Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control

Sweet little Xanthe

From the very first page, this book changed my whole outlook on life.  For a long time, we have been spiraling into a rut with Xanthe.  She doesn't seem to be able to remember rules, let alone obey them.  In fact, I am sometimes terrified to even tell her not to do something, because telling her not to seems to cause her to do it more.  Last year, she locked the car with my keys in it.  Now I can't ever leave the keys in the car because I am afraid she will do it again.  I don't know why she would do something that she has gotten in trouble for doing, but she does.

My thoughts have run the gamut on what could be causing this seemingly defiant behavior.  Our consequences have run the gamut, too.  I would be embarrassed to say how angry I have gotten at Xanthe, after she picks up Tziporah for the millionth time, even though she isn't supposed to.  I was ready to medicate Xanthe into oblivion to get her to stop being naughty.  I have made charts, I have had her write sentences about the rules, I have talked to her both with anger and patience.

The other problem was that she was ALWAYS in trouble, which made me sad.  Every so often, I would redouble my efforts, really focusing on Xanthe, telling her not to do something, going over why, talking about the consequences, reprimanding her, getting frustrated that she wasn't obeying, vowing to MAKE her obey, and ending up in a rage because I COULD NOT MAKE her behave.  She seemed confused, too, as if she had never heard of not picking up the baby or not closing your door when you play in your room.  Things that have been rules for years did not register at all.  My plan was to work and work on it until she got it, and sometimes I was patient and sometimes I wasn't.

The result of my discipline efforts, besides not having any effect on Xanthe, were that everyone else in the household picked up on my strong-arming, so everyone was always down on Xanthe for something.  Believe me, you wouldn't have to wait long for her to do something wrong, and she had siblings and parents pouncing on her for every little thing.  It was exhausting, and I was ready to take her to a counselor to talk about something I dreaded and feared like Harry Potter fears Voldemort:  Reactive Attachment Disorder.

That's when I got this book.  It addresses the behavior of kids who have experienced trauma and have severe behavior.  The very premise of the book instantly made me believe that everything was going to be better.  Xanthe experienced a year's worth of trauma before we even got our arms around her.  But for us to take her away from all the people she had known and the place that was so familiar to her, at age 13 months, was, in itself, the biggest trauma.  So she has been coping with all that trauma for years, and not very well, poor girl.  I sometimes feel resentful that her early trauma still casts a shadow over our lives.  I believe its effect should have been eradicated by now, just by Xanthe being in a stable, loving home with us, but that's not how little brains work.  Yes, she does have symptoms of RAD, but they are mild, I am not scared anymore.

This book informed me that all negative behavior is fear-based.  Just that one sentence alone allows me to approach Xanthe in a whole new light.  Just believing that she is not being defiant, manipulative or naughty on purpose, but rather is acting out of a fear-based survival mode, changes my whole dynamic with her.  I have been able to feel more compassion and understanding, and take more time to address her problems.  I have been able to say yes to her more often, and to say no less often, just by knowing that I don't have a mandate to get her behavior under control.  I have a different mandate now: to make her feel safe in every situation, and to mitigate her underlying fear.  This book goes into quite a bit of science, discussing how the brain works.  The brain literally short-circuits under stress, shutting down a child's ability to learn and cutting off the short-term memory.  (Which we all know, if we have ever taken an important test!) That is why Xanthe never remembers the rules, and why she gets so confused and seems disoriented when something goes wrong.  I was misinterpreting that behavior as "not listening to me" or "not minding."  Xanthe operates at a very high stress level, which is still a piece of the puzzle we are working on, but her stress has been dramatically alleviated since I began giving her more freedom and more positive reinforcement, and have taken away the consequences that were hanging over her head, fueling her stress.  Now there are no consequences, because I believe that she is always doing the best she can.  All of this seems like common sense, but there are a lot of parenting ideas out there that take the opposite tack, and it's hard when you're in the trenches to know what will work.  Parents operate on fear, too. You just want your child to be successful, and you're scared that is not going to happen.

Xanthe is an amazing girl.  She is fun, she has a beautiful giggle, her smile lights up the room, and she is kind and caring.  She will always have a certain amount of insecurity and fear that most people don't have, because early babyhood scars are permanent.  But now I feel like we can smooth those scars much more effectively.  The interesting thing about this book is that it refutes a lot of the conventional wisdom associated with discipline, and more specifically, children with extreme behaviors.  The best thing about this approach is that it gives parents permission to trust their instincts.  Every parent has inherent compassion and love for their child.  I am sad to say that my desire to help Xanthe with her behavior was only serving to snuff out my compassion, due to my failure and Xanthe's failure.

Food is a good example.  Scott and I are bothered by Xanthe's relationship to food.  I watched her at an activity days party.  All the other girls were doing the limbo and Xanthe was over in the corner, aggressively trying to get the LAST drop of syrup out of her snow cone cup.  It was ugly.  We don't want our daughter to be teased, so we took it upon ourselves to "train" her to not place so much importance on food.  Anytime there was food, it was very stressful because we were trying to teach.  Now, I don't point out any of her food behaviors at mealtime, because it adds to them.  With security, I hope she eventually normalizes around food, and she is.  It is a great feeling to me to be able to say, "Sure!" when Xanthe asks for seconds, instead of trying to teach her that she is not hungry, she is just asking because she is afraid, etc.  Now I know to have those teaching moments at a later, less stressful, time.

Now, when I look at Xanthe's sweet, tiny face, I know and remember in my heart that she is a scared little girl, doing the best she can.  I give her the benefit of the doubt, and I never allow myself to believe that she is intentionally being naughty.  And you know what?  It works.  Like magic.  And all of Xanthe's siblings, to the extent that they follow suit in their relationship with Xanthe, have started treating her much more kindly.  Our whole home is a much more peaceful place, just by Scott and me allowing ourselves to back off, and to believe in Xanthe.  What a relief!  I think we're gonna make it!

Even for parents whose children don't have "extreme behaviors," I would recommend this book.  I understand how overwhelmed a child can feel when things go wrong, and I see that they are hardly even naughty unless they are scared.  As adults, our whole focus when it comes to discipline should be to identify the source of fear and to eradicate it with safety and love.  It just works better than all the other stuff.