Children who are securely attached are much more likely to show healthy emotional development than are children who lack attachment security. Secure children are likely to have superior skills in the identification of emotional states within themselves and others, as well as in emotional regulation and communication. Children who experience habitual safety become very curious about and immersed in their world, and they experience it as fully as possible. Such active participation is certain to elicit a great depth and range of emotional responses to all sorts of events. The world of the child is so lacking if it does not ring with affective tones of varying rhythms and intensities.
Babies respond affectively, often in a sudden and intense manner, to many stimuli that are both internal (e.g., stomach pain) and external (e.g., loud noises or sudden movements). Similar intense affective responses occur during intersubjective experiences with their parents. They often appear to be very excited or deeply interested in these reciprocal interactions. When this affective response is intense, babies are not—on their own—able to consistently regulate the affective state so that it remains in a moderate range. Moderate affective experience enables the baby to maintain his interest and attention on an event while he explores it and discovers its qualities and nature. The baby needs assistance from his parent to avoid moving into either a lack of affect or extreme, dysregulating affect.
When a parent is engaged with her infant intersubjectively, she is attuned with his affective state. He is able to stay with his mother’s affective state and remain regulated—if she is—and engaged and attentive to the event associated with his affective expression. If he were alone, most likely he would not be able to regulate the affect that was emerging and he would become dysregulated. His behavior would become disorganized and he would lose his intentional focus on the experience. With his parent’s active, matched, affective presence, he is much more likely to integrate his affective response to the situation into his overall experience rather than being overwhelmed by affect.
Sometimes babies are able to regulate their affective state by themselves. They do this by breaking the interaction that is causing the increased affect. Often, when babies are engaged with their parents intersubjectively, they take a break and look away. The attuned parent also takes a break and waits quietly until her baby is able to reengage. Sometimes the baby is not able to take a break from what is raising his affective state. Examples include bodily distress, noises or other external stimulation that he cannot turn off, or acute stimuli that frighten him. Even when a child might turn off the external stimulation, as by looking away from his parent, his emotional development might be more enhanced when his parent is able to expand his ability to stay in the interaction longer by coregulating the affect. This will encourage the development of his attention span and his ability to engage in intersubjective experiences.
Developing Emotional Competence
The following suggestions are good to bear in mind when parents wish to increase their child’s emotional competence.
Remember Attunement
Affect attunement lies at the core of intersubjectivity, communication, and empathy and can also be seen as central in perceived safety, acceptance, and in how the parent’s attachment history has an impact on her child. Affect attunement is crucial in the development of emotional competence. Without attunement, the infant and young child would have extreme difficulty learning to regulate their emotions and overall affective state. With regulation, the child is able to begin to identify emotions and express them in ways that are both understood and do not create relationship problems.
Emotional competence develops through countless interactions that involve the coregulation of affective states. When her child is animated, the parent is also is animated, and her child is less likely to become agitated. When her child is agitated, she remains animated, and her child becomes animated again. When her child is excited, she is interested and excited herself and her child does not become frantic. If her child is frantic, her energy is focused and confident and her child becomes excited again. When her child is calm, she is calm as well, and her child does not become listless. If her child is listless, she remains calm and engaged and her child becomes engaged again.
As the child’s emotions become evident, the parent is able to remain attuned with each affective expression of his emotion, just as she was with his general affective state. When he is angry she is able to match the rhythm and intensity of the affective expression of anger, without becoming angry at her child for being angry. Her child is able to regulate his own background affect as well as the specific emotion of anger. When he is frightened, she is able to match his animated affective state without being frightened herself, and his fear then does not cause him to become dysregulated.
Michael: I don’t like you! [with loud anger]
Mom: I hear you, Michael. You sound very angry with me right now! [matching the intensity and rhythm of his vocal expression]
Michael: I am mad at you!
Mom: You certainly are!
Michael: You won’t let me play outside now!
Mom: No, I won’t, Michael, and you really want to go outside!
Michael: I don’t like you. [with a few tears and sadness]
Mom: And it’s so hard now. Here, honey, let me give you a hug.
