Topic : 05/20 The Dr. Phil House: Brat Camp

I wrote a much longer post and I don't where it landed, so here is an abbreviated one.

Wanted to respond to the idea of my turning the music up on the airplane. That is not even close to what happened. As anyone who has ever sat next to someone who had earphones in and was playing music knows, you can hear some residual noise. That is what Noah was experiencing. It was his attempt to converse with me as as if we were two adults that had him demanding that I turn the music down. Had I, there is no doubt that next it would have been some other ill fated attempt at another complaint. I refused, as I refused to allow him to run the show. My refusal at being intimidated by Noah is what caused him to go off.

To think I would goad any child, much less my child is a crazy thought. What I saw was and is a boy who thinks he is a man, an equal in this relationship. Luckily, we are working on this with daily results.

Wendy

Several things I want to mention. I'll take them each in turn.

First of all, I should probably state again that in principle, I more-or-less agree with your assessment of what Noah is feeling, and what he is going through. As I mentioned in previous posts, I think the main reason he's so angry and he's lashing out so much is that he is lonely - he feels emotionally abandoned.

I also agree that they both need help, although not quite the type of help that you're implying. It just seems to me that this whole situation arose from Wendy trying to shoulder more emotional weight than she's able to carry alone.

That said:

• Wendy probably didn't have any idea why her son was so angry. Most people don't have the ability to see themselves as others see them. Also, when somebody is going through a lot of emotional turmoil themselves, this means they have less brainpower to devote to other people's pain.
• By that same token, I do not believe that she is lying. I think it's Noah who's lying, at least about the physical abuse. That's not to say that it's entirely his fault - like I said, he's angry and appears to feel abandoned and betrayed and completely alone, so of course he's lashing out.
• I fail to see what is so incredibly immature about turning up the music when you're upset and angry. Somewhat immature, sure. But not enough to devote paragraphs to it. Adults do things like that all the time. It's not like we hit our 18th birthday and suddenly become perfect people.
• It's strange how you look in her eyes and see fear, where just about everybody else saw anger. Not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying it's far from as obvious as you imply.
• Everybody comes into this board carrying the weight of our past experiences. It's important to be able to distinguish between what actually happened on the screen, and what you're reading into it because of what you yourself have been through... and you should at least try to do that before attacking people. Especially people who are already having a hard time and are clearly doing the best they can.

Hahaha, me too! Whats the big deal?    duh...........! there is none read, the hole post nest time before you post!!  lol.......

yoshiyoshi: to be honest, reading this post, I do think that you are overidentifying here - seeing a few things that are similar to your own situation and concluding that Wendy and Noah's situation must therefore be identical.

I am not a psychologist, just an amateur, and all I know thus far of Wendy and Noah is what I've seen on the show, what I've seen on the web, and what I've seen here. And all I know of you is what I just read. But even with those limitations, I can see many things that are different between your situation and hers.

We've seen nothing on the show to indicate that Wendy's emotional state is caused by anything other than grief and frustration. I might be wrong, but I don't believe that grief and frustration require medications.

I do see where you're coming from when you say that Wendy was not listening to Noah - I agree. She appeared to be trying to listen to him, and was in fact responding to what he was saying... the problem is, what he was saying was, I believe, exaggerated (if not outright lies. 10-year-olds just do not talk like that unless it's rehearsed). So of course she was angry. Of course she wasn't seeing how much he was hurting right then - nobody would, after being falsely accused by their own child of being physically abusive and emotionally hung out to dry.

I do agree that Noah is hurting. I think he's lonely. He's clearly angry. I think this has a lot to do with being lonely because, frankly... who wouldn't be lonely in that situation?