Sometimes when working with a patient, particularly with parents who bring their children for me to “fix” I have to bite my tongue. I instead try to discuss the changes in the family which predicated whatever behavior they have found so concerning they have brought their child to me. Many of them are visibly disappointed when I spend the whole session talking with them about their parenting style and that they need to be in charge.

That is if the child is under ten-ish. Once the child is a teenager you have entered into the second stage of parenting, more commonly referred to as adolescence. In the second stage of parenting the parent’s job becomes one of encouraging the child to explore and the expansion of rules into concept explanation.

Essentially a young child will do what you tell them to simply because you tell them to do it. A teenager on the other hand needs to know why. This change is often quite difficult for the parent but it is also difficult for the teen. I have found that most parents explanation goes something like repeating the “request” louder, which does not work to address the issue in the teen’s mind. The result is much the same process which results in the small child having a total meltdown in a store–they have learned that no does not mean no, it means ask again with more energy. So the parent ends up, like the toddler in the toy or candy isle, screaming the request at the teen because they, again like the child, has learned an inappropriate lesion for a word. Instead of no the parent learns this lesson for why.

Parenting of an under ten child can be described as a dance, parenting of a teen often is a power struggle between the parent who used to feel in control and the teen who wants to establish their own control. The result, for those who end up I my office, is something like a negation with a terrorist and once that stage is entered the parent rarely wins.

Sometimes parents bring their child in without knowing the source of their issues may be the name they have chosen for their child.

I have long known children named “Michael” (like me) tend to be much more rambunctious than their peers but parents I have found do not want to hear this. I can remember being a teen employee of an auto parts store and 99% of the time when a child was running around and tearing the place up if I yells “Michael stop acting like that,” the child would go and stand next to their astonished parent who would ask me how I knew their child’s name was Michael.

Sometimes parents bring their child whom they chose to name after the son of satan from the book and movies The Omen, Damien, or after the psychotic child who killed the town’s adults in Stephen King’s Children of the Corn, Maliki.

They come in desperate. My precious snowflake of a baby is mean, or violent, or won’t listen, and I think and have to bite my tongue to keep from saying out loud, what did you expect would happen giving your child that name?

Maybe the child chose the name, I’m no theologian but I will admit there is a possibility the spirit which entered your child at birth was one bent toward malevolence and unconsciously told you what name to pick.

But even if that is what happened, why take the chance? Override that impulse and name you baby something safe.

I’m just saying words are powerful symbols and names have a lot of power as symbols.

You have been warned….