Q: Help! I am married and have three kids. The middle one, a son, and the baby, my daughter, are doing well. The problem is the oldest. He’s 14 and has always been difficult. He won’t do chores, gets in trouble at school, talks back, and hangs out with kids his father and I disapprove of. But the biggest problem is the arguing between him and my husband. They go at it all the time, and have even gotten into fist fights. No one gets hurt, but as my son gets older, I worry what will happen. I tell his dad he’s too hard on the boy, but he won’t listen. Sometimes I think this is related to my husband also being an oldest who had difficulty getting along with his father. They haven’t talked for the past 12 years. Will that happen to my family? What should I do?
Because there is a lot of anxiety present in your family system it is possible to see several common dynamics at work here:
1. Triangles. A relationship triangle is formed anytime a relationship between two people becomes unstable. Triangles are evident when two people are gossiping or complaining about a third person. Triangles only become problematic when they get “stuck” or they prohibit the participants from being able to resolve their issues. Other indications of triangles include jealousy, arguing or worrying with your mate about someone or something outside the relationship, and spending more time thinking about someone other than yourself or your own relationship.
Children are commonly triangled into emotionally reactive marriages. When you and your husband argue about how to handle your son, you are triangling him into your marriage. This is a typical result of emotional distance that has grown between the two of you. Distance is a feature of all relationships, but the triangle won’t help your son, or you. Triangles are universal, and there will be many interlocking triangles in any emotional system, but they are more evident when anxiety is high and less evident when anxiety is low or being managed. The best way to manage the triangles in your life is to work to develop a one-to-one relationship with each person in your relationship systems and to avoid unnecessary gossip or complaining, which never solves problems anyway. The more clear you can be about how you think you (not your husband) should parent your son, the better off you will all be. This advice contradicts the “united front” concept of parenting, but it is more realistic because no two people can be expected to think alike at all times and one steady, mature adult can positively affect the entire family.
2. Cut Off. Cut off is the term used when family members stop interacting with one another or become extremely distant. Surprisingly, cut off is not the result of a lack of feeling between family members. Cut off results from too much unresolved emotional intensity. When family members go months or years without contact, they have cut off. Often, people cut off because they feel they cannot “be themselves” around certain family members. Many young people believe that cutting off by moving far from the family is the road to independence. But you cannot be dependent on distance to achieve true independence, which only comes from being yourself while also staying emotionally close to important others.
The tendency to cut off is more prevalent in some families than in others. If there is a pattern of cut off in your family the result will predictably be more emotional pressure on your remaining relationships, thereby increasing the risk of future cut offs. If you are cut off from portions of your family it would be a good idea to work toward establishing some level of contact with them. If the people you are cut off from tend to be very difficult to deal with, this re-connection may best be accomplished with the help of a therapist who can help you to develop the relationships without being emotionally harmed. If your husband will not work toward re-establishing a relationship with his father, you can discuss with a therapist the pros and cons of reaching out to your father-in-law yourself. This may be an important first step in eventually lowering the level of chronic anxiety in your family.
3. Family Relationship Patterns. This concept describes the observable patterns of emotional functioning in a family in a single generation. Family members react to varying amounts of anxiety in the family system yet tend to maintain the status quo by engaging in repetitive patterns of behavior, even when the status quo is very unsatisfying. These patterns are: marital conflict, dysfunction of a spouse, and impairment of one or more children through the family projection process. The nuclear family relationship patterns of the current generation are highly related to the emotional process of past generations and will influence future generations.
4. Family Projection Process. One of the processes of emotional functioning observed in the nuclear family, to varying degrees, is the Family Projection Process. If you worry excessively about your child you will project that anxiety onto him which he will then absorb and act out. (In some families parental anxiety can result in neglect, abuse, or over-focus in an overly positive way.) It sounds like your oldest son is absorbing the lion’s share of the family anxiety. You can correct this by learning to deal more effectively with your husband, your son, and possibly other important family members.
5. Multigenerational Transmission Process. This concept describes the transmission of the family relationship patterns through multiple generations. You can see this process at work in your own family; your son has adopted the same position in the family that his father had. There are undoubtedly similar patterns inherited from your own family tree.
6. Sibling Position. Certain fixed personality and behavioral traits seem to be determined by the combination of a child’s birth order and gender. This is not precise because a child who absorbs more of the family anxiety by virtue of some vulnerability or external event occurring in the family at a critical time in the child’s development may not fit the typical profile of a child of that sibling position. Another child may or may not move into his or her place. The point is that certain of your son’s behaviors may be related to his position as the oldest son, as indicated by the similarities between him and his father as a boy. It can be helpful to remember this when dealing with him (both of them).
The good news is that it only takes one motivated family leader to make significant changes in the family system over time. If you can recognize when you’re stuck in an unhelpful relationship pattern you can figure out different, more productive ways of relating. A therapist who works from these concepts will help you to understand the patterns at work in your home, to define your position in your family, and to hold firm when there is internal or external pressure to return to old patterns.
