Seeing Deeper than Behavior

Before we move on, allow me to explain why last week I asked you to reflect on your long term intentions with respect to your parenting. Life with children is incredibly arduous at times. We are often exhausted, stretched thin, and maxed-out. In these moments we can find ourselves becoming reactive and moving to stamp out “bad behavior” with little insight as to how our intervention will impact their long-term development, or even how this behavior came to be in the first place. In these times, we need a better part of ourselves to step forward — a consience of sorts — to remind us of our best intentions for our child’s maturation. This intentionality can be the needed counterweight to reactivity in our minds that help us choose a more productive — and humane — intervention to our child’s acting out.

There are two basic challenges that I see in parenting today. The first is the need to look deeper than our children’s behavior and take into account the context in which that behavior is occurring. Is bursting into tears when you can’t hold mommy’s iPhone a behavior that is right or wrong? Normal or abnormal? Good or bad? It all depends on the nested contexts in which the behavior occurs. It is totally normal for a 14-month old to feel upset when they really want something and can’t have it and sometimes express their full disappointment with tears. In fact, it is normal for a 14-year old and even a 40-year old to also feel upset when they want something and are told that they can’t have it. Hopefully the 40-year old has learned to manage the up-setness over the years and can continue to interact appropriately in a social setting until they can find some quiet-alone time to feel their disappointment. The 14-year old probably has a good chance of not bawling in front of everybody, but may sublimate the disappointment into a more acceptable emotion like anger: “Who cares. She is a bitch anyways and I don’t want a stupid friendship bracelet from her.” The point is that stages of development are an important piece of context to keep in mind when observing any particular outward behavior.

Additionally, what other factors are impacting the child’s state that is underlying the behavior? Is it past the child’s bed time? Are they hungry and dealing with low blood sugar, or other physiologic effects, that make it more difficult to manage emotions and behavior? (Even mature adults are challenged in this arena.) Is this the 400th time they have heard the word “no” in the last hour and are having to deal with intense feelings of frustration over their powerlessness? Are they lacking in a felt sense of connection with the attachment figure who has been pre-occupied with nursing the new baby, and the child’s acting out is not about their right to mash buttons on the iPhone, but rather an expression of loneliness and hurt?

So we need to look deeper then the behavior into the underlying mind and brain of the child before we react to the situation and cause unnecessary problems that we will be forced to deal with later. We look at the context of the situation to help provide insight into what the child may be experiencing: we put ourselves in their shoes. And even more importantly, we pay attention to the physical and emotional cues our children are sending that help us feel directly into their underlying state of consciousness. From this state of emotional resonance and empathy, we can act with compassion and wisdom toward this human being who is just finding their way in this crazy world of intense desires and emotions and rules that could fill an entire library. We help them find a healthy balance between the full experience of emotions and the healthy and ethical expression of those emotions when with others. And this is possible only when we look deeper then behavior.

The other challenge I see with parenting today is that we have lost our intuitive capacity to parent. There are many good reasons for this, and it is certainly not our fault. However, it is up to us to begin to reclaim this natural capacity — which exists within our neural circuitry — and begin clearing out the obstructions to our naturally wise and loving heart. Next week we will look at a few of the reasons we sometimes lose our more sensible and loving instincts when it comes to challenging times with our children.

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