CHAPTER 7
Mecury's Child as King The reversal of Roles
Sadly one of the main reasons that parents with seriously 'badly' behaved children do not use sanctions is so common, so catastrophic, that it becomes symbolic of the transfer of the leadership role and power to the child.
Imagine an anthropologist looking down on a new community and trying to work out the pecking order, which individuals are the leaders, who is subservient to whom. Imagine that without knowing it, and with no information about which are parents and which children, they were in fact looking at the typical family with a seriously 'badly' behaved child. What would they see? It would be clear to them that a battle was going on and a natural conclusion would be that it was for leadership. If they think a winner is immerging they are not likely to think this is the parent simply because it is not the parent who is successfully stating categoricals and supporting these categoricals with sanctions, but this is precisely what the child is doing. They would see children threatening and using sanctions very effectively, holding out until they get their own way whilst the inevitable pattern for parents is that they will bend to the will of the child or fail to sanction, even when they have said that they will.
The main reason for serious 'bad' behaviour
Parents are not categorical because they are not prepared to support their statements with a sanction. Why? Often this because they respond from habit and have not invested a fraction of the energy intelligence and determination that their child uses to avoid them. The process should be inevitable and simple; once a warning has been given and the child still does not comply then they have effectively chosen to be sanctioned and must, therefore, be sanctioned. Sanctions do not have to be big - just unavoidable. Unfortunately parents allow their children to persuade them not to deploy the sanction, or when the child threatens or displays extreme or violent reactions they withdraw them. Parents will never make a more fatal decision than this. Allowing the extreme reactions of their children to control their behaviour is a complete reversal of roles and almost always a determining causal factor with serious 'bad' behaviour. One of the main themes of this book is the need for consequences. Nothing establishes the role and the authority of parents as the use of sanctions to train their children to leave behind harmful behaviours. Conversely nothing epitomises the usurping of the parents role, the reversal of roles, more than when parents allow their children to take over their right to punish. This happens every time a parent modifies their own basic parenting behaviour to avoid the punishments imposed by their children. No other response could symbolise more completely the child being allowed to become the parent.
Avoiding confrontation and Ignoring 'bad' behaviour
There could not be a more basic mistake for a parent to make, however, parents do not always make this decision independently. More perhaps than in any previous age, todays parents, follow 'expert' advice. Look at the advice this parent is given.
By the time Rebecca was 8yrs old I was desperate. Her tantrums were violent and extremely aggressive…... After waiting over 12 months.... phew!! we saw a Child psychiatrist. At this stage I was told to compromise at all costs...basically do anything to stop Rebecca experiencing a huge rage. Compromising became a joke... Rebecca is very intelligent on one level and grew wise to it. She pushed the boundaries until the doors were wide open... she stole out of a friends bag who came to stay from overseas... and she lit a candle one morning in an upstairs bedroom which resulted in a major house fire... (first floor and roof)….. Rebecca has now just turned 12yrs old ….. and her behaviour... avoidance, manipulation and boundary breaking has stepped up to an almighty and frightening high over the last 2 months ..2 days ago I had to call the police to control her. And I've come to the conclusion that I can not put up with this anymore.... She needs boundaries now before it's too late. However, every time I try to put them in place she blows.
Avoiding confrontation is always a good idea whether a child is just "badly behaved" or has a disorder. Parents should only insist when they have to. However professionals often, as in this account, advise parents not to confront or to ignore "bad" or "rude" behaviour without assessing the particular reward that is motivating the behaviour. What this parent says is very common
I keep being told that he is seeking negative attention and to ignore the bad behaviour but even that doesn't seem to work now.
The reason that it does not work or only works for a short time is that children, when they make a demand, are often more concerned with succeeding in "the process of demanding" than they are with what is being demanded; like the six-year-old of a client who said he did not want to go swimming all the way to the swimming pool, refuses to get out of the car, and then all the way back now says he does want to go.
Getting their own way is not the reward
Keeping children happy is, and should be, a major directive for parents, but not if it makes children think that strength of will can overcome all objection. Parents' placatory responses often do not even provided the child with the basic logical information that you cannot both stay home with mum and go swimming. The child's inability to handle disappointment is one of the defining characteristics of Mercury's Child and often stretches to not being able to accept a loss that is logically unavoidable. Every choice we make involves the loss of what is not chosen. Placatory responses from parents can mean that younger children, who have been given what they demand, immediately demand the logically excluded opposite.
