Yes. And.

One of my favorite concepts is that of dialects. Dialects are, simply, when two seemingly opposing things can be true at the same time. In other branches of thought, this might be called Duality or Paradox. In therapy, one goal is often to work towards understanding that two thoughts we would like to cancel each other out can actually both be true at the same time. Preferably without distress or a debilitating pressure to change one of the thoughts or the thinker. It requires a willingness and acceptance that is so hard when one of the thoughts is associated with big feelings or early adverse experiences.

So... this comes up A LOT in my work with parents. A LOT. Sooo much! LOL. Because, as adults, we have a lot of things that we want to be true and we often feel a lot of pressure to either control our thoughts, our children, or our partners in order to make that thing true. A common example: I made a good parenting choice AND my children are mad at me. If you are someone who struggles when people are upset with them, you may feel pressure to change your good parenting decision in order to appease the hard feelings. When parents bring their children to me, it is usually because they want their children to change toward the parent’s goal of "behaving better" or, at minimum, agree with the changes a parent is making with no fuss.

On my mind today are two common parenting dialectic situations.

The seemingly incompatible things:

Example 1: Your child's [disagreeable] behavior may not be your fault, AND you likely still have some power and responsibility to help change it.\

Why they exist together:

Children are often not the change agents in their families or classrooms. Their behaviors have developed over time and will require changes in their relationships and their environments to support changes in attitude, feelings, and the use of different skills. The person in charge of those situations, then, is the source of change, rather than a switch located inside the kiddo. (A related TED Talk could go here about whether a parent should "even bother" to make changes if "no one else is going to." Spoiler alert: Yes.)

Example 2: Your child's [disagreeable] behavior may be getting on your nerves AND it may be totally ok, developmentally appropriate, or your distress to cope with.

Why they exist together: 

Typically developing children can be annoying. Sorry. Children are often more active, less flexible, and noisier than their parents would prefer, at least on occasion. They are growing and learning and need a lot of space, literally and figuratively. So, sometimes the intervention is not to make the child smaller, but to help the environment expand to fit them sometimes.

What do you think about the concept of dialectics?

(Edited April, 2025. Originally published on my Facebook page April, 2021)