The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

Here is a question I received from Carlene:

Dear Dr. Kenner, my husband's granddaughter, Mary, is 15 years old. She's always been a strong-willed child. In the last two years, she has become increasingly belligerent. She curses her parents, runs away from home, and threatens to turn them in for abusing her if they strike her. Okay, my eyebrows went up. In the past, her parents used corporal punishment. It sounds so good with corporal punishment, huh? Her parents would hit her to discipline her. Mary's mother, Anna, never showed any respect for her own parents or for my husband and his late wife, and she doesn't respect me either. I feel for the child because I don't think her extreme acting out is all her fault. How can we help her? Her dad does listen to my husband. What advice can my husband give to his own son?

So first of all, Mary, as painful as this is going to sound, because we all have empathy for a child living under some sort of abuse, Mary is ultimately responsible for her own behavior. There are kids that, and I worked with many kids who lived under abuse, and yes, they develop coping strategies to deal with their problems, and they always have the ability to sit back and think about those problems. Now, do they even know to do that? No, in many cases, on some level, we all know that. But do we do it? No.

In Mary's case, she's 15 years old, she's had a history of having a lot of turmoil at home with her parents hitting her, or at least her mother hitting her for punishment. So given that, now let's look at having some empathy for this young Mary. So if your parents hit you, what message is that sending you about the nature of human relationships? It's telling you what? It's telling you that human relationships involve force, physical force. So how do any of us respond to that? Well, listen, if somebody just randomly hit me, I would either cower, run away, or I would strike back or yell at them. So I'm not surprised that she curses and that she's a bit belligerent, or she runs away from home, because we call those in cognitive therapy coping strategies. And they may have saved her at the time. They may have saved whatever self-respect she was trying to hold on to, but they're not good coping strategies when you go out into a civilized world.

And so when she visits you, assuming that you as a surrogate grandparent, and her dad is the real grandparent, biological one. You know, it's not surprising that she might still act out. So what are some ways your husband, her grandpa, can reach out to Mary or to the dad to have some influence?

I’ve got to interrupt this because we’ve got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, 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 on Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance, that is interesting.

So what are some ways your husband, her grandpa, can reach out to Mary or to the dad to have some influence? Well, you said that his son is willing to listen to him, so the first thing your hubby can do, number one, is listen to his son without “Yes, buts.” It’s called active listening. All of us say, “Yeah, we're good listeners,” or “Yeah, I can listen when I want to,” but to truly listen to someone, you don’t throw in your two cents. You can do that later. But to listen and really be on a person’s wavelength and see the world through their eyes, you need to really sit down and let what they’re saying paint pictures in your mind.

So the son may say, let’s say grandpa talks to his own son and says, “You know, your daughter, my granddaughter, is acting out and she's running away from home. She’s belligerent. I’d love to reach out to you. Tell me what's going on, hon,” you know, grandpa might say that to his own son. Now, the son may not want to talk, but assuming they have a good relationship, the son may open up completely, and it may give you a lot more information. He may feel guilty himself. Maybe he hit Mary too. Listen to your son. He may say he wants a divorce but he’s afraid that he’ll lose his daughter. So the first thing is for your husband to listen to gain information.

The second is safety. I usually put that first, but you need to assess the situation before you can see if there are any more problems with safety. Mary’s 15 years old. Is she still being hit? If your husband reveals more abuse, maybe they need to either go to the authorities to protect Mary right away, or maybe move her out of the home with Anna. Or maybe your son, I don’t know. Maybe your son can move in with you and take Mary along. Maybe they can all go to therapy, because I can guarantee you something, if there’s hitting going on, everybody in that household is in chronic psychological pain, and there are benefits to changing that, so maybe they can be convinced of giving therapy a shot. And I always recommend cognitive therapy because it teaches skills. It isn’t the only therapy that teaches skills, but it’s very geared to teaching you very good strategies.

The third point I want to bring up is family dynamics. Are there any good examples for Mary? Perhaps you and your hubby are good examples for this 15-year-old who is belligerent, out of control, running away from home, cursing. Maybe you’re better role models, and sometimes that one person or two people in your life are enough for you to say, “You know, Grandpa believed in me, or my grandpa's wife believed in me.” I’m calling it the surrogate grandma. “And I turned my life around because of them.” You can’t put that pressure on you because you don’t control Mary’s mind.

Another thing that your husband can pass along to his son is the book How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk. And I even recommend the book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. I know that's with younger kids, but both get across the same point. That’s by Faber and Mazlish, and it’s on my website, DrKenner.com. I consider that book the gold standard of parenting. I used it with my kids. I learned tremendous communication skills with that and how to help your kids become civilized. They don’t come that way to begin with. So as grandparents, you can also read the book. I mean, Mary could read it, but I think she's—I would love it if she did, because she could save herself that way.

So you may be more skilled in dealing with Mary’s outrageous or adversarial behavior when she visits you, and it offers Mary a better view of relationships again. Here’s the final gift I want to give you. Your husband can reach out to his son, but you need to set boundaries for yourself—loving boundaries, because if Mary’s parents, let’s say they’re no longer abusing Mary, and let's say maybe the son never did, but the mother did, and they don’t care to listen to your husband, and they don’t care to have any influence by you. You can send them an occasional email, make a phone call. You can keep some benevolent connection with them, but you want to recognize the following: You can’t force any of their minds. And it’s really important for you and your husband to enjoy your lives together. If you sentence yourselves in your daily lives with the task of trying to save Mary, when Mary doesn’t give a damn, then you lose out on your own joy together, and that’s a preventable tragedy.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner:

What a pleasure to see you again. You look more beautiful than ever. Tell me, what do you think of this building? I’ve been trying to take a poll among the guests. A what? A poll of opinion about it. What for? In order to find out what you think of it yourself.

And that's pretty poignant—in order to find out what you think about it yourself. Have you ever done that? We don’t want to voice an opinion until we hear what everybody else thinks, and then we feel safe voicing something that’s in line with what they say. If you do that, you lose your own mind; you lose your own life. And I don’t mean you go crazy. I mean you silence yourself. And you don’t want to go through life silencing yourself. You want to see the movie and enjoy it, or if you don’t enjoy it, understand why you didn’t enjoy it, and understand why you did enjoy it if you did enjoy it, and then you can share your impressions with other people or your evaluations with other people. You don’t want to always feel like you’re living in the shadows of others.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

Here is an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke:

Sometimes gender is the source of conflict between partners. In general, women want intimate, emotional relationships and are often socially skilled, whereas men are preoccupied with proving their strengths and competence, including in sex; they want to get things done without unnecessary talk. Women sometimes have trouble understanding why men seem to be oblivious to emotional issues, and men sometimes are confused when women get upset instead of just going along or solving problems. In these respects, each feels invisible to the other when they argue; they are on different wavelengths.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance on Amazon.com.