A "compromise at all costs" or ignoring strategy will not work because it assumes that the motive for the bad behaviour is to get what they want, an understandable mistake, but Mercury's Children are often actually being rewarded by winning a battle. For these children winning without a battle does not reward. In addition to this Mercury's children often believe the battle to revolve around mutual hurting so ignoring also withdraws this reward. Backing down, giving in, or ignoring just provokes such children to escalate their behaviour or invent new ways to hurt, new areas of conflict.
Although the parent in the first account eventually dropped the Child's Psychiatrist's compromise strategy she is unlikely to have replaced it with a strong sense of the need to be categorical. In fact she says "She needs boundaries now before it's too late. However, every time I try to place them she blows". Just like boy swearing on his computer (Scenario Three Chapter one) this mother sees the fact that her daughter "blows" as her reason for not imposing boundaries. But the reason her daughter "blows" is precisely because her mother historically drops boundaries when she does. The "blow" behaviour works, her daughter is objecting to boundaries and they are dutifully dropped. Nothing can help this parent while she continues to do this. This parent has, in the past, held out and held out and her daughter has come to need the battle but also learned that all she needs to do is hold out even longer. Unlike her daughter, this mother has never consistently held out long enough to get her own way, she has never braved her daughter's behaviour or consistently mitigated her daughter's "victory" with a sanction. Her daughter, contrary to what most parents say, was not born with this an obsessively strong will, this aspect of her behaviour has been, albeit inadvertently, cultivated and nurtured by her mother. In an earlier part of her account this mother listed what she saw as the most likely reasons for her daughters difficulties, they were; Autistic Spectrum; dodgy genes; her father's withdrawal; her being one of two girls in a boy's class. Unfortunately, rewarding her daughter's "bad behaviour" is not included in her list, she never understood that being categorical is not about the strength with which you make your case, it is entirely about outcomes, parents need to win not because their will is stronger than your child's, but because their child's long term rather than short term advantage depends on it. This parent looses because she allows her daughter to take over her role of sanction-giver in the home and to become 'king'.
Not noticing is not the same as Ignoring
Although the aim behind 'ignoring' - to prevent the reward of your attention - is a very sound aim it has another serious flaw, to 'ignore' 'bad' behaviour the parent has first to see it.
If the child knows the parent has seen it, a failure to act cannot help but undermine the parent's right to say anything about it in the future. Advice to 'ignore' is like saying, forget that consistency is the key to good parenting or pretend you are not a parent for a while. It also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. It is not doing anything at all that proves counter-productive but just doing the wrong things. More than any other area child behaviour is filled with people who prefer to believe solutions have been exhausted rather than expertise. If parents see something that needs correcting then they have to correct it, that is their role, the problem is in what parents previously chose to do and the negative ways in which they did it. If the child knows that you have noticed and you do not want to reward with your attention then a pre-explained sanction is a legitimate way of doing this. The parent does not immediately respond but the child knows what the response is and that it is automatic if the parent sees the behaviour. The parents does not have to give attention at all, or perhaps by a small change in facial expression they say they have noticed and a pre-determined sanction is being applied.
Not noticing is very different from ignoring. It can be a very useful tactic especially with young children because it comes without implying that the parent accepts the 'bad' behaviour. In fact, not noticing what toddler's do, since their attention span is so short, should probably be the response of choice with any action that is not going to keep recurring. Nothing fixates a child's mind on the wrong things and getting attention for doing them than being constantly "told off". With toddlers it is far better to organise away 'bad' behaviour so that all rooms are 'toddler proofed", and stripped of the things at their height that you don't want them to touch.
Parents as servant
We have seen that the first cause of the reversal of roles comes about when parents allow children to take over the ability to sanction. Our imaginary anthropologist, trying to work out the pecking order in the home, sees parents changing their behaviour because of the fear of their child's reaction and it is no surprise that they think the child is the leader in the home. What is surprising is that belief in their mistaken conclusion is not based on observations of battles in the home but rather on parents 'caring' behaviour. If they are trying to work out which party is 'king' and which party 'serves' they would want to track key movements of the parties around the home. In particular they would document which candidates for leadership does not move when contact is wanted and signals for other individuals to come to them and then gets the articles that they want brought to them and which have to get them for themselves.
