“Please change my child”

Irene came to us for a consultation regarding her nine-year-old son Gary. She was concerned about his aggressive behavior. Turns out that Gary’s father left them, and Irene brought her son to live with her parents in a different city. He spent there most of the time because she needed to “take care” of her personal life. Gary was 4 years old when this happened. Recently, Irene took Gary back to live with her – his dad returned, and they decided to try to restore the family relationship. But now the “restoration” is not going well because of the aggression of the child: he gets into fights at school, or breaks someone’s window, or is being rude to his parents… Irene has already visited many psychologists. She thinks that they are not very professional because they tell her that her child is normal. Irene asked us to help her.

Even from this short story, it is obvious that the problem is not with the child but with the family system. What happened in this family? The child was deprived of the main thing – basic trust. Since early childhood, he only heard his parents’ quarrels, they didn’t pay attention to him, and later simply got rid of him. His life did not have stability and certainty that no matter what happens there is a place in this world where he is always loved and wanted, where he doesn’t need to be scared.

His dad left, and his mom brought him to his grandparents. You can try to explain that there were very good reasons for this, that this was the “best” for the child, but from his point of view it looks the same: they got rid of me, nobody needs me.

Then the parents got back together and brought back the child. His aggression is a response to the lack of trust. He no longer trusts the parents who have already left him once. Now Gary is trying to show them his worst self, trying to understand whether they would leave him again. It is as if he is testing them: “Will you love me like that? And what if I misbehave even more?”

Gary desperately needs to discharge the accumulated aggression that he cannot spill directly on the people towards whom he feels it. And he also needs a stable basis – the trust that his parents will not leave him again. And only his parents can give him that.

But they don’t want to hear about it. They want a “magic pill” to deal with the aggression. They want their child to be changed but they do not want to change themselves. His mom continues searching for a “good specialist” who will correct everything. She refuses to work with the specialist herself, as you could have guessed. The idea that something may be wrong with the parents, not with the child, is insulting to her. This is such a sad story.