During this exchange, Michael’s mother neither experienced nor expressed the emotion of anger toward her son, while she still matched the affective tone of his expression of anger. In so doing, his affective state—and his anger—became regulated and his anger decreased fairly quickly. If she had become angry, his anger would have escalated or he would have experienced the emotion of fear. If she had been quiet and rational, his anger would also probably increase, having to manage it on his own and not being able to regulate it.
The child develops an awareness of his specific emotional states, accepts them, and gradually comes to identify them with the words given to them by his parents. Securely attached children most often have parents who are able to accept all of their child’s emotional experiences. These parents are as comfortable with their child’s anger, fear, and sadness as they are with his excitement and joy.
Our emotions reflect the meaning of our ongoing involvement with all aspects of the world, both internal and external. We may experience delight when we see an old friend, excitement when we are successful at sports, worry when we face a challenge, sadness when our friend leaves on a trip. Other emotional experiences may be less obvious in their source but just as rich. We may experience joy when we see the mist rise from a lake, anger when we read about an event on the other side of the world, tranquility when we sit at home on a quiet afternoon with little to do, and satisfaction when we check off the last chore on our weekly list.
When a child is habitually dysregulated affectively, it is very likely that he will not be able to regulate any of his specific emotions. Not only will anger and fear become dysregulated easily, so too will excitement and joy. Other children manifest a generally regulated affective tone but become dysregulated around specific emotional experiences. In their development they may have routinely experienced attuned responses from their parents, but did not experience an attuned response to a specific emotion. For example, some parents may be very sensitive and accepting when their child is happy or sad, but become agitated and rejecting when their child is angry. In general, when a child’s background affective state tends to be dysregulated often, his emotional development is more impaired than if his affect regulation is habitually stable, while often becoming dysregulated when experiencing a specific emotion or two.
Say What You Really Mean
The emotional component of an interaction tends to be carried by nonverbal features, while the verbal features carry more of the information being conveyed. When the words deny the emotions being expressed nonverbally, the child is often left unable to identify the emotional states of others as well as his own. Accepting our own emotions and being unafraid to communicate them to others facilitates our ease with them and their integration into the self. Emotions tend to become poorly managed when they are not integrated with thought and intentions and are not communicated coherently.
A parent may not want to communicate her emotion and so she speaks very rationally. Yet her voice and face give her away and her child knows that she is angry, which then activates his own reaction, possibly made worse by his anxiety over what she might be concealing about her thoughts and emotions. However, I am not suggesting that the answer lies in speaking honestly with him about what you feel. Such honesty, when the parent’s thoughts and emotions are intense, often leads to great emotional pain, hurts the relationship, and activates shame and anger in the child. A better response to such tough honesty or to using a rational tone to hide an intense inner life is for the parent to call for a time-out until she is calmer and can reflect on the big picture better before giving expression to her inner life. At that point, she can say what she thinks and feels without hurting or confusing her child. Better yet, if she needs to give herself such a time-out frequently, she would be wise to understand more fully what in her child’s behavior is activating such an intense response in herself, as well as, what is making it hard to separate his behavior from his person.
Be Open to Your Child’s Emotional Expressions
Securely attached children tend to have parents who are available, sensitive, and responsive. Parental sensitivity involves an awareness of the child’s emotions and general affective state, and awareness is a guide to the best response to the child’s behavior. When a parent recognizes and accepts her child’s emotion—whatever it is—she is able to facilitate his emotional development, communication of his inner life, and his inner life itself.
Remember: An Attachment Relationship Is an Emotional Relationship
For an attachment relationship to provide safety for the child, it will necessarily be a relationship that is felt deeply, containing a strong affective and emotional component. An attachment relationship is associated with the emotions of love and anger, joy and sadness, safety and fear, excitement and grief, shame and guilt, sharing and jealousy. Attachment relationships are a fertile ground for the development of emotional competencies of significant depth and breadth. When the various emotions associated with the attachment are allowed the full range of expression, they become better defined and integrated, and they enable the attachment relationship itself to develop more deeply, fully, and with greater safety. If a child needs to inhibit all emotional expressions or the expression of specific emotions, the relationship will become more narrowly defined, less spontaneous, and more ambiguous. This would create the risk that the attachment itself would become less important to the child or that it will be less a source of safety for him.