In the week of my writing this I had a fairly typical exchange with the parents of a problem nine-year-old. I asked a key question for professionals working with 'bad' behaviour. "What happens if your son was in a different room in the house and wants to see or speak to you?" The mother said that he would call them.
"what happens then?" I asked,
"We go to him" she said.
The father, perhaps realising where I was going, added "Unless we are busy and then we tell him we can't come."
I asked them to recall and relate the last time this had happened perhaps that morning or the evening before. The mother said her son had been upstairs playing on his Playstation and had called her and asked her for a drink of water which she got him. Parents almost always fail to see the powerful symbolisms in this behaviour. What the anthropologist, and more importantly her son, observes is an individual who is not ill, who has not been told he cannot get out of bed, and who has, as my mother used to say, a perfectly functioning "bone in his leg" but does not have to make his own trip down the stairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water but instead asks his mother to make two trips one to find out what he wants and the second to do what he could have easily done for himself in the first place. Parents have often skipped the developmental point where baby became child the point where this behaviour became inappropriate, this is parental behaviour designed for a baby incapable of moving to get what it wants. Perhaps these parents did not want their child standing on a chair at the sink to get a drink, but those days, too, are gone.
Continuing with behaviour appropriate for a baby creates a massive mixed message for the child. Having your needs served in this way places the child in a regal, kinglike, position in the home and his mother in a clearly subservient one. A little while later, when this mother asks her son to stop playing and have his shower, she is also asking him to reverse roles, give up his waited-on position, at the request of a person who, in their last interaction, was a servant-figure. This mother, like many of my clients, continuously alternates between being a servant-figure and parent who is defied, distraught and angry. Parents have either missed the transition from baby to child or this behaviour is a poorly thought out expression of love and care. Unfortunately, parents often become aware - and angry - about their child's unrealistic expectations and demands without realising the part played by their 'servant' behaviour.
'Give Mummy a hug'
The leadership role is precious in the home. The child's happiness depends on the parents' ability to secure it. What actually happens in the home, who moves to whom, who is needy and who supplies that need, has a symbolism that is missed by many parents but understood by the smallest child. 'Give Mummy a hug'. Even a simple request like this involves a reversal of roles. Asking 'badly' behaving children to supply even this simple emotional need undermines a later insistence on compliance. Just as in the earlier example, parents put themselves in a subservient position when they ask for emotional bolstering and create a mixed message when they later attempt to tell the child it is time to 'come off the computer'. Please remember that this is not a parenting book we are not saying it is wrong for a parent to say 'Give Mummy a hug' we are saying that it may well be compromising for the parent of a seriously badly behaving child to make this request. When the mother in the previous account says She does have difficulty showing love and affection one is tempted to ask, in which context; in the context of a lull in these battles? Is her mother expecting her to show these spontaneously? One does not show affection to an adversary, has this mother allowed herself to be categorised as one? Does this mother make the mistake of soliciting her daughter's affection? If she does it does not matter if her daughter is affectionate or not her mother's future instructions will be undermined coming as they do from a person made subservient by allowing herself to seem emotionally needy.
Parents often unknowingly alternate between being a needy or servant-figure on the one hand and a distraught and angry authoritarian on the other and then they wonder why the child does not respect them.
The chief advisor
Parents with a 'badly' behaved child almost all have a surprising chief advisor. They refer to their own parents, they look in books, they listen to the relatives but their chief advisor is none of these and often has far more importance, relevance and authority. They listen to this source's opinion on what to do in response to behaviour; they hang upon this person's every word. When working with parents I am constantly told what this advisor has told them, that their advisor 'does not care' about this approach, or their advisor predicts if we do that "this" will happen or they "really hated" the suggestion that they do that. This person is often the most important influence on what they do. What this advisor says about their parenting and about them as people is of vital importance to them. They can often be cut to the quick because of what this advisor says about their relationship. Yet, with all the power that this advisor has and despite the fact that they refer to them every day and hang on their every word, their identity has to be revealed to them and often comes as a complete surprise.
