Take Two and Call Me in the Morning

When I meet with parents, the most common question I hear is, "How do I get my child's behavior to stop?!"  As I sit across from them, I hear their frustration and concern about their child's behavior. This is understandable when parents are stressed out about their children along with all the other demands of adult life. The main focus for any child psychologist is, "How do we get our kids to be calm, safe, happy, and instill a sense of guidance away from maladaptive behavior?"

Unfortunately, I have noticed the media does not help parents find a lasting answer to their question. The big pharmaceutical companies can push for an idea of a "quick fix" in commercials and other outlets. The idea of, "Just take this pill and this bad thing will be better." However seductive this idea can be, it does not provide the total solution to a child's struggles. Medication along with psychological treatment is more effective than medication alone. It is critical that parents understand this important concept when their child is struggling in life. 

A more complete psychological treatment would then consist of the parents, child, and child psychologist working together to create a game plan. It would include the identified problem behaviors, implementation of new techniques to increase adaptive behaviors, support systems for the parents, medication management (if necessary), and new knowledge of environmental difficulties that are negatively impacting the child. With this "game plan" in place, there is a greater chance to a more successful outcome, which means a happier child and less stressed parent. 

 

I Hold You In My Mind

We carry our relationships with us. Meaning, as we experience important relationships in our life, we create representations of these relationships in our minds. This helps us to anticipate how to get our needs met and how to meet the needs of the other. Simply put, we hold them in our minds and they hold us in theirs. This is core to being human. The irony is we are seldom aware of how these representations influence us. 

Our relationship with God is no different. As we experience a meaningful relationship with God, we also create representations of Him in our minds. In other words, it is how we think God is thinking of us. 

Our representations of God can help or hinder our spiritual walk. Optimally, we would come to know God for Who He really is (i.e., Love, Benevolence, Omnipotence, Sovereignty, Divine Foreknowledge), which would create a relational representation of God that would be different from the representations others in our lives. If not, God may not get a fair share. For instance, if we feel shame because we have a representation of God in our minds that we must hide from God the unloveable parts of ourselves as we did with our parents, then God may not get a chance to be fully God. 

I think a major task in our spiritual walk is to begin the process of understanding our relational representations and their influence. Armed with this information, we could then begin the process of letting God impact us in new ways.