In profound ways, emotions exist between two people in an intimate relationship as much as they exist within one person. When the emotional expressions associated with the relationship are welcomed and supported, the relationship itself becomes better defined, more spontaneous, and more satisfying. Along with greater openness to each other there is a greater sense of feeling understood by the other, as well as an enhanced sense of safety and a general openness to the world.
Developing Competence With Specific Emotions
If parents have had difficulty integrating a specific emotion into their own sense of what is acceptable to the self, their child may also have greater difficulty with that emotion. The greatest way for a parent to facilitate her child’s emotional development is for her emotional abilities to have developed well. When that is the case, when a child shares his positive emotions with his accepting and engaged parent, they expand and become richer. When the same child shares his negative emotions, they become smaller and tend to dissipate. I wish to select three particular emotions now and describe their place in a child’s development and in the parent-child relationship in more detail. Fear is not discussed now as it was explored in Chapter 2.
Anger
Anger often presents particular difficulties in one’s overall emotional development as well as in the parent-child relationship. Many parents discourage, or even discipline, their child’s anger when it is directed toward them (thinking it to be disrespectful) or toward a sibling (thinking that it was not indicated or might lead to a fight). When anger is indicated or appropriate will be considered in the next section on anger regulation and expression. Anger does not fit well with the “in-door voice” that parents want their child to maintain. Parents also often confuse the emotion of anger with angry behavior and are not able to help their child differentiate the two. Also, parents often isolate children when they are angry, for fear of reinforcing it, something that they would never consider doing for the emotions of sadness or fear. With such an attitude toward the child’s anger, it is not surprising that the child often feels shame when he is angry, does not regulate it well, and has trouble remaining reflective while also being angry. Finally, he is not likely to learn how to express it appropriately and then repair any relationship problems that his expression of anger generates.
It is little wonder that such a child is often at risk to use anger inappropriately as a bully (too much anger; directs his anger inappropriately and at the wrong person) or as one who is bullied (too little anger; he becomes dysregulated by the anger of the other). It is also little wonder, when such children become parents and have children of their own, that they are at risk to use anger inappropriately when they discipline their own child.
Anger regulation and expression can be facilitated in the following ways.
Model Anger Regulation
The parent’s own anger needs to be accepted and understood so that it can be regulated and expressed appropriately. She might try to revisit angry experiences from her own history in order to attempt to normalize the experience and differentiate her emotion of anger from any angry behaviors. If her child easily triggers her angry outbursts, she might explore the source of the trigger and reduce her child’s ability to control this aspect of her emotional life. Parents are often correct when they say, “He acts that way just to make me angry!” When that is the case, the best way to reduce his acting that way is for her to control her anger. If she is emotionally strong and regulated, whatever the motives for wanting her to become angry (i.e., causing her to be upset since he thinks that she caused him to be upset; testing her readiness to follow through with a limit; testing to see if she is able to keep him safe), they will be less if she does not react with anger.
Express Anger Briefly
If a parent is angry at her child’s behavior, she might express her anger quickly, focusing on the behavior, the reasons for her anger, and alternative behaviors for her child. She then might repair the relationship as soon as possible. This will require that she be in control of her anger so that it is brief and not directed at the child himself. Keeping the anger brief, to the point, and repairing the relationship quickly afterward will ensure that her child experiences her anger as being directed toward his behavior, not his person. It also will facilitate his ability to experience guilt over his behavior (when guilt is called for), rather than shame over his person (see Guilt and Shame below).
Match the Affect
By matching the nonverbal expression of affect when her child is angry—while staying regulated herself—she enables her child to remain regulated. (For example, “I don”t think you’re fair!” causes her to reply, “I hear you, son. I know you think that!”) This makes it less likely that the anger will escalate. She is communicating that she is able to accept, be curious about, and possibly experience empathy for the child’s experience, while still being able to limit behavior that is associated with the emotion. After her child experiences her understanding of the intensity of his anger, he will be more likely to reduce his angry expressions when she begins to speak more quietly about his distress.
