--and you were doing your best to comply--but
that in some way you couldn't express (or even
formulate to yourself) you felt inadequate to meet these
challenges, these demands for change?
Wouldn't you try to
find the reasons, and, being human (and especially if you're still a
child), would you not find the reason for your felt inadequacy in
other people?--preferably your parents, whom you are used to
thinking of as responsible for everything and whose job it is to
make things right for you? Isn't it thousands of times
preferable to find the reasons for our behavior in other people
if we are convinced on an unconscious level that we are in some
way deficient?
In this line of thinking, your daughter
doesn't take responsibility for her behavior because she can't
afford to. It is absolutely too terrifying to her, if this line
of thinking holds up, to look at what she does/has done that she
knows is wrong. Because she is already convinced that she is
deficient (and this is DESPITE all the evidence to the contrary, in
terms of her getting good grades, having friends, etc.), she cannot
bare to see the 'proof' in owning up to wrong things she's done.
Often people who feel this way are struggling
with a real deficiency--but it's not a character or moral
deficiency, as they imagine--rather, a biological one. That is,
there may be a propensity for an emotional disturbance that is
responsive to stress (especially interpersonal stress).
ON
THE OTHER HAND: It would be crucial, I think, for you and your wife
to change the ways you are responding to her quest for autonomy, in
order to try to eliminate the possibility that a parenting
dynamic is pivotal (rather than just contributory) in the matter. I
will not attempt to offer suggestions in this area, but instead
refer you to the Archived Q&As at this web site on
the topics of autonomy, attitude, chores, limits (you can search on
these words).
Probably there is some combination of
propensity to emotional sensitivity and intensity in your daughter
that interacts with a somewhat too insistent style of
parenting. You want to parent with as few limits as possible, and
even with necessary limits, to formulate and then implement them
from an adult-like position (you have to read the Q&As in the
Archives to get what I mean here).
Teens can experience
their quest for autonomy as life-threatening. It must be taken very
seriously. They are trying to become independent of parents so that
they can lead their own lives, and parents need to foster as much
freedom of choice as can possibly be tolerated, consistent with the
actual physical safety of the child. Then the adolescents learn
from the choices they make. Look and see if you have too many rules
for her, which only foster the power struggles: let go of stuff like
cleaning her room, for instance. Negotiate with her on really
important limits in areas that really count, where she's showing
difficulty functioning safely and/or in a way you can stand, and let
everything else go. You want to avoid occasions of outright telling
her she's got to do something: she uses these as ways of blaming you
(for wanting to control her life, etc.) for her felt
lack of being able to grow towards independence.
It's
possible that what I'm thinking is a felt lack of adequacy in her
has been fostered in her for some time by a parenting style that has
tended to undermine her sense of her own agency. You'll want to take
a look at that.
I suggest you print out this letter and take
it to your current counselor and discuss. I also suggest that you
take the time to search the Archives, as I said above, and read the
Q&As on the topics indicated.
I am so glad that you are
working with someone. Don't stop--even though she has. And
good luck: I don't know a harder job than parenting, and it's
really fraught in adolescence.
Jean.
|
