Adapting to changing cycles part of family life

It was my high honor and good fortune to do post-graduate work with some terrific supervisors and researchers who were, in my opinion, on the cutting edge of therapeutic theory and models for therapy. Together, we shaped a model for family therapy called "Systemic Life Cycle Therapy."

Systemic therapy, also called "family systems therapy," begins by presupposing that there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as individual behavior. Individual responsibility, yes! This is non-negotiable for a thriving, competent human being. But virtually never do individual human beings behave out of a vacuum of merely individual will. All individual behavior is, in some way or another, a response to "the system."

Said more simply, a 16-year-old boy does not simply decide to burn down the high school gym on a random Tuesday night just because.

The "life cycle" part of Systemic Life Cycle Therapy was our attempt to identify and make overt the myriad ways in which a family system could break down in a necessary cycle of life.

Necessary life cycles break down into two types. The first are developmental cycles. Children move through development of language, development of motor skills, cognitive development, etc. Puberty is a cycle of life. The development of personal, social and emotional competence invites competence, which promotes the development of increasing autonomy. Peer relationships move through developmental stages. Dating, love, sexuality and marriage force a family system into new cycles of life. Every birth and every death mark a new cycle of life spinning through the family system.

The second kind of life cycles are called intrusive cycles. These are not the normal, more or less predictable biological, psychological and social developments. Rather, they are mostly unexpected intrusions of life events. A house fire. A burglary. A crime, particularly an assault or legal/social injustice. Accidents. Serious medical issues. Economic crises. Vocational crises. Even some positive events intrude upon the family's life cycles, such as winning the lottery .

When life cycles, it invariably provokes loss, goodbyes and grief. The reverse also is true: Our willingness to do the work of loss, goodbyes and grief allows life to cycle. And here is a consistent truism: When life cycles are impeded, because we stop doing the work of loss, goodbyes and grief, children act out. As if by instinct children, will try to ventilate the unspoken, unadmitted energies of a stagnated family system.

So, when I work with marriages, parents, children and sometimes entire families, my systemic view comes with these presuppositions ...

It's a child's job to urgently accelerate life cycles. Because they are children, they will invariably chafe against those life cycles with no little naivete and sometimes recklessness. Conversely, it is the parents' job to strategically manage a child's movement from life's cycles.

It's a child's natural tendency to resist and retreat from life cycles, yet to criticize the parent for the protracted and even unnatural dependencies. Conversely, it is the parents' job to birth the child into life cycles and the personal responsibility demanded thereby.

It's a child's job to punish the parent for not allowing freedom and for allowing freedom. It is, then, the parents' job not to take the punishment personally and to stop being surprised by the contradiction.

The goal of all healthy childrearing is a continuous, cyclical saying goodbye to our children ... and hello to competent adults.

And now, some strategies ...

From birth to age 12 to 14, parents teach values. From there to emancipation, parents defend values.

Parents are ever-ready to renegotiate freedoms and attach those new freedoms to new responsibilities.

Be conscious and responsible for the dynamics of your marriage, which will otherwise leak out and be acted out in your child's behavior!

Monitor the emotions surrounding your interactions with your child. The more intense your indignation, the more likely it is that you are protecting your own ego needs instead of being an effective parent. Ask yourself: "Am I focused on my child's well-being? Or am I protecting myself from the work of loss, goodbye, and grief?"

Sometimes life cycles get stuck in family systems. But, from within, it's hard to recognize that is what's happening. It just feels like maddening, inexplicable conflict. Often in therapy, when the "stuck cycle" starts cycling again, the conflict abates or disappears. Just as inexplicably.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.