The Psychology of Control. The Child Is Not The Problem

A teen is getting worse fast: school is collapsing, anger is escalating, and violence is starting to show up at home. It’s tempting to aim every intervention at the child. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I slow this down with a true story that shows why that instinct can miss the point entirely. Sometimes the “problem child” is the messenger for a family system built on silence, avoidance, and the management of reality itself. 

I walk through how two parents locked in opposition can turn everyday life into a battle of narratives, with allegations, counterallegations, and children used as vehicles for conflict. You’ll hear how loyalty binds form, why alignment with one parent can feel protective but psychologically costly, and how emotional truths left unspoken don’t disappear. They accumulate. And when a family can’t think or talk about what’s happening, a child may express it through behavior: defiance, collapse, anxiety, substance use, school refusal, antisocial peers, or criminality. 

We also get clear about the psychological meaning of violence in children and adolescents. Violence must be taken seriously, and it also has context: absorbed rage, helplessness, instability, and the loss of safe containment. I share what “healthy control” actually looks like in parenting and family repair, why the “good child/bad child” split is a red flag, and what tends to happen when outside systems like police and safeguarding are forced to step in after years of denial. 

If you care about family conflict, emotional neglect, teen behavior, or family systems therapy, this is a hard listen with practical insight. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more parents can find these conversations.

