Any therapist will tell you one of the problems with working with children are the parents- simply put, most children learn behaviour from their parents. We know phobias catch; a mother scared of spiders is much more likely to have children equally phobic. On BBC Radio Oxford during one of my regular appearances on Kat & Co, we were discussing why restaurants have such terrible separate menus for children, and the reason could very well be that to save time and for convenience parents are serving up such foods and inadvertently they teach their children to be fussy.
It’s happened in my family. I thankfully missed food phobia – it manifested itself as fear of bellows and chimney pots instead – but I took after my grandparents who ate a wide variety of food. My grandmother often said that nothing was off menu as long as it was in moderation, and science has backed this up with research done on gut flora. The wider the diet, the better the gut flora, the better the health of the person, not just physically but also from a mental health perspective.
How we respond to adversity later in life is also down to parental influence. When we do something wrong, the medial prefrontal cortex – just behind the centre of our foreheads – produces electrical activity called error related negativity or ERN. It’s job is to make sure we recognise we have made a mistake and not make it again. However, if we have parents that criticise, step in too fast when faced with a problem and are strict and authoritarian towards the child, then research done at Stony Brook University by Greg Proudfit, shows that 3 years down the line this part of the brain is much more active and later on in life shows higher rates of anxiety.
Parents sometimes expect too much from their children in life as well as in therapy, especially if they have never had to be in therapy themselves. With some children the problems manifest themselves at places where the parent is absent, such as school.
I have worked with GCSE students that are benefiting from hypnotherapy for stress, procrastination and motivation. Quite often I see how strict the parents are being with the child for not working as much as they want them to, or in subjects they have no real interest in. My own parents expressed their desire to see me do well, but allowed me to make the choices I wanted, though some friends were deeply unhappy about going to university to read a subject their parents thought was a good idea. All dropped out and went on to work in areas that interested them, being much happier.
We all want what is best for our family, but sometimes allowing them to make mistakes will benefit them more in the long term.
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Also see: Overcoming exam stress using hypnotherapy
Penny Ling is a widely experienced hypnotherapist who has worked with everyone from top executives to stroke victims since 2007. She has been editor of Hypnotherapy Today Magazine and is a supervisor and mentor for members of the AfSFH and NCH.
Read Penny’s inspiring story “How I beat all my phobias”, or find out more how hypnotherapy could help your problem by downloading “How Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with life”. Feel free to send Penny a message here.