Who is this advisor? Well, as this chapter is about role reversal, you have probably guessed. For parents their constant port of call for explanations of what is happening is to the child that is giving them the problem. They ask "why did not do that" or "what is wrong", meaning "what is wrong that made you do that". If the child were to answer honestly parents would be horrified since the only honest answer available to them is "I did it because I wanted to". The correct answer "because you reward me every time I do." would horrify them even more.
We just don't understand why she keeps acting out. She has structure, rules, and she is disciplined with time outs and chores. She comprehends when we discuss her behavior with her but she continually acts out and says "I don't know" when we ask her about her problems.
My girlfriend and I are having tremendous problems with her 12-year-old daughter who throws really nasty tantrums and then cannot remember why she has done this.
Eventually things got very bad and his childminder had to stop looking after him because he punched one of her charges 4 times in the stomach and had absolutely no remorse, when tackled as to why he did it he said, that the child was annoying him.
Parents refer to their chief advisor for the answer to the crucial question "why is my child behaving like this". They ask their children "why did (or do) you do it?" The way the question is framed tells the child that they are considered solely responsible for the behaviour and asks them to explain why they produce it. Since the child's behaviour is produced through interactions with the parent this is like asking a boxer to explain the way his opponent fights. It delineates the child as the sole 'agent of change'. Children know of course that they are battling with their parents but they have no idea why and certainly have no inkling that they are actually being programmed to continue behave in the way that they do by their parents. Asking the child why it is behaving 'badly' is the clearest indication that the parent completely misunderstands the interactional quality of 'bad' behaviour and role reversal the question entails.
These parents mistake parental propaganda for reality. It is not and has never been the child's job to control its own behaviour. It may be reasonable for us to imply that they should be able to control themselves but we should not actually believe it and certainly not by reference to some moral expectation or precept that will always be less important to a child than what ends up happening. They do not come socially programmed with this 'control' information quiet the reverse, they come programmed with a primary mode behaviour that the parents have to train away. They are children. It is the parents alone who determine whether their 'bad' behaviour 'works' and the parents alone who end up rewarding it or not.
Given the right to choose but, not to choose this
It is part of the parent's role to prepare their children to eventually to be able to make all decisions for themselves but parents often defer decisions to their chief advisor that they are not yet capable of making and should not be part of the youngster'ss role. Parents even tell me that they stopped using a particular sanction because "he really didn't like it" which clearly misses the point.
Children are never able to resist taking over a parental leadership role that has been left vacant or is actually offered to them. The following is a fairly typical description of this. Without realising it this parent is being completely hypocritical, he has given his son the right to choose but his son makes his choice only to discover that he did not, after all, have the right to make that choice.
We have a 15-year-old son who has decided that he would like us to stay completely out of his life. We have tried to encourage him all the way along and made sure that he was participating in things he wanted to do, not what we wanted. In grade eight he was put in a grade 7/8 split class with only 4 other grade eights. He took it as a personal insult and has never been the same happy go lucky kid since. After failing a class in grade nine we thought that he had learned his lesson and would put more effort in this year but he has received only one mark that is over 60. . We have tried to stay off his back, like he has asked, he has asked us again today, I told him that our trying to do this obviously didn't work.
The rule for parents should be "give them what they want but under your terms not theirs". Children often want childish ill-conceived things, worse they cover-up their difficulties with concentration or application with appeals to independence. Worse still, a boy of this age on some level knows he is doing this and desperately wants his parents to help him apply himself and not to be hoodwinked by his fake appeals. This father has given his son the right at fifteen to make a crucial decision about his own life for which he was just not ready. In fact the likelihood is that his son is aware, at some level that he has taken a wrong turn but will never acknowledge it. Giving permission for a youngster to decide between two courses of action both of which are in his best interest is one thing; allowing him, at 15, to decide a course of action that is ultimately harmful to him and which he will later regret is quite another. From what is said, the crucial event that they cannot 'pinpoint' was where they allowed his phrase stay off my back to prescribe their actions and for no other reasons than he said he wanted them to do this; they complied. When they did this they gave away their parental long-term reasons and gave their child the right to swap them for his childish, lazy, Mercury-based now reasons. As well as a problem about behaviour this is a philosophical dilemma about relative parental / teenager rights, he makes this clear by what says next
Parents often see events, in this case the split class, that were coincidental or were merely an original catalyst as still producing the negative effect. In reality the crucial event was where they allowed his phrase stay off my back to prescribe their actions and for no other reasons than he said he wanted them to do it. What this parents says next shows he is confused about his parental role As well as a problem about behaviour this is a philosophical dilemma about relative parental / teenager rights, he makes this clear by what says next
Parents often see events, in this case the split class, that were coincidental or were merely an original catalyst as still having a causal effect.
