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This Sunday on father's day we went to see the movie Inside Out. The main intention is to entertain the kids, which pretty much describe most activities that we do. It turned out to be an amazing movie. It is a fantasy dramatization of what is happening inside a person's mind, which having several different cartoon figure that stands for different emotion, fighting for the "control panel" in our head. The story evolves into a control room trouble and that leads the girl into an emotion wild ride, making the once jolly little girl suddenly become depressed and irritable. As a father facing some challenging relation with my growing son myself, I found a lot of support in this story. My kids are perhaps mildly entertained with the movie. But I found my self teary eyed, which I wipe out before the movie ends, because it resonate so much.

The story also give me new language to communicate with my son. These days his "disgust" mind is very active, enough to hurt my feeling every time I cook for them. Now when he say "ewww" to my cooking I can response that his green disgust figure is in charge of the "control panel".

I am hoping to see the movie with my son -- he is seeing a therapist to treat anxiety/depression. He knows that Lewis Black plays one of the characters, and knows him from The Daily Show. I think he found it fascinating that someone could be funny AND angry. A lot of the content was a bit over his head so something else appealed to him about LB.

Glad you have a positive review about the movie! How does your son respond when you reference his moods that way?

It did not developed into a very relevant conversation. Still I like to have a different way to talk besides just me saying what is right and what is wrong :)

Does he respond well to validation? My son doesn't like my cooking either (I think he's a Highly Sensitive Child with some sensory processing issues) and at first I validated him (then made him eat it anyway). Lots of tension around eating, which made me feel awful because N/BPDx was particularly harsh about food and our meal times were awful. I didn't want to keep that tradition going. 

And then I got a tip from a counselor and started to treat the task of finding foods S13 likes like a mission to understand better what he was experiencing. And when it was no longer a power struggle but a fact-finding mission, I managed to convey my concerns (that he was not getting enough of certain foods, that it took longer to make multiple meals, that it's more expensive to eat snack foods). For a while he actually got involved in making parts of the meal, although that has gone by the wayside because all of our animals followed us around in the kitchen when we were there together and I realized I like it best when I'm cooking on my own  :)

It's still not ideal. It's also no longer a source of misery.

Sorry to hijack! We're hopefully going to see the movie this weekend. S13's sensory issues make it a challenge because he has a hard time with ordinary normal things that require a lot of validation. 

I am trying my best to learn what works for us. Frankly there are far more examples of hitting the wall than a smooth conversation. I haven't practice validation that much. There are so many times when he was at rage, such as when his little brother mess up his stuff, that he could not listen to anything.

I don't have the sibling issue to deal with, so don't have to mediate that kind of thing. However, I did notice that validation is like filling a large tank. It's about letting them feel heard, it's also about teaching them how to "do" relationships. We all get angry, it's how we recover and repair that matters. Especially our kids who have BPD parents and saw bad examples of how to resolve conflict.

Validation all the way. Even when it doesn't seem to work.  *)

My kids (S25 & D21: no typo, they're adults) took me to see Inside Out too.

Divorced and they live with me (while not in college).  Lots of memories for me.  Enjoy them!