Accept the Child’s Anger
The child will benefit when he can honestly express his anger toward his parent without it being evaluated. Often when children are not able to express their anger, they are likely to begin to limit the expression of other aspects of their inner lives. This often intensifies the common tendency of adolescents to conceal their thoughts, emotions, intentions, and beliefs from their parents. If a child cannot communicate his experience of a problem through showing that he is angry, he is likely to find behavioral ways to show his discontent. Parents certainly need to limit what words are acceptable for expressing anger, but hopefully some words will remain. The same needs to be said for nonverbal communications of anger through facial expressions and voice tone. It is wise to rethink the belief that when a child shows anger that he is being disrespectful. When children are given the right to express their anger directly to their parents, those children are likely to have a closer relationship with them, to accept their authority more easily and to less often show the anger through problem behaviors.
Accept Differences
While mutual understanding and agreement is certainly an important goal, often such an agreement does not occur. The child may continue to insist on his desire, not feel understood, and have difficulty accepting the parent’s decision. In those situations, it is wise for the parent to completely accept her child’s anger, though she might limit the manner in which it is expressed. Trying to reason her child out of his anger often only makes the situation worse. His anger does not represent a failure of the parent’s discipline. It is often simply a natural expression of the frustration associated with the discipline. If the anger elicits anger in the parent, or doubt, or shame, the parent will try to rescue the child from his anger or suppress the anger. Emotional development is enhanced best if the parent simply matches the affective expression and shows understanding and acceptance, while still being clear and firm regarding the discipline.
Guilt and Shame
Shame and guilt are emotions that are given many meanings by professionals and parents, and so it is important that I clarify how they are used in this book. Although shame is often used interchangeably with guilt, I differentiate shame from guilt, following the theory and research presented by Tangney and Dearing (2002).
Shame precedes guilt in childhood development. It is directed toward the self, whereas guilt is directed toward behavior. With shame, the individual experiences the self as being bad, worthless, unlovable, or deficient in significant ways. With guilt, the individual experiences himself as having done something wrong—often causing pain or distress to another person—or failing to do something that he wanted to do. Given that shame is about the self, the person feels that there is little that he can do to fix it since he does not feel able to change the core of who he is. As a result, he is likely to deny what he did (e.g., lie), minimize it, make excuses for it, or blame someone else for it. When those efforts fail, he is likely to become enraged at the person who is making him focus on his shameful behavior. With guilt, the person is able to fix it since it is behavior that can change. If there were negative results that cannot be fixed, the person is often willing to accept or even seek a consequence for the purpose of restitution and relationship repair. With guilt, the person is focusing on the other and the effects of his behavior on the other. With shame, the person is focusing on the self and how to minimize the negative effects of his behavior on himself.
Individuals who are rated high on measures of shame are rated as low on measures of empathy for others, whereas individuals who experience guilt readily when they do something wrong are high on measures of empathy. Guilt, as defined here, is not associated with any measure of psychological problems, whereas shame is associated with many such measures. Excessive shame prevents the development of guilt, and when experienced in the present, it prevents a person from accepting responsibility for his actions. Regulating shame so that it remains limited enables guilt to develop.
Using this definition, when we speak about “too much guilt,” we are actually referring to shame. When a person does something wrong to another, his guilt helps him to be aware of his effect upon the other and to motivate him to repair the relationship and to try not to do that behavior again. Then the guilt dissipates. Guilt signals that one’s behavior has caused a problem to another that needs to be corrected. Its mission accomplished, it leaves. Shame, however, indicating a deficiency in the self that cannot be fixed, tends to stay, simmer, and express itself in many unhealthy ways (lies, blaming others, excuses, rage). Therefore, it is shame, not guilt, that I focus upon for the purpose of regulation. Shame regulation can be facilitated in the following ways.
