Make a Problem Worse by Sensitizing It - the Back Pain Phenomenon.

We as loving and caring adults want to attend to every unhappy feeling our children exhibit. So we ask, "Why are you pouting?", "Are you mad?", "I know why you hate writing so much!", etc. And their answers could trigger a whole evening of discussion and con-solation. We think that unless they understand first why they are unhappy, they can't become happy.

Or we as reasonable parents want to convince our children why they should want to act a certain way before they act. We hesitate to make them comply unless they agree with our reasoning and see our point. We feel guilty un-less they understand why they are un-happy, why they should be happy, or why they should want to do the things you want them to do, they won't grow up happy and adjusted. Often enough times, a parent tells me she needs her child's 'approval' before coming to see me or signing up for tutoring, while desperately watching their child failing school. Or a parent laments to me, "John gets really mad if he doesn't get his way!" - in front of John and others. And John gets mad even more often!

So in this process of persuasion, much rationalization and verbal back-and-forth occur. But if this pro-cess repeats itself too often, the child becomes sensitized and skilled at poking at our guilt and grateful-ness for his compliance. And gradually, his 'approval' rate gets lower and lo-wer, to the point that any attempt at compliance results in violent protests.

The phenomenon is by no means limited to children. An interesting study on back pains of older, married couples demonstrates succinctly the power of too much attention and sensitization: a subject's chronic back pain gets worse if he/she has 'understanding' spouse. The study examined complaints and actual back pain, measured by electric impulses through electrodes attached to the back and the head, of elderly married subjects. It found that the subjects complained significantly more and had more actual pain if they had very empathetic spouse who tried to 'feel' for their pain and talk about it. The subjects' electrical impulses shot up as soon as their 'caring', empathetic spouse entered the room. Conversely complaints and pain impulses either did not change or actually decreased for subjects whose spouses made light of the issue and/or diverted the subject to engage in constructive activities (instead of sitting there and moaning).

So often inadvertently, we sensitize the person to think more of the issue and give him a forum to express and practice the negative feelings and behaviors. In the case of a child, this could lead to low tolerance of frustra-tion, self-righteousness, impulsivity and non-compliance.

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