978-1572305441

William 89
shoes, see the world from his perspective, be aware of the child’s interests,
concerns, and recent experiences. With this knowledge, an understanding
of behavior and communications is much easier. Without it,
the potential for misunderstanding grows and can lead to conflict, to
challenging behavior, aggression, and “being stuck” in maladaptive and
repeated responses.
A simple but common example illustrates this paradigm. A child
drags his mother by the hand to the fridge but does not say what he
wants or even point to the fridge. If the mother does not infer the child’s
motivation (that he wants something to eat or drink), the child becomes
upset, may start to cry or even hit his mother or himself. Once
the mother opens the fridge, having “read” the child’s mind, she has to
infer again what it is he wants. But it can be only a guess since he cannot,
or does not, communicate with her. What are his favorite foods?
Has it been a while since he had something to drink? Might he be
thirsty instead of hungry? The mother again has to infer a desire on behalf
of the child who cannot communicate on his own. If her inferences
are wrong, temper tantrums, aggressive behavior, and frustration will
follow.
This simple example can be expanded to include a whole range of
other situations, at home, at school, or in the community. The most
challenging situations are those where the child is quite verbal and, on
the surface at least, can communicate quite well. It’s easy for parents
and others to forget that what is being said is often not what is meant, as
in the case of William and the subway cars. I remember one child who,
when he got mad, would say the most horrible things to his father, like
how he was going to cut him up, disembowel him, and feed him to the
birds. Of course the parents were terrified, particularly as he got older
and bigger. They were worried that he could become violent and might
act on these sentiments. But they needed to realize that he was simply
angry and had no more appropriate ways of expressing that frustration.
There was no middle ground to his emotion; he either sounded “violent”
or was placid; there was no in-between. If they reacted with anger
or anxiety, that only made him more frustrated and more violent in his
threats. The key was to recognize that he did not mean what he said, react
calmly, respond to the real message that lay behind the threats, and
try to teach him more appropriate ways of expressing his frustration.
Once they started calmly ignoring the threats and saying things like
“You must be upset. Are you upset? Tell me that you are upset. Now tell
my why,” the threats diminished over time. They realized that their anx-