(Ages 0 to 5) Fear of people or trust seeking is the first psychoemotional task of a child. In essence, resolving stranger anxiety is the initial developmental hurdle. If a child is anxious around people, they will behave in extreme ways. That is, their behavior will seem extreme to others in any given situation. For example, the underachieving child struggling with the fear of people will disproportionately respond with physical aggression to a verbal engagement, or, the child will react to people by acting out, seemingly to cause others to reject them. In essence, this is "the test of trustworthiness”, that children who are fearful of people consistently create. For largely unknown reasons, some children appear to inherently struggle with resolving stranger anxiety. In other circumstances, such as adoption, post-partum depression, or extended infant hospitalization a child must overcome additional challenges in emotionally working through the fear of people. Even in the best of adoption arrangements, an infant must resolve anxiety related to discrepant sounds, smell, and touch. The latest developmental research confirms that, even in utero, a child’s perceptual system is active and continues a rapid, dynamic development in the first years of life. The bonding process is now fully accepted as critical to reducing an infant and toddler’s fear of people.
Without successful resolution of this fear, a child will enter the school setting with immediate and significant behavior problems. There may be a diagnosis such as, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, or Asperger Disorder. The fear of people or trust problems can operate as a dual problem with one of these disorders or a misdiagnosis could have occurred. Indeed, the trust-seeking fear response involves many of the same behaviors as do the neurodevelopmental disorders such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Asperger Disorder. A comprehensive evaluation can help clarify such diagnostic questions. Answering this diagnostic question is critical because the derived medical and psychological treatments vary.
Trust Seeking Treatment
Unfortunately, if a child has not resolved this fear by age 5 to 6, the problem only tends to compound. Regardless, intense psychological therapy (one to two times weekly) with associated parental counseling (two to four times per month) is typically necessary to develop positive therapeutic direction. After approximately two years of this intensive treatment, less intense but ongoing treatment will be required through childhood and adolescence.
(Ages 6 to 10) For those children fortunate enough to have largely resolved their fear of people, the next stage in psychoemotional development involves resolving a fear of failure. All parents recognize the time in a child’s life (ages 6 to 10) when a child desperately wants to please others. In fact, children frequently overextend themselves trying to please. For example, a child climbs on top of a counter to retrieve a canister of sugar, only to spill it on the floor, or, a child breaks the china trying to surprise the parent by setting the table. Regarding school, children struggling with the fear of failure, which is the essence of approval seeking, have ideas of perfection. Perfectionism is incompatible with elementary school. That is, elementary school is a dynamic learning environment. Children must move fluidly from task to task and begin to learn the cognitive skill of multitasking. A child with ideas of perfection becomes utterly frustrated in this setting. They are quickly overwhelmed with the fear of failure. They cannot emotionally accept less than perfection. This child quickly begins to project blame, i.e., "The teacher didn’t tell me we had to do that paper”, or "I gave my book to Billy and he didn’t give it back so I couldn’t do my work”. Of course, the child is unaware and unable to explain this pattern of fear of failure and avoidant behavior. Soon, the family becomes frustrated with these excuses and projection of blame. In turn, the family’s confusion becomes frustration, frustration becomes anger, and the "nice boy” that everyone likes begins to snap-become tense and easily agitated at home, mean toward siblings, like a Jekyll and Hyde. This closet perfectionism can also soon look like laziness. The child, trying for perfection, exhausts all energy worrying before even beginning the task.
Importantly, if the psychoemotional fear of failure is not resolved it will persist on through life. This pattern of underachievement is most prevalent and most confusing. On the surface, at first glance, the child appears to "have it all together”. They are dressed neatly, hair combed, and they carry a backpack loaded with books. Unfortunately, they can’t seem to actually get started on a project. Their pencils are sharp, a nice notebook opened, but the pages are empty. They just can’t seem to find that perfect opening sentence for their story. For the older approval seeker, more experienced with the self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, their latest failure and subsequent parental confrontation elicits hostile, insistent, and often absurd projection of blame. Blaming others works to sidestep internalized shame. Too much shame upon a child fearful of failure can literally drive them to their wits end. Often times these children covertly consider suicide. Sometimes, a suicide attempt by an older child or young teen can be triggered when an approval seeker is "too full of shame".
