Button Pushing / Winding Each Other Up
- Parent learns to notice their own and their child’s signs and signals that they’re escalating the argument
In the next exercise you will discuss the concept of button pushing with the parent. It’s important for the parent to be able to distinguish between behaviour that is button pushing and behaviour that needs addressing. Often, when we’re in conflict, it can be hard to separate out the things that really matter. All teenagers push their parent’s buttons from time to time. It’s a way of testing out boundaries and part of growing up. It’s not personal, but unfortunately, because they know their parents well, they usually know exactly what to say, to get a rise.
You want the parent to realise that they don’t have to respond to it. If they do retaliate, that’s only going to escalate the situation, instead of calming it down. In addition, it’s often counterproductive as the real cause of the conflict is forgotten in all the tit for tat button pushing. The first step in not responding is to be able to identify those things that really do wind them up. It is also helpful for parents to resist winding up their child during conflict, as this also escalates the situation. For these reasons the purpose of the next session is to identify button pushing on both sides.
