BPDFamily.com

We have uBPDgf's S13 for the weekend.  I'm looking forward to it - I like hanging out with him.  I'm brushing up on my validation skills for when the inevitable hiccups occur.

I've found a lot of good ideas in other threads here.  I just wanted to start this thread for some quick ideas.  They don't have to have context with them (we all understand the context).

Things like:
'You know your mom loves you.' - not great - kind of invalidating if she's just done something wild

What's a better validation?
'That was hard.  Are you ok?' - validating?
'I know that was weird.' - validating?
'How are you feeling?' - not really validation - ok to ask this?

Is there ever a good time to reinforce that his mom does love him?  Or is it best to leave that between them?

I used to think it was weird that she would always talk about love in the third person.  She often says 'mommy loves you'.  She now occasionally says 'I love you' to him ... after months of me repeatedly saying it to him myself and just modeling what it sounds like.

Your gut instinct is correct -- telling S13 "your mom loves you" would probably be invalidating. Other members have said it better here, but the gist of it is -- whatever it is Mom has just done, likely the scenario is that S13 is describing something wacky, wild, hurtful, bizarre... potentially abusive. When an adult tells a kid in that situation "your mom loves you", it primes them to connect love with being mistreated, ignored, belittled, etc.

"Oh, Mom yelled at you to get out of the car on the highway and walk home? Come on, she didn't really mean it... after all, she loves you so much. And anyway, you got to ride home, so it wasn't that bad, was it?"

Big ol' nope. It's teaching kids to not trust their instincts and perceptions.

Better validations:

(Note, tone and body language are huge for some of these, or else they could come across as patronizing/insincere)

"Oh my gosh..."

"Uh huh... and then what happened"

"Yes"

"Of course you felt that way"

"Wow, uh huh..."

"Anyone would feel that way in that situation"

"How are you doing after all of that?"

"What was that like for you?"

"That was seemed hard. Are you ok?" (note, if it were me, I'd do the edit, so that instead of me telling the kiddo how it was, it's "softer", if that makes sense)

"And then what did you do?"

"Your voice sounds tight to me, and your face seems down. Is that close?"

"We can just be together while you talk"

"I can just be with you while you're feeling that"

"We can just be together and I'll listen to anything you say"

...

I would steer away from questions starting with "Why did you..." as those can come across as accusatory and can push the other person into JADE mode.

Neutral observations plus plenty of space for S13 to describe things on his own would be the recipe from me.

...


Not your job, is the nutshell version.

It can be confusing, because the "content" sounds so positive -- like, why not tell a child that his mom loves him.

When we look at the structure of that interaction, though, there's something unhealthy going on.

One person is taking it upon themselves to describe to another person how a third person feels.

Imagine if S13's mom were to be telling S13 "you know your dad hates you". We would immediately call that out as inappropriate, and rightly so. But we sometimes stop our examination at the negative content, and forget that there's a dysfunctional communication structure underneath that.

It's not our job to tell people how other people feel about them.

S13 can learn and see on his own how his mom feels about him, when he has room to process his personal observations and a neutral, validating sounding board (you!) there for him, no matter what he ends up thinking about his mom. It would be sad if he decided that Mom didn't really love him... but that's his own journey.

Hope that helps!

kells76

Kells has great advice!

With my kids, sometimes they are venting about a particular incident, but they are staying on the surface, focused on what X did.  I try to flip it to focus on emotions.  Some lines I use commonly to draw the kids out -

-What did you think about that?
-How did that make you feel?  (If they can't answer this, I will suggest things - happy, sad, upset, disappointed, etc)
-Huh, were you expecting that to happen? / What did you think/want to happen?  (Kells mentioned the "huh", too.  It's a great way to soften a question that might otherwise seem accusatory.  It indicates you are actually interested in the answer.)
-Is this something that happens a lot/something you feel a lot?

It helps me to remind myself that my goal is not to fix their problem/their relationship with mom.  My goal is to help them find the tools to describe and process what is happening.  People with strong BPD traits can't effectively help their kids learn the language of emotion or how to trust their own feelings.  Kids need other adults to step in and help with that.

If they start attacking motives ("mom must have done this because she hates me"), I focus on the kid's emotion.  "Wow, it must feel pretty awful to think mom hates you".

I don't talk about the kids' other parents' emotions or motivations in a negative way, ever.  I might redirect to "what do you think about asking parent why they did that?" with an added "I realized a long time ago I'm really bad at guessing why people do stuff.  Most of the time it's easier just to ask them."

These are some great notes and tips - some good additions to my toolbox - thank you!

Many times when my Ex vented, ranted, raged, whatever on me, it shut me down and my mind couldn't find a good solution.  And often in such situations there isn't a good solution.  But over time I realized that there had to be some "less bad" approaches to address the problems.  With time I could come up with them but, sadly, not in the moment.

I was reminded of one recently when my ex was ranting on the phone and I hung up on her.  (We were already separated.)  She called right back and yelled not to hang up while she was ranting on me, as though in her entitlement only she had the right hang up first.  I told her, essentially, that was my new boundary.  Of course, it was easier then since our relationship had already imploded and I no longer felt restricted.

Maybe take time with the child to review the quandaries and come up with some belated but "less bad" response scenarios to lessen the damage.  Granted, at first he or she won't do so "in the heat of the moment" but often the pwBPD will act out in unpredictable times but in predictable ways.  Helping the child to identify when things are deteriorating and pondering options to address them should help the child to be able to weather the attacks, whether purposeful or not.