"An Instructor's Advice" by Sue Wright
In my second year of graduate school to earn a master’s degree in Social work, I was field-placed at Western Missouri Mental Health Center in downtown Kansas City, my clinical emphasis of study, children. Though I had taken many courses in psychology by then, I was still only 23 years old and basically clueless about how to counsel children and their parents.
Fortunately, before I was assigned my first case, my instructor shared with me her three basic tips on how to raise put-together children, or as necessary, help repair damage in children brought to our professional attention.
Her first suggestion made perfect sense but is one parents don’t always heed. That is, being consistent and firm with children, and then, whenever sincerely appropriate, providing positive praise for good behavior. She taught me to help parents draw up their consistent—daily—expectations for their kids and then decide what the reasonable consequences would be if they fell short. With any luck, a child, free of confusion about the rules, could relax within those rules. The rules will allow them to stop testing the limits to his or her parents’ patience by acting out and get on with a more satisfying life. In the process, they will internalize an emotional structure that would carry them through the teen years when children by nature seek more independence from their parents, hopefully, with a minimum of rebellious meltdowns.
My teacher’s second bit of guidance was connected to the first—that being the part about expressing praise. She said that to change unwanted behavior in children OR adults, always build on their strengths and forget the weaknesses. Bringing up someone’s deficits only makes them defensive and less willing to give up a hurtful behavior. Look for the best in a person, she coached me, and sing those praises loud and clear.
Her third bit of advice, tied to the last, was to help a patient find something curative and constructive, to fill any void in his or her personality left by the work done in therapy. She cautioned that was the only way to produce a permanent change in someone.
And so, how does any of this information belong in a 2BC blog? Well, as I see it, our emotional and SPIRITUAL well-being, as well as our being physically well, are interconnected. Hence, what better time than during this pandemic to apply my instructor’s lessons to our lifestyles as they relate to living out our feelings, health choices, and what Jesus taught us by example? We could use this unique time to get and stay focused, to draw from the strength of others and ourselves, subtract what’s useless in us, and find a sum that is beneficial not only to our own psyches but to those around us. We would be enabled to explore that most laudable of behaviors among the options prescribed in God’s Kingdom Come; the most powerful tool in our therapeutic kit—the miracle medicine for our souls called love.