Читать книгу You Don't Know Anything...! - Nadir Psy.D. Baksh PhD - Страница 18

John was one of the more angry teenagers we have seen in our practice, and for good reason. His father, a single parent raising his son, didn’t believe he should have to go to work and then come home to keep the house. He put responsibility for most of the housework and almost all of the cooking on John’s shoulders. Admittedly, Mr. R. wasn’t the neatest man in the world, so even if the housework was done in a slipshod manner it didn’t come under white-glove scrutiny. Nonetheless, it was up to John to make sure the garbage went to the street on pickup days, the grocery shopping was done, something was made for dinner, and there was enough soda and beer in the refrigerator.

John’s mother died when he was still in grade school, and he tried to help his father out as best he could because he didn’t want his father to be sad. John felt extremely sad at the loss of his mother, but he could tell that the overall atmosphere of the house was “nicer” when he did his part to pick up his clothing or walk the dog.

Over the years, as John got bigger so did the list of chores; in fact, little by little, his father gave him more and more responsibility for home maintenance, both inside and outside, until John was handling the majority of the tasks. That left little time for studies, and almost no time for socialization. John was isolated from his peers because of his “job” and felt like an outsider in his classes. By the time he was a junior in high school, he had had enough, and he snapped. He began lashing out, starting fights among his classmates, and ending up in the principal’s office at least once a week. Then John beat up a boy one year his junior and put him in the hospital. The boy’s parents pressed assault charges, and John was ordered by the court to therapy for anger management.

After several sessions, it became clear that John’s anger was displaced from his father onto his peers. It also became clear that John had become a “parentified” child after his mother died, meaning that he took it upon himself to parent his remaining parent, rather than his remaining parent parenting him. Because he was not given grief counseling, nor any opportunity to talk about his mother and resolve his feelings about her death, John’s feelings of loss, coupled with his anger toward his father for his father’s lack of understanding and exploitation, brought the situation to a very serious head.

John’s father agreed to hear what we had to say but de-fended his right to “make” his teenager “help out” around the house. To date, John continues to express his sadness and his anger in a more constructive manner by verbalizing it, but, unfortunately, his father has not given John the emotional support he craves.