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Story Matters

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Hello and welcome back. I'm Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist, and this is episode two of the psychology of control. In the last episode I referred to a true story, which I'm going to tell, and which I think demonstrates what can happen inside families when control is used as a mechanism for avoidance and denial. These things have knock-on effects which are considerable, and very often it will be the child or children who become the carriers of this family dynamic, and then they symptomatically express it. What then happens, ironically, is that they are regarded as the problem when in fact they are simply the messengers. True stories are difficult to tell because as much as it brings theory into real life, it it translates theories and concepts into reality. It also carries with it great sadness and disappointment, particularly when trying to intervene, trying to alter the trajectory that is so painfully obvious fails. Why? Because in order for that to happen, people have to face reality. They have to not avoid or reframe or conceal. In this particular case, it was apparent that the likelihood of change was limited, and if anything, it was more as if here was a family on a collision course who refused to acknowledge the frequent warnings, who couldn't read the signs, who couldn't or who chose not to join the dots. Quite why is anybody's guess. But the outcome is something which exposed everything, exposed all of the factors which led to what would best be described as something that was quite disastrous for the child concerned. In my work, we look forensically, and by which I don't mean in the scientific sense, but we examine all the parts, we join the pieces, we see how things have arrived at the point that they are at. That's what we do, and that's what we do best. We invite parents to participate in that process, not to apportion blame, but to try and enable them to better understand the situations that they present and then to adapt to change, adapt to reparation and resolution. But that requires a willingness on the part of the parent to do just that. But if that doesn't happen, we as clinicians, as observers are powerless. We see the inevitable crash, we see it long before others. Sometimes parents will say they see it as well. But if they don't alter the course of travel, then the outcome becomes inevitable and self-evident. So in this episode, I want to tell the story. I don't want to apportion blame because there is little point in that. But I do want to highlight certain things. Because at first glance it appeared to be a family in conflict. Parents who, although living together were effectively separated, that there was ongoing disagreement, there was allegation, counterallegation, and very different accounts of reality. So at some level, this isn't unusual on the surface, but underneath something much more psychologically dangerous was taking place. This was a family system that was organized around silence, avoidance, emotional alignment, and the management of reality itself. And like many systems that are built this way, it functioned for a long time through suppression, i.e., the pushing down, the staying away from reality until eventually it just stopped functioning altogether. This episode is difficult because it concerns not just theory but real life consequence. The consequence of a family system in which conflict replaced communication, emotional truth became dangerous, game playing was just overwhelming, and the psychological needs of the adult slowly overtook, but powerfully overtook the developmental needs of the children. And although I want to say, as I've said, this isn't about blame, because families are psychologically complicated and people suffer, but avoidance itself can become and has become for this family so dangerous. Because children are left inside systems that adults no longer have the capacity to examine honestly. So we have two people who are in opposition. One claiming the other is a narcissistic abuser, and the other claiming that the accuser is controlling, one claiming to be the victim of all manner of wrongdoing, the other declaring innocence on their part, but deception on the part of the other. One person claiming to always be truthful, the other saying that the version of the truth that is being told isn't the whole truth. Children being used as vehicles for expression of the conflict, children being explicitly told critical things about the other parent. One parent voicing quite openly feelings of anger and insulting comments, and thus not just creating but reinforcing a chasm, behaviors which were alarming, concerning, including violence. Two children living in this seemingly affluent and seemingly successful family. By the time I was involved, the system was already psychologically divided, not simply separated structurally, but emotionally organized into separate opposing camps. One child had become closely aligned with the mother. The other, the elder boy, increasingly aligned himself with the father, but not without ambivalent expression. And by this I mean that on the one hand the father was idealized, but on the other, he was attacked verbally, emotionally, and physically by the boy concerned, caught between the rage and anger at the entire situation, but also the sense of loss at not having the father he deserved, or for that matter, the mother. So instead they began serving functions within the family system. Aligned children, or when when children become aligned to one parent, it quite often it's protective and it's emotionally vigilant and it's psychologically loyal, but it's hugely conflicting and damaging. Because the loyalty is so emotionally loaded. To move toward one parent feels like a betrayal of the other. Here's what made this family particularly concerning, and it was silence and avoidance as organizing forces. The conflict was obvious, but the emotional reality underneath it was never genuinely addressed. Instead, difficult conversations were avoided, or if they were approached, inevitably they would break down. Emotional truths really remained unspoken, and tension just continued to accumulate, and everyone adapted around the instability rather than confronting it directly. There were numerous accounts of events which were highly concerning, and very often around the children. And when families get into this kind of pattern of behavior, it's one of the most dangerous things that can occur because children always adapt to emotional atmospheres, even when nothing is openly acknowledged, especially then. Over time, the concerns about the boy became greater. And reaching adolescence meant that he was dealing with a number of struggles at the same time. Adolescence itself is a bit of a minefield to put it politely, and what with neurobiological changes and the increasing need to separate from adults, he was primed to inevitably act out his internal distress and chaos. I've said in previous podcasts that disenfranchised children, and I mean disenfranchised from their families, will tend to join another family. But that family will be made up of other young people who are similarly disenfranchised. And such groups of young people will inevitably behave in ways and express their internal distress, which will raise concern and involve the attention of others. At first, it was increased anger and oppositional behavior, some of it very confrontational, some of it very controlling, some of it very threatening and increasingly worrying. My experience of him was very interesting because that was not something which he demonstrated to me. And I think that was largely due to the fact that my approach to him, whilst underpinned by sensitivity and understanding, was also very boundaried and very clear. And there was something in that which he absorbed because it was really what he needed. He needed the safety of a mature grown-up who did not avoid, who was able to tolerate his dysfunction but doing so in a safe and containing way. And this led me to say this boy is redeemable. But it also led me to say this boy isn't the problem. Yeah, sure, this boy has got difficulties, that's for sure. However, he is not the problem. Sadly, that fell on deaf ears. And the behavior