APPROVAL SEEKING TREATMENT
The treatment program for an approval seeker is less intense than a trust seeker. Meeting one time per week for 8 to 12 months, while parental counseling occurs one to two times per month, typically results in successful treatment outcomes. The approval seeker is able to form the therapeutic relationship necessary for successful treatment outcomes. However, they persistently deny a problem even exists. In fact, as many approval seekers begin to succeed with treatment they say-"See I told you there wasn’t a problem”. However, in later years, it is often the approval seeker who mails a letter to a psychologist saying "Thanks for all of your help, I'm happy and doing really well".
(Ages 11 to 14) Once a child has sufficiently resolved trust issues to form stable relations and holds sufficient self-worth to accept setbacks and learn (versus punish/self-shame) from setbacks, a child is confronted with developing self-confidence. Fundamentally, self-confidence involves the belief in oneself to consistently achieve a need or attain a goal. For example, does the child feel confident in writing an "A” paper, or, simply, is a child confident they can kick a ball through the goal most of the time? Dependence seeking children try neither. Rather, they "talk a good game”, but never put themselves to the test. The dependence seeker is plagued by self-doubt. They have very low self-confidence. The dependence seeker does not believe they can write an "A” paper or kick a goal. Hence, they make excuses or try to get others to do their work. If these approaches fail, the dependence seeker lapses into statements of "I don’t know” or "I don’t care”.
As with all underachievers, the dependence seeker states they want success and, indeed, they do want success, but are conflicted by a fear of success. The dependence seeker states "I could do it if I really wanted to, but why bother, I don’t care”. Success for the dependence seeker means they will only have more responsibility (increased responsibility is the greatest fear of the dependence seeker). Remember, because the dependence seeker has low self-confidence they attempt to get others to do their work. The dependence seeker can form relationships and may have sufficient self-worth to believe they deserve success, but the dependence seeker is not sufficiently confident in their own abilities to persist in striving for success. Moreover, success by one’s own merits only means more responsibility. Hence, the dependence seeker becomes the master of excuses and the master manipulator-able to get others to do their work. Inevitably, parents are up late typing a paper or a friend has done all the research on a paper. This pattern establishes a vicious cycle, the paradoxical trap-the dependence seeker fears success, they cope with low confidence through avoidant behavior, thereby, they never develop more confidence. In a dependence seeker’s mind, success occurs only because they were able to cajole someone else into doing their work, leaving the dependence seeker to languish with low self-confidence, never pushing or testing themselves.
DEPENDENCE SEEKER TREATMENT
The treatment program for a dependence seeker involves weekly meetings for six to ten months. An aftercare program with the dependence seeker meeting one time per month, is critical to prevent regression. Regarding parent meetings, two meetings per month for approximately six months is required. These parent meetings can then be reduced to one time per month. Parents of the dependence seeker are typically caught in their own emotional conflict-best summarized as enabling. More specifically, while one parent enables the other confronts the underachieving child. Changing this parent pattern is essential to successful treatment. This treatment goal sounds much easier than it is in reality. The dependence seeking child can bait hope and then hook a parent into repeating the enabling cycle.
(Ages 14 to 18) The independence seeking child has enjoyed a pattern of early success in their lives. Not only have they substantially resolved the three earlier stages of psychoemotional development, they have been tangibly successful, obtaining good grades, sport success, and holding close friends. The independence seeking child falters at points of major transition. For example, when a child is moving from the eighth grade to high school or moving from high school to college.
The independence seeking child is struggling psychoemotionally with the development of self-esteem. The underpinning of self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence, are sufficiently developed, but when faced with significant challenges, the independence seeking child is shaken, unsure if they can master this next step in life. In this circumstance, the independence seeking behavior can be characterized as "the classic teenage years”. The independence seeking child becomes especially argumentative with adults. If a parent comments "Look at that beautiful blue sky”, then the independence seeking child retorts, "The sky is not really blue-didn’t they teach science when you were in school?” The independence seeking child’s shaken self-esteem is projected onto others. In essence, the independence seeking child is trying to prove their esteem through winning arguments with adults and authority figures.
INDEPENDENCE SEEKING TREATMENT:
The treatment program for an independence seeker is less intense than any of the earlier stages. Three months of weekly meetings with the child followed by meeting one time monthly is typically recommended. Again, typically, meeting with parents for a total of four times or one time monthly is recommended. Independence seeking children respond quickly to treatment, as they have sufficiently developed psychoemotionally to gain insight into their unconscious patterns and can, with proper direction, make effective behavior change in these patterns.
