As a child and family therapist, I have met with many teenagers who have shut down. It looks like they have put up 2-foot thick concrete walls around themselves to keep their parents and other concerned adults at a distance. By the time parents contact me, months or even years of damage has already happened in the family and the interactions of shutting down and pushing away have become habits. Sometimes the parent and the child don’t even know or
Recently, there seems to be a pattern among the families that I have been working with as a therapist. The pattern starts by the child acting rude and disrespectful. The parent then gets offended and upset and eventually sends the child to their room. Afterwards, nothing is really talked about or resolved between the parent and the child related to the situation that occurred. After a while of following this pattern, kids stop liking being around their parents and the
Why is it that two set of parents can apply the same consequence but yet get very different results? Is it because the child that learns from the consequence is good-natured while the other child who becomes resentful is just a bad egg? Does it all depend on the temperament of the child or does the way the parents apply the consequences have any influence over their effectiveness? I am reminded of mother whose first reaction when her child did