A mother's quandary

The last insight, wisdom tidbit, fact, reveal – whatever we shall call it – that I named for the mother of a teenage client is the first one that some other therapists would, I suspect, have offered. Her son, whom I hadn't seen in three months, had only attended four sessions total. The last one included his mother. The boy and I quietly ganged up on her: Please tell your husband, the stepfather, to stop shaming, ridiculing, criticizing him. Recently, the mother returned, alone, to give me the backstory of her son's problems that included depression, depressive personality (where he preferred feeling miserable to feeling positive) and suicidal thoughts. Three years earlier, he had pushed a sexual behavior at a non-rape level, that may or may not have been consented to by the other person, that may have led to legal involvement but didn't. He was kicked out of school, went to a different school, was assaulted by another "behavioral" student, sent to a third school where his reputation followed him. He got a job but was harassed there, and quit. Many stresses, and they came home to an environment that was shaming since he was a toddler.

He was not motivated to get to school on time, or to do his homework, or to do his chores. We're all familiar with the term "old school." That means: It doesn't matter how you feel or how serious your problems are: You must toil and toe the line. Mother described the punishments levied to motivate him: remove his electronic devices and social media access. I said that may not be great at two levels: Punishment, in general, will make a child feel worse, and these are punishments one might administer to a 13- or 15-year-old, not to a young person about to turn 18.

I cited Thomas Gordon's concept of 'who owns the problem?', which could also be called 'who owns the child?' If a little boy's friend dumps him, it's his problem, not the parent's. Help him get his feelings out, respect and validate his feelings, help him brainstorm through Active Listening, but don't drive over to the other child's house and strategize with the mother about how to resuscitate the friendship. The principle that says 'the parent doesn't own the child' is a very difficult one for many parents to grasp. This is easily seen in another of Dr. Gordon's examples: A teenager is ditching important classes, a potential crisis that would activate the proprietary instincts of most parents. But should the parent force him to go by threat, have him monitored, stand over him as he does his homework, make him think? The child owns himself. See what his grievance, his pain is, which might go back years. Care about him more than the grade.

My client's mother had a solid rebuttal: She would get in trouble – Child Protective Services – if her son didn't go to school. A powerful argument as long as you leave out the "care" factor. Her old school mind also explained the removal of the boy's television from his room.

I recommended Gordon's book, with a "warning" that it may be hard to take, this notion that the child should be respected as much as the parent.

As the session ended and we were about to exit the office, something occurred to me by sheer, stupid luck: Stupid, that I had almost missed it in the fervor of psychoeducation and the mother's polemical intransigence. I said: "What it comes down to, the essence of everything, is that your son needs to feel loved." She paused for a fraction of a second then said: "Yes, he does. I wish I knew how to make him feel loved."