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Double Vision

Double Vision

by | Nov 6, 2023 | Parenting, Relationships

Among adults, the challenge of seeing a different point of view is an intellectual maneuver. If you lived in their circumstances, you would probably feel the same way. As parents, however, understanding your kid’s world requires a shift to a developmental lens that most of us find difficult.

The problem is that shifting developmental perspective triggers history. All at once, the clear picture becomes blurry. Simply, our kids’ stage of development stirs up issues from our own childhood struggles. Naturally, we apply our personal memories to our reactions.

Double vision requires the impossible task of letting go of your own perspective while placing yourself behind the eyes of another person simultaneously. That means you must be sufficiently comfortable and clear with your own life to be open to another view. Easier said than done – especially if your history includes unresolved stuff.

Literally everyone has unresolved stuff. Some people work on it and others unconsciously allow it to steer their narratives with messages that have long been obsolete. Take, for example, the memory of a parent being conditionally available. Whatever the parent’s reason may have been for being preoccupied, the child is extremely likely to grow up wondering whether they are worthy of love.

It's nearly impossible to see a parent as flawed or broken from a young child’s angle. Instead, the child will see themself as the cause of the problem, even when there is zero evidence to support that conclusion. Kids don’t know any better. Growing up will inform different realities but, by then, the self-image die has been cast. Your parenting approach will inherit this context.

Be careful. Your child’s world view is blind to your history. Your interpretation of their struggle most likely has nothing to do with their context. Clean the slate. Do your best to imagine what the world must look like through their eyes, and stay  as free of bias as possible.

As caregivers, our goal is to help our kiddos feel understood. That doesn’t happen by thinking that we know how they feel or have been through what they’re going through. We don’t and we haven’t. Understanding comes from listening without judgement.

The greatest gift we can give our children is the deliberate effort not to pass our unresolved issues onto them. Think about whatever percentage of your own worries stem from historical extended family struggle. Then let the buck stop with you.  

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Buffering Kids from Adult Business

Buffering Kids from Adult Business

by | Sep 20, 2023 | Marriage & Family, Parenting

We teach kids coping skills by exposing them to situations that require coping skills. However, care must be taken to remain within the limits of their developmental stage. Until the brain becomes capable of abstract thought, there’s a potential for them to misinterpret information in concrete terms.

A client once shared concern about her son who seemed unable to recover from the grief that set in after his grandmother’s funeral. The parent assumed her child was having difficulty processing the loss. It turned out that he had overheard the selection of a ‘walnut’ casket and had spent weeks wondering how grandma was going to get out of the walnut. Pretty typical mistake for a seven-year-old.

Before we share the gravity of adult business with our kids, it’s wise to get behind their eyes and imagine how they’ll interpret the data. In some situations, you simply edit the language of the information to match their developmental readiness. At other times, it’s better to buffer them completely.

When life appears normal in the day-to-day experience of a child, parents can attend to the complexities of the crisis without creating needless vulnerability in the family system. This results in a stabilization that enables a more measured form of sharing. Once the circumstances have settled, parents can evaluate how much information and in what language best fits each kid.

The goal is the wellness of the family system. Parents are at the nucleus and hold responsibility for filtering environmental stress in the best interests of their children. Sometimes, exposure is the path and the fallout triggers growth. Often, however, a more strategic approach promotes understanding that is aligned with each kid’s readiness.

When the crisis hits, take a moment to assess the wisdom of discussing the upset at the dinner table, or quietly after the kids have gone to bed. Whichever you decide, let the best interests of your children be the guide. A gentle buffer might enable the protection they are not yet able to provide for themselves.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Protecting the Bubble

Protecting the Bubble

by | Aug 25, 2023 | Counseling, Marriage & Family, Parenting

Those of us who take care of kids professionally have a unique perspective. We see both the parenting strategies of the caregivers and the consequences on child development. Breaking news: they’re related.

If you parent from a helicopter, it’s not realistic to expect your kids to develop autonomy. They will defer to your judgment, especially when the circumstances involve risk and you make it a habit to swoop in and prevent crisis. Heaven forbid that my kid falls and gets hurt.

If you prefer to fight your kid’s battles on their behalf, don’t expect your child to learn how to stand up for themselves. Instead, they will protest past your patience threshold so you are compelled to solve the problem just to quiet the noise. It’s all about anxiety reduction – yours as much as theirs.

We treat anxiety as though it is poison. Soothe the symptom as soon as possible rather than considering the problem that generates the stress. If our efforts are focused on symptom reduction, the problem is guaranteed to send its roots deeper.

What if parents set the example and looked the discomfort straight in the eye until, despite the discomfort, the reason became clear? Solve THAT problem. Parents learn how to parent, and kids learn how to grow.

