Understanding Doesn't Mean Agreeing

I have a 16-year-old son that is starting to rebel against our families values and we have not been able to make him stop. I am thinking of sending my son to therapy but a friend of mine warned me that all the therapist will do is agree with and validate whatever behavior he’s doing and won’t tell them when something is wrong. I am scared that  it might makes things worse. Why wouldn’t a therapist tell someone if they are ruining their lives? 

Thanks for the question. I think there are a number of facets to what you are asking and I hope I can adequacy address them all. 

We definitely have been witnessing an ongoing rise in rebellious or “off the derech” behavior in our children. In fact, I know many “good parents” that despite their best efforts have experienced this struggle with one (or more) of their children. Why this is happening is beyond the scope of this article and has been addressed in many different forums and mediums and continues to be done so. One thing we are noticing is that many of the interventions that used to work in the past don’t seem to be as effective in our generation. I think in particular utilizing the “power” differential we have as parents/adults to try and limit/control our child’s behavior seems to be becoming more and more ineffective. I am not advocating to abolish rules and consequences but it seems that it should not be the primary tool in our toolbox. So, in response to the idea of “making him stop” we might be better served to shift the goal to “help him make better choices”.   

As far as a therapist’s role, there are many assumptions about what therapy should or shouldn’t be, and while I can share with you the approach I use, its important to check with each therapist about how they practice and what guides their decisions when working with clients. 

I believe that one of the primary roles of a therapist is to help bring more awareness and understanding to why a person is choosing to engage or not engage in any particular behavior and to help them examine the pros and cons of their behavior. I do not believe that it is helpful for a therapist to try and persuade, instruct, or convince a client to make specific choices. * Even if a therapist were to choose to try and “convince” a client into making different choices, just as the parent was ineffective in their role the therapist will likely experience the same results. In addition, the client will likely lose trust and feel more unsafe in therapy.  So, while it can be frustrating to parents when therapists aren’t instructing their children how to behave, we can see how it is both ineffective and potentially harmful in the therapy. As far as “validating” what the client is doing I think the primary validation in therapy is in helping them see that you understand what led to their choices (even the poor ones) and that you don’t view them as “crazy” or “stupid”. 

In fact, as you pointed out in the question, there are times where someone’s behavior might get worse initially in therapy although it’s not necessarily an indication that therapy is making it worse as much as we can view it as a part of the process of getting better. Of course, for a therapist each case needs to be looked at individually to determine what is causing a client to get worse. As our children grow older the natural shift in chinuch seems to move from initially instructing (and perhaps enforcing ) positive behaviors to supporting and encouraging our children and primality modeling the attitudes and behaviors we want them to adapt. I believe one of the hardest things for parents is to accept is that our children are separate human being from us and will make their own choices in life some of which will make us really happy proud and some that will be hard for us to accept. Being able to acknowledge and embrace that can alleviate some of the immense pressure we can at times out on ourselves which can lead to power struggles and rifts in the relationship. Of course at the end of the day prayer is something we can and should turn to as without God’s help, I’m not sure if any of us can survive raising a teen :)

*(Of course, there is an exception when the client is engaging in any particularly dangerous behavior we clearly advocate for the side of safety. And while parents have asked me at times “isn’t this behavior 'dangerous' for my child’s soul?”, it is usually detrimental for a therapist to share unsolicited religious values and beliefs as it is typically received as being judgmental making the client feel unsafe in sharing about any religious struggles).

Alexander Rand LCSW-R CASAC