became more serious. Angry and physical behavior towards his mother intensified, and violence emerged within the home. The younger sister also became the target of his aggression. So often it's the case that the younger child will be targeted by the older child, not exclusively. And even when there were episodes of possible harm or physical harm to the child, the parents didn't approach this in a joined up, intelligent way. They took opposing stances, apparently. So here was a boy who was emotionally and psychologically uncontained. This is neglect. It is emotional harm. The behavior wasn't the problem. It was the expression of the problem. And it was the symptom of a family system that had become emotionally unmanageable. Children often express what families can't consciously process. And this is critical to understand. Because when emotional conflict can't be safely thought about, talked about, find another kind of expression, it will just occur through behavior. There will be aggression, defiance, collapse, confrontation, collapse, again, of the sense of self, anxiety, addiction, school refusal or failure, and or criminal behavior. The child becomes the carrier of the system's unspoken dysfunction. And tragically, the more symptomatic the child becomes, the more the family often focuses on trying to control the child rather than examining the system itself. In this case, the escalation was severe. The boys' education began collapsing. There were repeated exclusions, suspensions, failure academically, failure socially, increasing antisocial behavior, association with peers and criminality, drugs, police involvement. And by this point, the family system was no longer containing the problem, it was disintegrating around it, as predicted. I want to talk about the psychological meaning of violence. And this is important because violence in children and adolescents, although it must always be taken seriously, always, psychologically, violence does not emerge from nowhere. In many deeply conflicted family systems, the child absorbs rage, helplessness, divided loyalties, emotional instability, and chronic psychological tension. Eventually, those things become externalized. It's inevitable. But not as a thought or as a verbal communication that directly communicates the distress, but as action. And once that process begins, the risk becomes increasingly dramatic. And the risk itself has a greater quality in terms of the likelihood of repeated behaviors. What is particularly sad about this case is that opportunities for deeper examination existed long before the collapse, but avoidance had become so embedded in the family system itself. There was an avoidance of emotional reality, accountability, examination of conflict, and the effects the dynamics were having upon the children. And this happens far more often than people realize, because facing reality in conflicted systems can feel psychologically unbearable. So people continue to minimize, defend, avoid, reframe, or externalize the problem onto the child. And what of course that does is creates a situation where we have one child who is the problem and the other child who is seemingly, and this is an important point, seemingly okay and doing well, because they're compliant, because my God, they have to be. They don't have a choice. So we have a good child and a bad child. So for the bad child, and of course I don't mean those words, but for the bad child, they are in a self-maintaining system where they are locked into a role where the expectation is that they're going to be problematic. And just to make things even more complicated, they have a sister who is doing incredibly well. Well, that to me looks like a potentially explosive situation. And eventually the distortion within the system can't be contained anymore. And that's what happened here. The police became involved, social services became involved, safeguarding processes began, and suddenly the family system that had spent so long avoiding examination was forced out into the open and it was exposed. So everything that had been psychologically managed through silence, avoidance, denial, rationalization became externally visible. And so at that point, the illusion of control collapsed. I want to say something really honestly and carefully here. Not every case has a good ending, and clinicians have to live with that reality, and despite significant concern, despite repeated attempts to intervene, despite efforts to encourage reflection, communication, offers of help and systemic understanding, sometimes the momentum of the family is so entrenched, nothing is going to change. This is one of those cases. And what makes cases like this so sad is that the child who becomes the problem is often just the child expressing what nobody else has been able to face. And they pay a significant price for this. The child has become damaged by a system that wasn't prepared to face itself, and the consequence for the child is more than significant. So what do we learn? Well, children cannot indefinitely carry the emotional weight of unresolved adult conflict and dysfunction. That silence isn't neutral and avoidance isn't passive. And neglecting to pay attention to those things is explicable but not excusable. Family systems organized around division, emotional recruitment, and narrative control, and chronic unresolved conflict can become psychologically dangerous environments for children, especially when reality itself becomes too threatening to examine honestly. Perhaps the most painful part of cases like this is that by the time the system finally collapses, the damage is already profound. The child has lost educational stability, lost emotional safety and trust, has begun organizing itself around rage and alienation and just trying to survive. And somewhere underneath all of that there is a child who is just trying to communicate something long before anybody was prepared to listen. This is why unresolved family conflict matters. This is why ambiguity matters. This is why silence matters. This is why neglect matters. Because what families refuse to confront psychologically, children will almost always express behaviorally. By the time that expression becomes impossible to ignore, the system may already be breaking apart. And on a final note, what of the compliant little girl? She's okay, people might say. Parents who neglect to consider and be attuned to the environments that they create, and the controls, the unhealthy controls that they live by, create damage. There was a need for control in this case. It was a need for the adults to take control and behave like adults, and to behave like people who recognize their responsibilities and who were prepared to invest themselves in solutions rather than conflict. Healthy control looks like: okay, there's a problem, there are problems, we have problems. We have to be honest about this. We have to find ways of managing this differently and alleviating the awful pressure upon children. That control that recognizes that when things go wrong, there are consequences, and we work at putting them right. The control that recognizes that children don't just exist in the present, they will exist in the future. And what they take into the future will not only inform how they manage themselves, but how they manage their children if and when they have them. It would be nice to end the story on a positive note, but I can't. But you may think, actually, how do we manage in the family? How do we deal with conflict? How do we deal with disagreement? What tends to happen when there's been a rupture? Does it just go underground and we behave as if nothing has happened? What do we say about the other parents of the children? Do we see that there is a kind of alignment that is taking place? Maybe not. But on the other hand, maybe so. And if you are parents who are at this point, as I've described, that things have broken down so badly that your child is failing at school or is involved in criminal activity or is expressing violence, you have some questions to ask yourself because it may not be too late. The boy I was talking about, I described as redeemable. And if people do the right things, join the dots and pay attention and stop avoiding those things which need attention, then maybe the situation is redeemable. Maybe not. Thank you for listening.