I also told him that I loved him and wanted do right by him and if that meant helping him to organize his time to complete his tasks, than that was what I would do. I am confused as to whether I should just let him go ahead and walk all over us by leaving him to do as he pleases or tighten things up more by being tougher.
This clearly seems the way to go but his father cannot decide
I am confused as to whether I should just let him go ahead and walk all over us by leaving him to do as he pleases or tighten things up more by being tougher.
Yet, in reality, a lot of what this father has said up to this point needs to be seen in the context of his failed attempts to reward and sanction. Parents will often speak of dissatisfaction with the results of their democratic or even laissez faire approach as if it was their method of choice when it reality it only came about by default when their attempts to sanction or reward failed, as he now makes clear
We have tried the reward system i.e.; get up everyday and get yourself to school on time and you can go out on the weekends. He says that as a result he hates school. He used to be such an easygoing guy, we can't pinpoint what has happened and we are very concerned that he may really hurt himself along the way.
This father actually had consequences that might well have got his son up and into school each day. School has been compulsory throughout his son's life but this father stops the consequences for refusing to go because the boy says that it is the consequences for not going that make him not go. Their chief advisor tells them it is that it is what he losing his weekend after he has decided not to go to school is what makes him not want to go this is blatantly illogical and yet they believe him. Parents all too often make the mistake of believing statements that are not relevant or can't be true or are downright nonsensical that are made solely to get them to drop a sanction. Attempts at blatant manipulations like these are a strong indication that the sanction has 'bite' and would work if the parents persisted. By accepting these statements parents train their chief advisor to be dishonest, manipulative, irrational and illogical. Clearly the child enacting the behaviour is the last place to look for advice on how to handle it. It is relatively easy for a chief advisor to reverse roles and establish the "king" status of Mercury's Child. (See "Red Herrings" in Chapter 12 The Real World as a Template)
The Parents' authority and the Child's Self-esteem
Sitting on the top of a nearly empty bus I listen to the mobile phone conversation of a teenager sitting a few seats ahead of me. She makes it clear that she is going to a party that is being held at the weekend and asks her friend if she will be going. Her friend tells her that she will have find out if her mother will let her go. The girl on the bus then says "Oh, of course I will have to ask my mother too." What makes this interesting is that it is a lie. Up to the point when her friend told her she would have to consult her mother this girl had been certain that she was going to the party and, in reality, did not have to clear it with her mother. What this lie indicates is that in spite all appearances to the contrary children view, or can learn to view, their parents authority as a sign of care and a source of pride. Even when they do everything in their power to induce their parents' authority to fail but nobody is happier than they are when their attempts fail. At a time when their own identities are still being formed children's first sense of pride is not in themselves but in their parents. Even as teenagers their first sense of identity is initially borrowed from their parents who represent the only model of who they are and who they will become.
Once this is understood then love for the child is the very last excuse that parents can use to condone the fact that they allow themselves to be worn down by their child's persistence. When 'badly' behaved children undermine the authority of their parents and become 'king' they undermine their own self-esteem.
Children giving orders
The parent's role is reversed when they allow themselves to become servants, but just as crucial is how their children talk to them and ask for things. Rudeness at any level is a challenge for leadership; never more so than when it results in requests being framed by children in the form of 'orders'.