Express Empathy
When a child expresses shame (e.g., I’m stupid, bad, selfish) it is not helpful to argue with him and say that he is not. Within the shame state, most children (and adults too) do not believe the other person. In fact, during states of shame, most children will attempt to hide from their parents in order not to be seen (as bad). The child is convinced that the other person either does not know him well, is lying, or must say that because of his place in his life (parent). When a child is expressing shame, experiencing and expressing empathy for him is often a much more helpful response. For example:
Such comments do not give the child anything to argue about and they help him to begin to feel understood. Such comments might lead to questions (curiosity) about when he started to experience himself as being bad, and if there are times when he does something wrong and does not experience it as a sign that he is bad. Later, when the child feels understood somewhat, he may ask—or the parent might tentatively comment—about her experience of him and whether it differs from his.
If the child is then receptive to hearing her experience of him, he may gradually begin to rethink his shame-based experience of himself.
Give the Child Time
When a child has done something wrong, he may react with anger and shame initially but with some time to calm down, he may be more able to address and accept responsibility for what he has done. He may react with shame when he feels trapped in a corner and anticipates intense rejection or criticism from his parent. When he feels safer, is calmer, and trusts his parent’s response to what he has done, he may be able to address it and accept responsibility for it. He may actually feel safe enough to experience guilt, rather than shame. Insisting that a child defend himself, explain himself, or apologize immediately after he has done something wrong may make him more likely to react with shame, make the situation worse, and learn less from any discipline that is being tried.
Focus on Behavior
Since shame refers to the self and guilt refers to behavior, points that were made earlier about separating the self from behavior when disciplining the child are also helpful in facilitating guilt rather than shame. This involves not evaluating the child’s motives for his behavior. It involves not assuming that we know his motives, because such assumptions almost always involve negative motives that will only elicit a defensive and probably shame-based reaction. The behavior needs to be addressed alone. Later, with curiosity and empathy, the inner life of the child that was connected with the behavior is able to be explored.
Repair the Relationship
Toddlers experience shame frequently when corrected by their parents for their behaviors, regardless of how sensitively the parents limit them. Such young children do not yet have the reflective capacity to regularly differentiate self from behavior, be aware of their parents’ intentions, and perceive the effects of their behaviors on others. In such cases, to reduce and regulate shame, parents intuitively and wisely immediately repair the relationship with their toddler. They reattune with his affective state, provide him with comfort and support, and possibly redirect him into a modified or new activity. Such toddlers, safe in their relationship with their parents, often readily seek and receive comfort from the very person who caused their distress in the first place by saying no. With further development and with shame regulated, guilt becomes the primary socialization emotion to guide their behaviors.
Excitement
Excitement is an intense positive emotion that may be difficult to regulate and transition out of. Since it is a positive emotion, the fact that it may present problems for a child is often overlooked. The assumption is that the child will enjoy this emotion and the activity associated with it. “Too much of a good thing” is a phrase that can easily apply to excitement. Many vacations, special events, and surprises begin with laughter and reciprocal enjoyment and end with conflict and angry, hurt feelings. Parents initially feel proud that they are facilitating their child’s enjoyment and end feeling confused and resentful that their child is never satisfied or doesn’t appreciate what they have done for him.
Excitement regulation is as important as the regulation of anger or shame.
Parents will assist their child in regulating excitement when they participate in the activity with the child or at least be intersubjectively present in his experience. If a parent affectively matches the child’s state of excitement, the child is more likely to remain regulated while in that state. If the parent is animated along with the child’s animation, the child is less likely to become agitated and dysregulated. Joining the child affectively with voice tone, facial expressions, gestures, and movements is likely to help the child to experience the excitement along with the parent and enable him to borrow his parent’s affect regulation abilities. If he is alone in excitement, he is more likely to find it escalating and be unable to regulate it. Then, as the activity winds down and the parent remains regulated as she transitions into a less stimulating activity, the child is much more likely to remain regulated as well. Even if the parent did not participate in the original activity, if she is affectively engaged with him—matching his animation—during the transition time into the quieter activity, he is more likely to make the transition successfully.
Parents need to recall and reflect upon their child’s history to know how much excitement the child can regulate successfully. Parents might consider the nature of the activity, who else is involved, the length of the activity, the degree of stress or stimulation in recent activities, how tired the child is, and what is happening next in deciding how to organize the activity to regulate excitement.
