When I was in 8th grade, walking between classes, the hallways were crammed with humans. A 7th grader vomited and It was like parting the red sea! Everyone cleared a path away from the puke and yet, no one went to get the custodian. It was an amazing sight to watch unfold. I decided to sit and watch it play out as person after person walked by, repulsed, but not taking the next step.(but, then again, neither was I!) I’ve noticed with a lot of families there tends to be a similar system built around NOT dealing with problems.

In families, we build systems to help us survive. It’s like a kind of shorthand. If I yelled the word “SOCKS!”, everyone in my family knows that means someone left their socks in a place they shouldn’t. What happens next is that the kids prone to “pleasing” will come and find out if it’s their socks and the kids prone to independence will hide in hope that if no one sees them, they don’t exist at that moment. (guess whose socks it usually is!) In some families, the next part of the system would be the parent unleashing their fury to get the kids out of hiding and hope that fear will drive them to take responsibility. Unfortunately, what more often happens is that it reinforces that kids need to keep hiding and make excuses to diffuse the anger of the parent, which only makes the parent more hostile and the spiral tightens and continues.

Maybe your family gets stuck in one of those?

(most families do- pretty common!)

 We had a version of this in elementary school where we had to square dance for P.E. class. Whoever came up with this idea? And why didn’t someone stop them? You had to hold hands and square dance and, inevitably, somebody stepped on someone’s toes. I don’t know if every class had this unspoken rule, but NOBODY would ever say OUCH! We just went along like everything was fine.

So how do you get out?

This is just the kind of tangled up mess I love to help untangle!

It’s a process, to be sure. It was a process that got into this situation…so give yourself some time and practice at this.

First, I think you have to name what’s happening in a non-shaming/ non-blaming way. Say “I don’t like socks on the coffee table” instead of “YOU keep leaving your socks on the coffee table”. If you blame or use shame (even unintentionally) it will only end in more hiding and excuses. That’s a pretty good gauge to look at as well. How much are the responses you get about avoiding or excuses? Pretty likely you’ve used shame or blame. (again, very common) Keep it about your expectations and your hopes. “I’m hoping to keep the house clean, so I need socks to be picked up”. “I want the house clean and I see some socks”.

Once you’ve gotten in habit of naming things in this way, it would give you some room to go a bit deeper into the interaction. You could approach the child who avoids picking up the socks and, in a moment where things are going well, dive into the sock issue. “I notice a lot of times when I say socks, they are your socks. Seems like we both end up feeling bad about it and I wonder how we could do this differently?”