Reader Question: I am 40 years old, my profession is finance, and I am the mother of a 13-year-old girl. In the years of marriage, I experienced two infidelities, once during pregnancy, once in the kindergarten class of the child to the third grade, and the latter was discovered by the daughter, which had a very big impact on our lives.
Although there is no divorce, but the relationship between husband and wife is not good, and now it is directly projected onto the child, and the child's body is frequently in condition. Recently, my daughter lost her hair on a large scale, at first she thought it was alopecia areata, I saw a doctor, and her hair slowly grew new, but I found her secretly pulling her hair several times.
As the area of hair loss grew, I communicated with her father many times, and her father thought I was sick and did not believe that the child's hair was ripped off by himself. Last night, my daughter said to me personally: I want to rip off the hair when I see it, and now I want to tear off even my eyelashes.
I would love to take my daughter to a psychiatrist, but I don't know how to cut in and make my child accept this fact?
The General answered:
You are right to conclude that the daughter's problem actually reflects the family's problem.
This is also a typical case in family therapy, where the child is unable to digest and cope with the problems between the parents, so there will be a series of stress reactions, subconsciously wanting to fight and protect themselves.
For example, parents often quarrel, children do not write homework to fight, this time parents will usually focus on the child does not write homework, there will be no quarrel, the child uses his own way to "solve" the problem, to avoid parental quarrels, to protect themselves, but also to protect the survival of the family.
Similarly, your daughter's physical and mental problems have now become the primary problem in your family, and as long as your daughter's problems are retained continuously, you and your husband may not have the heart to deal with the relationship between husband and wife, but are more likely to "work together" to solve your daughter's problems.
There is another layer of reason.
The daughter finds out that her father is cheating, and the father's "betrayal" makes the child feel afraid, she realizes that the father has the possibility of leaving the family to "love" others, and the love she gets from the father will be divided or even disappeared, so she uses the "problem" to keep the father and compete for the father's attention and love.
If after the daughter finds out that her father is cheating, you and your husband do not deal with this matter in time, as if nothing happened, or deal with it in a way of concealment and deception, and never respond positively, then for children, it is indeed a shadow knot.
From the perspective of time, the daughter is now 13 years old, the husband's second infidelity should have happened when she was about 10 years old, the incident has passed 3 years, but your treatment of this is only "no divorce".
This result is clearly only a superficial peace between adults.
You couples may be able to turn a blind eye and pretend that "nothing happened", but for minors, she can't pretend that harm is harm, so the problem to be solved does not only exist in the daughter, the root cause is still from the husband and wife.
Otherwise, it is difficult for the daughter's fear of hair to completely improve, or it will "recur" in other aspects after changing.
Without a thorough "confession" of the husband and wife problem, the daughter's "heart disease" will always be there.
Therefore, just trying to persuade your daughter to see a psychologist is not responsible or "curative", which means that you feel that solving your daughter's temporary problems will be all right, and you and your husband do not need to change and deal with the problems between you, only let your daughter be the "scapegoat" of your family.
Before your daughter receives counseling, I recommend that you and your husband go to counseling first, if the other party is not willing to cooperate, at least you can first receive psychological counseling, and at the same time you can communicate with your counselor about the relationship between husband and wife, and how to get your daughter to receive psychological counseling.
I understand that you didn't deliberately want to avoid the problem, but certainly didn't want your daughter to "carry the pot" for the problems in the family. That being the case, you and your husband and wife should first face the problem and solve the problem, and assume the responsibility of parenthood. #Cheating##Homeschooling ##心理咨询师说 #
General Guo, master of psychology from Beijing Normal University, national second-level psychological counselor, popular author of Han Han [ONE], author of the book works "For Yourself You Are Still a Stranger" and "The World Prefers Self-Healing and Self-Pleasure".