The Bower Place Perspective 

Overview

It is often said that parenting is the most difficult of careers yet one for which we receive the least preparation. Parenting is a humbling experience and brings into sharp relief our best and worst qualities. We may love, protect and fight for our child in a way we never imagined was possible yet there is also a dark side that is less often discussed. Where we may have viewed ourselves as patient, reasonable and kind our child can produce in us a level of fury, irritability and irrationality we do not encounter in any other relationship. Viewed from outside we wonder at a parent’s decisions and incapacity to see their child and the situation with the clarity we can bring yet embedded in the situation it is very different. Our parenting practices are multifaceted and often resistant to change and analysing these through the lens of the Bower(method) can bring a clarity about constraints operating within and between all those involved and a way forward for change. 

The Bower(method) and Parenting 

Parenting issues encompass questions of discipline and the management of children’s behavior including sleep, eating, engagement with others both inside the family and out and sibling relationships. Parents frequently request help with children’s refusal to obey instructions, aggression and violence towards others. Internalizing behaviors like anxiety and depression may also motivate parents to seek help for their child. The understanding of the situation and meeting the adult’s requests will be considered though the four meta-frames of the Bower(method). 

Politics 

Politics refers to the way naturally occurring differences are translated into inequalities which manifest as symptoms. Clearly children are unequal to adults in most dimensions; physically, emotionally, intellectually, psychologically and their access to information and resources. This naturally occurring inequality leaves children vulnerable to become the repository of adults poor emotional control, flawed ideas about parenting and willingness to exploit for their own personal, emotional or sexual reasons. There may be very different bases for a parents’ poor parenting practices, and it is important to understand and identify these.  

The inequality may be expressed the other way around. Sometimes parents present oppressed by their child and unable or reluctant to set reasonable and appropriate boundaries that will protect the child and the family. This may be a result of their own difficult childhood and unwillingness to reproduce this with their child while being ill equipped to know how to do different. It may also reflect qualities or experiences of that child that undermine that parent’s capacity to manage the child well. It is not uncommon in this situation for the parent to accept the child’s demands and conduct to a point and then become angry and violent or excessively controlling of the child. This sets up a fluctuating pattern between excessive accommodation and excessive control, where the parent feels so distressed by their behaviour that they are even more inclined to accept unacceptable, oppressive and poor behaviour. 

On occasion a child appears to have been ‘born into the wrong family’, so different from parents and siblings that both sides are unable to make sense of the other. In parenting in a style that would have been effective with the parent or other children in the family, difficulties may arise which are then exacerbated by the parents intensifying their efforts in applying the failed strategies.  

Whether the situation is one where a parent is effectively frightened of or confused by their child and unable to exercise appropriate authority or the child terrorized or neglected by the parent the same difficulty applies: a fracturing between the exercise of proper power or authority and the willingness to exercise responsibility commensurate with a person’s role in the relationship. This is a sliding balance dictated by the developmental age and stage of the child. Infant depends on the adults to exercise total authority over their bodies and emotions with the parent taking responsibility for feeding, sleeping, comforting and building relationship and the child responding to this. Young children require the parent to continue to exercise more authority and more responsibility over themselves and their child while beginning to give the child limited choice commensurate with their capacity. However, this is gradually recalibrated as a child becomes more competent both physically and emotionally to manage their bodies their feelings and their relationships. Parenting is a balance between management of oneself and the knowledge to know how to apply this to the best possible effect in order teach the child to manage themselves into adulthood. 

Parenting difficulties may be the result of a lack of knowledge or interest by the adult as to what should and could be expected of a child at each developmental stage leaving the parent carrying more or less responsibility than is good for them or their child. Some children are eager to accept responsibilities of growing up while others are content to allow a parent to carry these, resulting in a child who becomes out of step with peers and school. Irrespective of the dynamics which underpin any misalignment of authority and responsibility it is important for the practitioner to identify these and move to a more functional balance as a first step in the therapeutic process. 