If a child has habitual difficulty coping with excitement, the parent might review how much excitement the child is being exposed to. He may be habitually overstimulated. She might also discuss with the child the pattern of difficulty and explore possible coping skills. These might include accepting the need for his parent’s guidance, direction, and limits during the period of excitement as well as engaging in his own self-regulation or self-soothing skills.
Obstacles to Emotional Competence
The following suggestions address two obstacles to the development of emotional competence.
Evaluating Emotions as Right or Wrong
Emotions are best understood as aspects of oneself, similar to thoughts, intentions, wishes, perceptions, and interests. As they are accepted, they can be understood, and their ability to guide our intentions and interests and to increase our insight into ourselves is increased. If a child is ashamed or afraid of his emotions, he will not understand their central place in his life. Rather he will focus on making them go away, or trying to change or hide them. Often, because of his resistance to their presence in his inner life, a particular emotion will only increase until he eventually becomes aware of what it represents in his life.
Emotions can be a valuable guide to
When we maintain an open acceptance of our emotions, seeing them as guides to understanding our inner lives rather than as something that is right or wrong, they are much easier to develop, identify, regulate, and express appropriately.
Emotions Function Best When Integrated With Thoughts
Emotional catharsis, which refers to the expression of an emotion simply for the sake of the expression itself, is of little, if any, value. As was just indicated, emotions are an excellent guide to aspects of our inner life. At the same time, our thoughts are also an excellent guide. Experienced and expressed together, thoughts and emotions are excellent means of communicating one’s inner life. When either is expressed alone, the communication is limited and much remains ambiguous about the experience of the person, child or adult.
Children are often encouraged with the phrase “Use your words.” This is valuable advice when the words represent the child’s ability to reflect on his experience and connect it to specific words that enable his parent to better understand what it is. When a child is experiencing distress and can use words that communicate the nature of the distress, he will be able to elicit a helpful response much more successfully than if he had only screamed or cried.
At the same time, when a child “uses his words” but is told to do so in a flat tone, without any affective expression in his verbal communication, the parent will also be handicapped in her effort to understand the specific qualities of his distress. The affective tone of the verbal vocal expression goes a long way to help the parent understand the intensity, immediacy, and even the course of the distress. Such acts of using words tend to conceal more of the inner life than they reveal.
Sometimes parents regard the affective tone as a sign of disrespect and will command, “Don’t you talk to me that way!” Regretfully, in placing limits on the expression of specific emotions or even his background affective state, the child is often less able to communicate the specific nature of his distress. He feels less understood by his parent, and, in fact, he is less understood. It might be wiser to limit the particular words that the child is using to convey his intense emotional state rather than trying to limit the nonverbal expression of the emotion itself. To give a child permission to tell a parent when he is angry, without giving him permission to express his anger with congruence between the verbal comment and nonverbal expression is likely to only generate miscommunication, deception, and avoidance of both forms of communication.
Attachment-Focused Dialogue
Sue, age 16, had asked her father if she could get her driver’s license. When he said no, because she had not attained various goals that they had agreed she would attain prior to getting the license, she became very angry. In her anger, she called her father selfish, which caused him to dysregulate briefly and try to emotionally hurt her as she had just hurt him. There was an immediate risk that their anger would escalate and they would become objects of anger to each other. If that occurred, the intersubjective nature of their discussion would have ended and true communication would have stopped.
Sue: But everyone else is getting their license!
Dad: That’s not my decision.
Sue: But maybe it should teach you something! You could be wrong, you know!
Dad: I’m doing my best!
Sue: Well, it’s not good enough! You’re just so selfish!
Dad: Now that’s enough! It’s fine to be mad at me but not fine to call me names.
Sue: But you are! You never think of anybody but youself!
Dad: That’s rich! Look who’s calling me selfish!
Sue: So you think I’m selfish? Thanks, Dad! Thanks a lot! That’s just what I mean! You are selfish!
Dad: And who used that word first?
Sue: So what do you want me to say, “I did”? Ok, Dad, I Did! Are you happy now?