I am having a problem with my 4 year old being very rude and sarcastic towards not only us but his sister and other family members. It seems to mostly happen when he is not getting what he wants, he is very impatient when things don't go his way. My husband and I have tried teaching him that if you are patient that maybe it will work out but this doesn't seem to work. For example on his rudeness, every time I tell him what we are having for supper he responds with "I'M NOT EATING THAT" and then starts with "fine then, I won't eat." Now it is not just what he is saying but the manner in which it is said. He also cannot control his anger and usually lashes out not physically but verbally with many "I hate you's" and "you're not my friend." We have a 10 year old daughter and never encountered this problem with her therefore we are running out of ideas. If you have any suggestions
When this parents says My husband and I have tried teaching him that if you are patient that maybe it will work out what she means is she has tried to convince her son with words and has ignored the reality of what actually happens in their home. The problem is that in their home being patient will give her son far less attention and is probably far less effective in getting his own way than the 'demand' method they want him to discard. Teaching doesn't seem to work, because it never does in competition with outcomes. For children words will never be more important than what actually happens. If his rudeness was always noticed, never allowed to work, and, if continued, always produced a small sanction, it would disappear.
Our son who is fifteen, learning disabled and has behaviour at home that is controlling and verbally (and occasionally physically) abusive. At school, or if we visit doctors, etc, he is very good which makes it very hard to get any behaviour-management help locally. At home Joe tends to be good while ever we're doing something he wants to do but he expects us to react immediately to his orders and to get his own way all the time. He swears at us and can't bear to be 'manhandled' so for instance if he is squeezing his little sister and we try to part them, we then get thumped for touching him (he doesn't as a rule object to being touched, cuddled, etc, just when it's stopping him from doing what he wants). One of his favourite ways to wind us up is to ask 'why?' over and over, like a toddler would, about things that make no sense. He's very difficult to reason with or to punish. For a long time it's seemed that the only form of punishment appropriate - grounding him - was something that would also actually make our lives harder. When he was younger and we used to make him go to his room he just refused to go. Forcing him would lead to violence. One other sanction we've tried is to knock 5 minutes off his bedtime for every time he was naughty - to be honest this wasn't effective as he can't tell the time anyway and he messes about so much on his way to bed that any odd five minutes would easily be taken up with him asking questions while loitering at the bottom of the stairs. We have lost control of the situation and Joe rules the roost, although' if we ask him he knows in theory that we're in charge!
If we ask for help locally we get offered respite, which is very helpful on one level but what we want is to be able to enjoy life as a family - all four of us.
Parents of badly behaved children usually complain that their children expect them to 'react immediately to his orders' or expect to 'get' their 'own way all the time' and often they speak as if this expectation has come about in some kind of vacuum in which they played no part. This boy expects these outcomes because his parents have, and probably still are, fulfilling this expectation. How could he have learnt to expect something that has never been provided? This parent does not realise that he is describing a reversal of roles he and hisr partner have allowed to develop. The principles of using sanctions are well understood by children, well enough for them to reverse roles and sanction their parents. This boy rewards his parents for behaviour that he likes, he doesn't as a rule object to being touched, cuddled, for instance, but punishes them when they attempt to accomplish what he does not like or something that is stopping him from doing what he wants. Significantly they complain that providing consequences was too hard that it made our lives harder. It was too difficult to make bedtime at the correct time each evening or not respond to their son's "red herring" questions at the bottom of the stairs.
I have a five year old son, when asked to do a task, he will only do it if he wants to. If not, there is no 'making him' do something. I am learning this only makes it worse. We have tried time-outs, taking things away and even a spanking. nothing fazes him. Please help.
This parent says "there is no 'making him' do something. I am learning this only makes it worse" if she is talking about physically forcing him she would, of course, be right. What, I fear, she really means is that her son has reversed roles and she is being trained by her son - he is teaching her - that insisting on categoricals will result in a massive over-reaction from him. The lesson he has taught, and that his mother has learnt, lies at the heart of her problem. It is 'don't insist that your categoricals are carried out because it only makes it worse'. (See How children control their own consequences Chapter 21 Effective Sanctions) Because parents don't know how to sanction they are blackmailed by their children and choose the easier unchallenged short-term response in preference to consistent longer-term training. They create the despotic 'king' figure in their home and although they know he is winding them up they have not worked out that the only possible reward for this behaviour in contained in their response to it. They are annoyed with the child for accepting the 'king' role that they hand them.
This, more comprehensive, edition, of Mercury's Child will be ready for publication in 2009
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