Parenting courses help families heal

BY KAREN KOTZE

She doesn’t fit the stereotype. A university-educated mum in her early 40s, house in a good suburb: A professional woman.

And yet in her own words, her relationship with her teen daughter was "out of control, physical and sometimes dangerously so".

Betty – not her real name – has volunteered to talk about her experiences in the hope of encouraging other parents to seek help with their anger.

"What undoes your head is that when you start spiralling, you know it’s wrong, you know where it’s going but it’s like a switch in your head goes off and you become devoid of all reason and logic," she says.

"To be brutally honest, all you want in that moment is to win. Win the argument, the fight, whatever. You just want to be right and have that power."

She says her serious battles with her daughter started when the girl was seven.

"I hear myself say that and I think what an idiot, what adult engages in battle with a child?"

But Betty is not alone.

With the help of Philippa van Kuilenburg who offers group counselling with the not-for-profit group the Parent Trust, she is one of many parents who confront their own demons through discussion and psychodrama.

Last year the Parent Trust ran 54 groups from Whangaparaoa to Papakura.

"People can learn to become the parents they want to be," Mrs van Kuilenburg says.

The counsellors are all parents themselves, and specialise in defusing toxic family relationships.

"We can’t make stress vanish. But we do offer parents better ways of coping.

"This creates better balanced individuals who parent more efficiently," she says.

During an eight-week course, parents work through their own traumas and belief systems, then learn healthy new coping strategies. There are optional follow-on courses.

"I knew I needed help for my temper and was in counselling for many years," Betty says.

She attended a number of courses to try to break her old behaviour patterns.

"I even did my thesis at university on relationship theory.

"This course unlocked the door for me though, through psychodrama. I had intellectually put myself in other people’s shoes, but not emotionally, and that was the key."

Betty’s daughter is talking to her, confiding in her, and even becoming affectionate with her again.

Progress is slow but steady.

"Before, I would tell her she wasn’t safe, and to get out of my way when I felt my triggers being flipped," Betty says.

As a divorced mother with an only child, there were no buffers and these arguments would escalate quickly and dramatically.

"She pressed my buttons because she reminded me of unresolved parts of myself. It was never even about her, just what she mirrored to me," Betty says.

Betty says as a child she was the scapegoat in a physically violent family, and that what she did was what she was taught by her own family.

Her new parenting style has ostracised her from her siblings, whom she says tell her to "stop talking funny" when she applies the strategies she has learnt.

"What they want from me is the response I’ve always given them, for me to play the role I always have, and to buy into their dramas and those old ways," she says.

"Now I’ve gained my daughter back and lost the extended family. But I’m more than okay with that.

"I hope that I’ve made enough progress to stop the cycle here, so my daughter adopts these strategies, rather than the toxic ones I learnt."

The next course offered by the Parent Trust is Being the mother you want to be and runs from May 14 to July 2 from 12.30pm to 2.45pm at the Community Church Centre, 1 Waipuna Rd, Mt Wellington.

For more information go to www.parenttrust.org.nz.

- © Fairfax NZ News