As long as our adult decisions are guided by achieving peace and quiet, our children will compel us to make them happy. If making kids happy is the goal, we have to sacrifice the construction of healthy coping skills and resilience.

True happiness doesn’t result from removing conflict from life experience. It comes from the evolving capacity to manage life’s challenges effectively. That ability only unfolds when coping is required.

It rubs against all instinct to let your kid fall. Imagine teaching your child to ride a bike in hopes of seeing them learn how to maintain balance. How long to you hold on to the back of the seat as you run up and down the sidewalk? The ability to balance only emerges at the moment that you let go of the seat.

 

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

A Day in the Life of a Social Worker

A Day in the Life of a Social Worker

by | Jun 5, 2023 | Counseling, Wellness

What happens behind the closed door of the therapy office is often a mystery. By necessity, it’s confidential. Yet beyond the personal details, every clinical alliance unfolds in predictable stages. First, there’s an identifiable beginning, a middle, and an end. Next, each of those stages can be teased apart into those same three categories. In other words, there’s a beginning, middle, and end of the beginning stage, the same three phases are found within the middle stage, and finally, the same three phases are within the end stage. All in all, nine stages.

Now that you’ve been thoroughly confused, let’s take a glimpse at each of the nine stages of the clinical alliance in an imaginary 20-session engagement:

 

Beginning

Early-Beginning (sessions 1 - 2):

  • Welcome the client and invite a healing/learning partnership.

Mid-Beginning (sessions 3 - 4):

  • Gather a comprehensive history with unconditional support and acceptance.

Late-Beginning (sessions 5 - 6):

  • Engage in a working alliance with defined goals and expected outcomes.

 

Middle

Early-Middle (sessions 7 - 8):

  • Maintain a holding environment for pain, struggle, and collaborative discovery.

Mid-Middle (sessions 9 - 11):

  • Investigate the relationship between the client's history and current circumstances.

Late-Middle (sessions 12 - 13):

  • Invite a new understanding of recurrent cognitive, affective, and behavioral themes.

 

End

Early-Ending (sessions 14 - 16):

  • Teach and practice healthy coping strategies to support a corrective experience.

Mid-Ending (sessions 17 - 18):

  • Empower the transition of gains from the clinical alliance to relationships outside of therapy.

Late-Ending (sessions 19 – 20):

  • Review progress, anticipate future challenges/coping plan, and facilitate emancipation.

 

Clean and simple, right? Establish a working partnership. Gather history and set goals. Create a safe environment to explore the relationship between past traumas and current struggles. Teach coping skills. Test them outside the therapy setting. Set the client free.

As therapists, our job is to put ourselves out of a job by making our clients their own therapists.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Think Globally Act Locally

Think Globally Act Locally

by | May 11, 2023 | Counseling, Marriage & Family, Parenting, Wellness

A trusted friend recently reminded us that sometimes the problem is bigger than the solution. “One finger does not lift 1,000 people,” he said, quoting an adage from his country of origin. There, he shared, the depth of national crisis leaves most leaders at a loss for how to make even a tiny dent. So you lift what one finger is able to lift.

Our country is currently in the throws of a mental health crisis. It has two prongs. First, the acuity level struggle among children and teens is at unprecedented levels. Second, there is a shortage of available resources. A shrinking pool of therapists is either backed up with untenable waiting lists or burned out from the long hours and the clinical intensity of the work. Often, it’s both.

So, what can you do if your kiddos are struggling and you can’t find a local resource? In our practice, we field numerous requests with limited clinician availability. We match client needs with therapist skills to the best of our ability and refer out to trusted colleagues when we are unable to provide the needed service. For most families, unless you are lucky enough to snag one of our limited hours, that doesn’t help much.

While you can’t control the availability of community resources, you can influence the wellness of your home. And although you can’t alter the choices of everyone who impacts your family, you are in charge of your home ecosystem. Start there. Your need for outside resources may be less urgent if you are able to stabilize the rhythm and buttress the structure of the crew that makes up your home.

Often, this is precisely the guidance that paid professionals provide:

  • Ensure that everyone is honoring the basics of respect, trust, health, and safety.
  • Call time-out when a crisis alters the family norm, so there’s time to process the change.
  • Attend to little problems before they have a chance to take root and get big.
  • Allow stress to activate coping skills before solving the challenge prematurely.

If you performed an informal check-up on your family’s well-being, you would probably discover some opportunities to put these in play. Are respect, trust, health, and safety your priorities? Are you slowing down enough to discuss transitions? Are you practicing early detection/early intervention to the best of your ability? Are you allowing adaptability to develop rather than jumping in to solve problems too quickly?

You might not need a therapist. Or maybe a session or two gets things on track. Think globally, act locally.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.