The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and I want to invite Eureka to the show. Did I get your name right?

Yes, ma'am, and you're having difficulty with your five-year-old granddaughter. Tell me what's going on.

We have a lot of difficulty with her anger, and she'll start hitting either a parent, grandparent, sibling, that sort of thing. Okay, we're using the 123 method of discipline with her right now. Okay, that has improved a little bit, but she's a very energetic child. She seems to be very smart.

Is she an only child? No, she's not. She has two siblings, one three and one and a half.

Okay, so she's been dethroned. Do you know what that means? Right? Yeah, when you're in the... I was the oldest of three girls, and when my sisters came along, we all think, oh, isn't that wonderful? Now you'll have a playmate, Alan. And that isn't always the case. It's, hey, wait a minute. I'm no longer on the throne here.

Well, her mother says she's always seemed a little angry when, you know, when her sister was born.

And the sister's the three-year-old, the three-year-old, correct? And then does she have a brother?

Now, the little brother that's one and a half, she doesn't seem to be that way with him.

Okay, but there's a lot... there's some sibling rivalry going on. And she moves into aggression. What happens if she hits? If she were to hit you, what do you do? You said 123, can you just briefly explain that?

Yeah, I do start the count. You know, if she starts the hitting, it's an automatic five minutes. Okay, time out in her room, and I give her the choice of either staying in the room with the door open, or if she doesn't choose to stay there, then we shut the door, okay? And sometimes she'll throw things in the room. She'll throw picture frames. She's hit the windows before, yeah, that sort of thing.

She does do something else that we think is a little bit unusual, and I don't know whether you will or not, but you might see her siblings sitting and playing with Barbie dolls or baby dolls, you know, paper dolls, that sort of thing, right? She's making a tent, a house, yeah, that she has to have either inside or outside. She'll fill a house with umbrellas, pieces of cloth. She'll have a kitchen. She'll take her some food in there. She's done this for probably a year or two.

With her doll?

Or dolls? No, she doesn't really play with dolls, yeah, this five-year-old, yeah, but she does set up these. It's her house. She says, a home away from home.

You think I don't know, or whether I don't know whether she's standing her ground, or what it is that she acts like she wants to be the parent or the mommy.

Okay, what's going on with mom and dad? What does she see in their relationship?

The mom is a stay-at-home mom, she's there all the time, and she is a very consistent and soft-spoken person. And dad, he spends a lot of hours at work. You know, he probably works from 9 a.m. till 7, 7:30 p.m., so he comes in just in time for end of the meal, bath and bed.

Okay, so he gets the functional stuff at the end of the night. Just, does she hear mom and dad fighting at all? Do they argue?

You know, I think they've had some discussions about her behavior, yeah, and that sort of thing. Because my daughter just recently had to fire someone that was helping her do laundry because the five-year-old got into a dispute with her, and the lady brought her inside, and she didn't follow the rules like we had set them up. Yeah, she just started punching, yeah, our five-year-old, just like the five-year-old was doing, and then pulled her pants down and started to spank her.

Okay, so, and she's never really hurt... the five-year-old, this particular lady never has gotten, you know, you can tell there's a personality conflict.

Okay, so here's what it just I'm going to sum up what I'm hearing so far. Eureka.

Hey, I gotta interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. It's a very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance.

I wish I knew more about what girls want from a relationship.

Well, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is, The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at amazon.com.

Huh? The Selfish Path to Romance, that is interesting.

I want to sum up what I'm hearing so far, Eureka, which is that your granddaughter has been hitting you. She's hitting her parents. And it's like, where the heck is this coming from? You know, she should be a darling little five-year-old. So the first thing was, you know, how are you handling it? The second thing was, what is happening? You know, you talk about time out, and you give her some restricted options, which is proper: do you want the door open or talk closed? And then you talk. Then I wanted to know about siblings, because very often when you have some aggression, it can be easily related to sibling rivalry. And I know as parents, I would have been absolutely clueless had I not read a book.

And here's one piece of advice, Siblings Without Rivalry. In fact, I have that book here when I opened it up to page 146: When kids fight, how to intervene helpfully, and there are some things that are counterintuitive that you can do, but I'll get to those in a moment.

Then I wanted to know about sibling issues because we're looking for the causes of her behavior. I wanted to know about the family. You know, what's going on with mom and dad? Is she observing aggression between them? Because kids often mirror their parents, or mirror something they've seen.

The next thing I would have asked, but you already answered it, partially for me, is, what about caretakers? Does she observe this behavior with caretakers? And I wasn't thinking of you. I was thinking you were talking about the babysitter, or someone helping mom out, folding clothes, you know, has she observed it? And so I would look at that also if she's in any school or preschool or daycare, you know, what's going on? So, but the person who actually knows what's going on is whom?

Her.

Yes. And so the skill, instead of punishments, many times punishments backfire. I am all for natural consequences, but punishments that don't match. You know, if a parent takes away a stuffed animal from me when I'm hitting my younger brother with it, okay, that's a natural consequence. But if a parent takes away a stuffed animal from me when I didn't wipe the kitchen table, there's no natural consequence. So it sounds like you already know about natural consequences.

They say that she has no problem at preschool.

Okay, I would then that's even curious to me because if she's not hitting at preschool, what is the difference at home? Is it just a sibling issue that you could read this book, Siblings Without Rivalry? You can go to my website, DrKenner.com, and look up that book. Is it just that, that it's a sibling issue, and that you could nip it in the bud, get it early on, but draw her out?

The fundamental skill what I would do in therapy is I would get the child comfortable enough so she would tell me what's going on at home and what makes her happy and what makes her angry. And when she talks about what makes her angry, that's the key thing that I need to hear.

Listen. Thank you so much for your call.

Thank you for more Dr. Kenner podcasts. Go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this net.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner.

When a person does something irrational, thoughtless, or immoral in relation to a romantic partner and is asked, Why did you do that? A common answer is, I don't know. Often this really means I don't want to know, which means I don't want to introspect, because I do not want to face up to what I might find. Such evasion not only puts you out of control of your actions, it undermines any romantic potential. If you don't know why you act as you do and thus can't trust yourself, how can any partner trust you?

Introspection is essential for making yourself lovable. Be objective about yourself. Living in a subjective fantasy world or playing a role to gain the illusion of self-esteem is self-destructive and destroys romance. Acknowledging your flaws is the first step toward self-improvement.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.