Space 

This meta-frame refers to both the inside neurobiological space of each person involved in the interactions and the outside socio-relational world. Inside space encompasses emotions, cognition and memory. For the adult parenting requires a mature level of emotional control so that when they are stressed, angry or overwhelmed by other matters in their lives actions by the child do not trigger excessively punitive, irrational or distressed responses. Children develop emotional control as they mature and are incapable of exercising the same management of their feelings as an adult. Consequently, adults must take responsibility to manage parenting in a way that protects the child from their immaturity and does not escalate exchanges. Children are also developing cognitively, in their capacity to understand language and the potential consequences of their actions and in this domain too require adults to exercise their greater capacity to think clearly about a situation. Memory impacts both adult and child. The parent may vividly recall their own childhood experiences and the parenting they received in a way that impacts their relationship with the child and decisions they are willing to take. This may result in more laisse faire parenting on the grounds that they do not want the child to suffer as they did or replicate the parenting, they experienced citing the rationale that quotes ‘it didn’t hurt me in’. Children will also recall experiences from the past with either this adult or others that will influence their responses to parenting. A child may have learned that if they are excessively upset or persistent the adults will comply or that they should instantly capitulate or hide if a parent appears distressed or angry. 

 Understanding the patterns of interaction in the outside world is crucial to making sense of parenting difficulties. The practitioner should look for fractures, alliances or coalitions between the parent, the child and other important people in their world that are perpetuating the difficulty. This may be within the family, for example grandparents or between the parents and others in the wider community like teachers or others mental health practitioners. 

 Time

An understanding of time past present and future is also important in analyzing the presenting difficulty. Exploration of the adults parenting experiences in their own family of origin can sometimes clarify the current difficulties between them and their child. These formative experiences provide the basis for beliefs about parents, children and parenting that may have gone unquestioned and are driving the behaviors that are perpetuating the difficulties. Understanding key transition points in the adult’s lives and how these have shaped their current behavior can also be instructive. These may include events in their own childhood or more recently between themselves and their child or children. For example, if a child has experienced poor health or received a mental health diagnosis, a parent may become excessively indulgent and accommodating in a way that is unhelpful. In response to this the child may begin to view themselves as less capable and act accordingly. 

Mapping the pattern of interaction between the child and adults in time present can be instructive. Identifying the circular pattern of interaction inclusive of what people do, their behaviors, how they feel, their affect, and the meaning they draw from each interaction will give the practitioner insight into the difficulty and while also providing information of difference to the parent and child. This activity done collaboratively in the session can also give access to underpinning beliefs the parent and child my hold about their relationship and particular difficulties it presents. 

It is also important to include time future. What does the future will look like if the problem does not change and what needs to happen for that change to be affected? Understanding parent and child’s view about the future they can expect will give additional and sometimes unexpected information about the current situation. 

Development  

This meta–frame refers to the development of both family and individual child and adult. Just as individuals have a life cycle stage so do families with expected challenges and tasks to be addressed at each stage. Sometimes when a child’s individual developmental stage is significantly different from their siblings either much older or younger, the family life cycle phase may be out of kilter with that individual child. If child is significantly younger than others, they may be expected to be managing themselves and their lives in ways that is incompatible with their developmental stage and capacity. Alternately a child who is much older than their siblings may be being excessively constrained and are responding to this.  Scenarios like this are more common in reconstituted or stepfamilies where generations are less clearly differentiated. 

 Development also includes genetics and physical characteristics of the child and family. A child who looks older because they are bigger may be expected to behave in ways commensurate with their size rather than their capacity resulting in difficulties. Genetics may also be important where a child looks like and reminds a parent of someone with whom they have had difficulties in the past which may shape their parenting of the child. For example, a child who looks like a parent’s sibling who has a criminal record and is in goal may receive harsher and more controlling parenting than another who does not remind the parent of their relative. Some genetic disorders provide challenges to parenting where the child requires particular accommodation that may be confusing or oppressive to the parent. 

 The family’s culture both in the broader sense in terms of the country and belief system in which parents were raised and individually as the culture of that family, is also part of development. Cultures which hold children closer and make differentiation into the wider community more difficult may experience significant conflict between parents and children. in a multicultural society like Australia, it is important to understand the ideas and expectations of children and parenting for any family with which we work in order of the presenting difficulties. 

Development incorporates identity of everyone in the family which comprises productive identity earning or learning, attachment identity, belonging within the family group, peer identity, friendships, and sexual identity. Effective parenting requires the adults to support the child as they progress along each pillar of identity towards adulthood. The capacity to effectively do this is often corelated with the adult’s own achievement of successful mature identity.  

Summary

In summary, Bower(method) provides a template to analyze and intervene in difficulties of parenting. This complex array of factors can be simplified by attention to each of the four metal frames. this section will also include case studies demonstrating the application of this process to clinical matters.