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Thursday, 08 May 2008
Permission and action
Parents give children permissions when they are growing up. When a permission is given the child gets the message that it is OK or they are permitted to do such behaviours.
There are 4 different levels of permission giving that parents can do to children
1. Doing nothing
2. Verbal permission giving
3. Directly observing the parents doing the behaviour
4. Parents doing the behaviour in the relationship with the child
Take the behaviour of giving encouragement or positive strokes.
1. The parents never give encouragement or make statements to the child about giving encouragement to others. A child from this background is getting the least permission to give encouragement so that in adulthood this person is the least likely to give positive strokes to others.
2. The parents tell the child that giving positive strokes is the good and right thing to do. This is a mild permission so it might occur sometimes when the person grows into an adult.
3. The child directly observes mother giving encouragement to others. This is a strong permission and the person is likely to do similar behaviour when they grow up.
When humans observe others doing something that is an instant permission to do so oneself
4. The mother directly gives the child encouragement. This is the strongest type of permission as the behaviour of giving encouragement is brought directly into the relationship between the mother and child. This is the strongest type of permission that a parent can give to a child and it is quite likely that as an adult this person in some way will do the same behaviour.
So if a parent is wanting a child to exhibit certain behaviours in adulthood, the more they give the stronger types of permissions the more it is likely to rub off on the child. Of course the same applies for feelings an attitudes as well. For instance racist attitudes and emotions such as depression or anxiety can be giving with varying degrees of permission.
Also the same applies with drug use. The parent who says to a child “Don’t take drugs” is giving a level 2 permission. If the child then sees first hand the parents drinking alcohol and taking tranquillisers then they are giving a level 3 permission to take drugs.
When I worked in a prison I was always in two minds about children visiting their fathers’ in prison. Such visits were great for the inmates psychological state and of course allowed the father and child to have an ongoing relationship whilst he was incarcerated. The problem is that it also normalised prison in the child’s mind and gave a level 3 and 4 type permission about going to prison.
This mother is giving a strong permission for her children to grow up and enjoy life.
Then there is the contentious area of hitting.
1. The child hears and sees nothing about one person hitting another. No permission to hit is being given.
2. The father advises his son that hitting people on the sporting field is OK and that one has to stand up for himself in the playground and punch others at times. A mild level of permission is being given.
3. The child sees father getting involved in physical fights with others. The child sees father hit mother. A strong permission to hit.
4. The child is hit directly by mother or father. The strongest permission to hit is given as it is directly in the relational of the child with the parent.
Please note that I have said here that the child is being given permission to hit. I have not said the child is being given permission to hit others. The person who was hit many times by their parents is probably less likely to hit others than those who were not, because being hit usually lowers the self esteem as raises the self contempt.
But hitting is in the psyche of the person. They will however tend to display that permission to hit in one of two ways. The first is that there will tend to be a pattern where they get involved in relationships with others who do hit. The girl who was physically abused by father, will marry a man who does the same. The woman whose parents never mentioned or showed hitting is far less likely to marry such a man as she has much less permission to do so.
She may not even be hit herself. I recall a client who was a small, timid and quiet type of woman. She was hit many times by mother throughout childhood. When she reached adolescence she became a skin head and reported seeing many quite severe beatings by others in the gang. She was never actually hit herself but she got herself involved in a violent subculture where there was a lot of hitting. Of course she did, because she had been given the strongest permission with regards to hitting.
The other thing that a person with a strong permission to hit can do is actually hit out, but they don’t hit others they hit them self. If they have a low self image then they are more likely to do this than hit others. The hitting can take the form of actually physical self harming, or more commonly such people have a very large and active internal critic sitting in the back of their head. At the slightest transgression the internal critic will launch into an angry tirade at the individual and verbally hit self in the most viscous of ways.
Most parents would wish that the levels of permission giving were in fact the opposite way around so that, “Do as I say, not as I do” was the rule of law in child development. Alas it is not. One of the most sobering things for a parent to do is to eaves drop on the children when they are playing with friends in the backyard. It can be an eye opener indeed!!
This post will be followed by another one on the paradoxical nature of change that came up in the Erskine workshop a few weeks ago.
Graffiti
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