Dad: No! I’m not happy!…This is not getting anywhere. Please stop for a minute! Stop! We both have to stop!
Sue: Yeah, that’s right! You win! Discussion is over!
Dad: No! [takes a deep breath, troubled look on his face as he stares at his daughter] I haven’t won, Sue. I’ve lost. I’ve hurt you by suggesting that you are selfish. I haven’t been the father that you need me to be. I’m sorry. You hurt me and I hurt you back. That’s not the way for a father to treat his daughter.
Sue: How have I hurt you?
Dad: You’re right, Sue! Let me say it better. I was hurt when you said that I was selfish. You were being honest with how you experience me right now. And I took it that you were hurting me, rather than just telling me your experience of me. So I tried to hurt you back. And I think I did. And for that I’m sorry.
Sue: Why’d you say it if you don’t believe it?
Dad: I think because I try so hard to be a good dad. When you said that I’m selfish, I felt like I had failed to be a good dad. I failed you. And that hurt a lot. So I got angry with you for saying it and the way I expressed my anger was to try to hurt you back.
Sue: Thanks a lot!
Dad: And that’s why I’m sorry, Sue. I’m sorry for trying to hurt you. And hurting you. I’m sorry that I forgot for a minute that I’m your dad…and that you’re hurting now because I won’t let you get your driver’s license…and that you’re trying to show me how important it is to you…and you’re hoping that I’ll change my mind.
Sue: It is important, Dad! It really is! Will you change your mind?
Dad: No, I won’t, honey. I won’t. But can we stay with what just happened for awhile longer?
Sue: What more do you want to say?
Dad: I want to know how you’re doing now, after I suggested that I think you’re selfish.
Sue: Are you sure you don’t mean it?
Dad: No, I don’t mean it. I know how much you do for your friends. And your little brother, and for the whole family. You give so much of yourself to others. No, I don’t think that you’re selfish.
Sue: Okay.
Dad: I think that you are pushing your beliefs at me strongly right now. I think that you’re angry with me right now, and that your anger is part of why you think that I’m selfish right now. But I don’t think that you’re selfish.
Sue: Okay, Dad. I’m okay about it now.
Dad: Then help me understand about your calling me selfish. Are you saying that you think that my decision about the license has to do with my putting myself first and not considering you?
Sue: Well, it seems that way to me, Dad. It seems like you don’t care how important this is to me and how much it hurts me that you won’t let me get my license.
Dad: Okay, I think I understand more now. It seems to you that I’m selfish because it does not feel like I care that you’re really disappointed now…that you want the license so badly. And yet I still won’t let you get it.
Sue: Yeah, you think I’ll just forget about it and be my happy self in 5 minutes. Or you want to think that so you don’t have to notice how much this bothers me.
Dad: So it really feels like I’m letting you down. That you’re not that important to me.
Sue: I know that I am, Dad. But it seems like you don’t really listen to me when I tell you something is really important to me.
Dad: And I won’t really listen because?
Sue: I don’t know. You don’t care? You’re selfish? You don’t notice me?
Dad: So no matter what you come up with, it hurts you because it says something about me to you, or about us, that we’re not as close as you thought we were.
Sue: I guess not.
Dad: I’m sorry if that’s how you make sense of this. That would make your not getting the license only a part of why this is so hard for you. You’re also not getting confidence in our relationship…nor in who I am.
Sue: It’s not that bad, Dad.
Dad: No?
Sue: No. It’s just that I really want that license…and you said no. And I was mad at you, so I hurt you because it seemed that you were hurting me.
Dad: Do you think that was it? I hurt you by saying no, so you hurt me by calling me selfish, so I then hurt you by calling you selfish.
Sue: Yeah, I guess, and I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I called you selfish. You’re really not. You are a good dad.
Dad: What changed your mind?
Sue: I didn’t change my mind. I always think that you’re a good dad. I just was mad.
Dad: Thanks, honey, for telling me that.
Sue: Anytime, Dad. Can I get my license now?
Dad: If I said yes, I don’t think that I’d be acting like a good dad.
Sue: Yes, you would! [laughs] Okay, okay, I’ll get working on my grades.