March 1996

Improving Family Relationships

Many teens and parents have periods in which they don't get along well together. They aren't comfortable talking openly to one another. As a result, they argued often and their relationship suffered. Here are some ideas to create or repair important relationships:

ù Do something together--just the two of you. By experiencing something together you are forced to rely on each other for help, wisdom and expertise. As a result, you have a greater range of opportunities to communicate. By spending time together you have to acknowledge and confront the usual evasions, half-truths and the contest to prove who was in the right. When you really start listening to each other, and you can learn and do new things. You begin to recognize the old, automatic reactions for what they were--defensive maneuvers that won't get you anywhere. Strategy: Plan a regular event, a do-it-yourself project or a trip together. Then make an effort in advance to listen carefully to the other person. Don't go with an agenda of topics to discuss or problems to resolve. Instead, spend time imagining how the other person sees the world and why. After you become sympathetic to the other person's view, it is much harder to have meaningless arguments.

ù Be open to changing how you feel and think. Give yourself plenty of time to reflect about the relationship. The more you think, the more you will notice. You may begin to realize that both of you are in an "I win, you lose game."...that each of you is always looking to be right. As a result, there is no room for discovery and growth. For the relationship to grow, you have to be willing to be wrong-- or at least look at things from another perspective.

Helpful: Don't spend all your time trying to make the other person see things your way. Instead, think about how you might behave differently so the other person would see you from a new perspective.

ù Be willing to forgive. If you want to move on, you have to be willing to forgive. Until then, you will be giving him or her all the power over you. Learn to say "I'm sorry, please forgive me." By forgiving, you free that person and yourself.

ù Accept that the other person probably means well. It's important to realize that when someone does something that you consider thoughtless or hurtful, he or she probably had reasons--and those reasons weren't necessarily bad. Once you accept that fact, you are less likely to get your feelings hurt and you can respond to the other person in constructive ways.

ù Don't try to control the other person's feelings. There is nothing you can do about what your family member thinks, believes or does. All you can do is take control of your side of the relationship. Helpful: Be responsible for your behavior--and the other person will likely begin to worry about his or hers. Don't fret too much if that person can't do what you would like him or her to do.

ù Don't take everything personally. Some of the behavior that bothers you probably isn't about you at all. Once you realize that, you will avoid unnecessary and inappropriate conflict. Helpful: When your family member does something that bothers you, ask your- self if the behavior is aimed at you. If not, live with it.

ù Make an effort to change roles. A lot of parent-child, even husband-wife roles, are based on the role they played as a helpless child who relied on their parent for protection and everything else. Be willing to see each other as an adult and try to break your relationship out of its past mold. Helpful: Think about how you change when you are with this other person. Make a conscious effort to shun that role and be yourself.

ù Say what you admire about the other person. This can be very difficult if you are angry...especially if you are dealing with parents. Reason: In most cases, parents are already so important to you that you spend a lot of time trying to chip away at them. You do this to bring them down to size so that your strong feelings about them don't control your behavior. If you accept that they are great in some ways--often many ways--you gain some freedom. You're not driven to rebel against them so much.

Raising A Caring Child

Of course, it's important to love our children, says Elizabeth Ellis, Ph.D., author of Raising a Responsible Child. But, she believes, as the pressures of modern life increase, it's tempting to give in to a child's demands in the hope of keeping the peace. And, many parents are learning the hard way that overindulgence is not the answer. Overindulged children tend to become underdeveloped--with poor problem-solving skills, low self-esteem, low-frustration tolerance, reluctance to explore new situations and difficulty dealing with stress.

By learning what children are capable of at different stages of development, Dr. Ellis suggests that parents can provide opportunities for growth. Therefore, her book includes chapters on what to expect in the way of maturity and responsibility for children--from toddlers through young adulthood. Here are three of the author's many suggestions for parents to keep in mind.

LOVE = LIMITS: If you love your child, then give her limits.

Each problem my child handles on his own successfully makes him stronger and stronger.

I want to be for my children what I want them to be: self-assured, calm, clear-thinking, respectful of others self-confident and responsible.

Role of Self-Esteem in Raising Healthy Children

Low self-esteem has been linked to various emotional and behavioral problems, including unsafe sex, criminal behavior and the abuse of alcohol and other drugs. People with low self-esteem are also more anxious, lonely, shy and depressed than those with high self-esteem. Several treatment and educational strategies have long been based on the theory that by elevating patients' self-esteem, they will ipso facto "get better."

"Not necessarily true", says Mark R. Leary, PhD, a psychology professor at Wake Forest University who is studying the role of self-esteem in raising healthy, caring children. Leary suggests that the behavioral manifestations of low self-esteem are not consequences, but symptoms, of real or imagined rejection. "I don't think that self-esteem by itself does very much," says Leary. "If you look at the things that are related to self-esteem, they're really consequences of being accepted or rejected. Self-esteem is not a causal mechanism psychologically."

Then why do we have it at all? Leary suspects that self-esteem has something to do with monitoring the feedback we get from the significant people around us. "It began to dawn on me that self-esteem was really a monitor or a gauge for something else. It is a way of keeping track of how well we're doing socially, which is a pretty important function," says Leary. This idea is called "the sociometer model" of self-esteem.

When this sociometer detects real or perceived rejection, it alerts the individual with dysphoric feelings. Just as hunger motivates us to eat, the loss of self-esteem motivates us to get back in the good graces of others. And, just as eating is necessary to survival, so is belonging to supportive social groups. In fact, self-esteem may similarly have evolved as a way of conferring a survival advantage on primitive human beings.

Several theories of substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, violence and eating disorders fit the sociometer model, Leary says. All of these behaviors may start as a way to seek inclusion in a social group, or, conversely, to blunt the negative affect that comes from low self-esteem. The sad irony is that the plan often backfires: Alcoholics may lose their jobs; violent husbands may lose their families; aggressive children may be excluded from play by their peers.

An interesting exception: Gangs. Although people who join deviant groups often have low self-esteem, once they're in, their self-esteem is as high as anyone else's. Membership may actually raise self-esteem by providing a sense of belonging.

This model has far-reaching implications for education and clinical work, including a thorough re-examination of therapeutic techniques. "It reconceptualizes what it is that people are trying to accomplish when they interact with other people," Leary says. "It's not that people are seeking only unconditional positive regard but they also are seeking a certain level of social inclusion," he says.