Last week I was able to attend the Charleston Child Trauma Conference in South Carolina. The sessions focused on supporting children and teens who have been victimized by different forms of neglect or abuse. Although this is a difficult topic to consider, the mental health profession is recognizing the immediate and long-term risks faced by young people who have been mistreated.
We cannot erase the overwhelming situations that impact a portion of youth in our society. We can recognize the impact of mistreatment and work to help them cope with the stressors they face.
Dr. Karen Horney wrote about children adjusting to significant stress in their lives in her 1945 book, Our Inner Conflicts
.
"...the child gropes for ways to keep going, ways to cope with this menacing world. Despite his own weakness and fears he unconsiously shapes his tactics to meet the particular forces operating in his environment. In doing so, he develops not only ad hoc strategies but lasting character trends which become part of his personality...At first a rather chaotic picture may present itself, but out of it in time three main lines crystallize: a child can move toward people, against them, or away from them...In each of these three attitudes, one of the elements involved in basic anxiety is overemphasized: helplessness in the first, hostility in the second, and isolation in the third."
Dr. Horney recognized that children tend to develop a strategy to deal with their sense of being alone and overwhelmed in a dangerous world. This is most pronounced for children who have been victimized. She went on to explain that children who present as helpless try to make connections to gain support and move toward people. Children who are hostile move against people because they lack trust in others and look to fight so that they can feel stronger and protect themselves. Children who isolate themselves move away from connections with others because they feel misunderstood and do not make the effort to connect or fight. We have all encountered children and teens who predominantly behave with one of these three attitudes that were described over 70 years ago by Dr. Horney. We are sometimes quick to think these children are simply misbehaving. We can describe them as needy and clingy; oppositional and rebellious; or aloof and conceited.
It is rare that we will know the personal histories (especially the traumatic histories) of the young people who we coach, teach, supervise or otherwise encounter in our daily lives. We should take the time to consider that the youngsters we find challenging might be doing the best they can to cope with stressors many of us could never imagine. Youngsters often need our kindness and understanding more than they need our criticism.
The quote above is from Our Inner Conflict: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis pp.42-43 by Karen Horney; 1945 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Children depend on the guidance of their parents, caregivers and teachers from a very young age. At the same time they seek out opportunities for independence. This dance, led by the youngsters, can be taxing on the adults. This has been the case since the earliest human cultures. Over time the thing that has changed is how well, or how poorly, the adults cope with children and teens who need security and reassurance while also wanting autonomy. Each generation of adults who care about children experience the stress of navigating this unavoidable internal conflict of young people as they work to become the individuals they hope to be. The current norms and pressures of a society frequently dominate how adults manage this push and pull with young people.
Gordon Allport was a prominent psychologist in the first half of the 20th century who had clear insights about a child's struggle between security and independence. He wrote about this problem in his 1955 book Becoming
: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality.
"Thus there seem to be two contrary forces at work. The one makes for a closed tribal being. It takes its start in the dependence of the child upon those who care for him. His gratifications and his security come from the outside; so too do all the first lessons he learns: the times of day when he may have meals, the activities for which he is punished and those that bring reward. He is coerced and cajoled into conformity but not, we note, with complete success. He shows a capacity even from birth to resist the impact of maternal and tribal demands. While to a certain degree his group shapes his course, at the same time it seems to antagonize him, as if he realized its threat to his integrity. If the demand for autonomy were not a major force we could not explain the prominence of negativistic behavior in childhood....All his life long this being will be attempting to reconcile these two modes of becoming, the tribal and the personal: the one that makes him into a mirror, the other that lights the lamp of individuality within."
Dr. Allport clearly described what the experience is like for children who struggle with the conflict of meeting the social norms of the community so that they can be accepted and provided with care. At the same time, children do not want to be carbon copies of their caregivers. They develop a view of who they can become based on their experiences and view of the world, and they realize their own internal striving to be unique individuals.
Adults who care about the children in their lives need to set boundaries and offer guidance while being careful to not limit independence. Adults must realize that children need limits that do not serve as punishments or harsh restrictions. Children can understand that limits, when presented with kindness and support, demonstrate that the adult is offering support and security. A world without limits would be chaotic and threatening to a child. Harsh or unreasonable limits lead children to lose confidence in themselves or to develop an attitude of needing to protect themselves from being devalued.
The safety and security kindly offered by the adults in a community (family, school or neighborhood) allow children to have confidence needed to explore, test limits, push the rules or even break the rules. Them they wait to see if the adults will demonstrate authentic caring by consistently enforcing limits in a way which teaches that the world is not chaotic or punishing. At the same time the children help the adults learn. Adults realize, with some reluctance, that children can move into the world (which adults paradoxically perceive to be chaotic) beyond the security provided by current boundaries, and become independent. Children can take the risks to become individuals who will survive and thrive.
Young people will be able to struggle with challenges, impose limits on themselves, and then move beyond their own limits. They will grow and continue to lead their own lives rather than simply reflecting the norms of the community members who raised them.
The quote in the post above was taken from page 35 of Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality by Gordon W. Allport; published in 1955 by Yale University Press, Inc.
