Malin Alfvén - Time Out!: A Parents Guide to Understanding and Dealing with Challenging Children

copyright 2015 by malin alfvn and kristina hofsten

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library of congress cataloging-in-publication data is available on file.

print isbn: 978-1-62914-729-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-62914-881-6

printed in china

Contents

You are not alone!

When you are in the middle of a parent-child crisis, it is nice to get hands-on advice and feel that you are not alone. And it is nice to laugh a little.

Thanks to child psychiatrist Gran Hberg, social worker Eva Gunnarskog, and pediatrician Gsta Alfvn, who helped us with their experiences with children and adolescents.

And thank you to all parents and children who came forward with their situations and shared their thoughts and emotions.

Malin Alfvn and Kristina Hofsten

Defiance and maturity

DEFIANCE AND MATURITY

HE HAS ENTERED THE DEFIANCE AGE, parents sigh when the child suddenly becomes frustrated, awkward, defiant, or angry, and generally impossible. As if there was only one single defiance age! In fact, life is composed of many different periods of defiance. And this is how it should be, because defiance leads to maturity and development. We might even say that defiance and development go hand in hand, that both are needed. Just like a little four-year-old girl who fought a lot with her mom said: I feel in my heart that I need to fight with you. So there is nothing wrong when the child suddenly becomes defiant. But nevertheless, it can be very difficult. We do not know how we should act towards our children. What used to work so well in the past, now does not work at all. We do not recognize our child. We worry about how our difficult child will get along with other children and adults, how she will be treated. We feel weve failed.

Defiance is something we do throughout life

Throughout life, we all enter into more or less intensive periods of maturity when we become defiant and say No, I will not. Though, we say it in different ways at different ages. Already during our first year, we go through at least seven phases of development. We all know about the two and three-year-olds defiance age. New phases of defiance and development occur at about four, six, nine, and twelve years of age, and of course, in adolescence. This continues throughout life. Pregnancy is such a time of development, crisis, and maturity, mostly for the woman but also for the man who is about to become a father.

And what are the thirty-year and forty-year crises if not important stages of development? For women, menopause is a crisis and a period of transition. Retirement is a tumultuous time for all of us, just like the idea of moving to the assisted home. In short, we defy and develop throughout life. Children are very different from each other; they differ just as adults do in temperament and way of being. To speak of a typical two-year-old or six-year-old is just as mad as to speak of a typical thirty-two-year-old or forty-eight-year-old. We are individuals and want to be treated as such. Individuality cannot be tucked away in age bins.

Nevertheless, we broadly follow the same physical development. We learn to crawl and stand, walk and talk, all in this order and at about the same age. Some years later, we are mature enough to learn how to ride a bike and skate. Similarly, we all go through a spiritual development. It is not always quiet and smooth but more typically it happens in sudden leaps, and we oscillate between calmer and more troubled periods. How vigorously and how often we oscillate depends partly on heredity, environment, and external events. For children these periods occur at about the same age, although it somewhat varies depending on how early or late the child is in his development as a whole. Some children start their two-year-olds crisis before the age of two, other children start at three. The six-year-olds perhaps occurs half a year before or six months after the child turns six.

A starting point for something new

All these periods of defiance and maturity mean both a summation and a starting point for something new. We grow and change our ways. We defy both ourselves and our environment. We often become more sensitive and cry easily. There is a reason to it. We need to take care of the feelings we have, both the positive and the negative.

Each defiance age is about opposites. We are happy and sad, gentle and angry, awkward and cuddly. We want to be both independent and dependent. We could say: we are everything we usually are and can be, but with much more intensity than usual. For many, defiance can have a negative connotation. Nevertheless, defiance is something necessary and good. It leads to something positive. Each defiance age opens up the world more and more. Instead of defiance age, we could call it developmental age or maturity period, or I-want-to-and-can-do-it-myself-period.

When the intensive developmental phase has toned down, a calmer period of recovery follows. It is usually called the harmonious five and ten years of age. It is as if one gets back the child one had before the defiance age, though more mature. The stormy time is over and it is a relief. We can finally harvest the fruits, until the child falls into a new defiance age.

How severely the child reacts varies. Some children enter each defiance age with full force, while in others you hardly notice the periods of crisis. One never knows. Suddenly, the calm and nice child who never reacted at nine months or even two or four years, enters a hefty six-year-olds crisis.

Sensitive children (and adults) react more than others when they enter the defiance ages. They have a strong responsiveness and are more vulnerable.