Counterwill Preview

0:02 Welcome to this four hour course on why children resist and oppose. I hope you enjoy the material. It was some of the first material that I put together as a young theorist trying to understand what makes children tick, trying to understand them from inside out. And certainly you cannot understand children, never mind your spouses and other adults in your life or yourself, without some appreciation of this dynamic.

0:40 And yet, despite the fact that as I talk, hopefully you'll find it absolutely intuitive that yes, it is there, it is self evident once you have the words for it. It. Yet this dynamic is probably one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted dynamics in dealing with children. We simply don't interact with children with an appreciation of this. Part of the problem is that we have no word for it.

1:12 We need words to have or words are required for consciousness. Consciousness is required for some kind of reflection and, and keeping it in mind. So what we're going to try and do is to be able to open our eyes to this, to bring this into our consciousness. The first problem of course is that there was no word. If you wondering where you had never heard the word counterwill before, that's probably because it doesn't exist.

1:49 I borrowed the term from a German theorist that coined the term about a hundred years ago in the German language. And so this is an English translation. If you google it, I think you'll find about 28,000 hits, almost all of them which have to do with me because I'm the one who has popularized the time term here. But you'll actually get some original hits on Auto Rank who originated the term as it was translated.

2:21 And also Freud used the term in his earliest works. He borrowed the term from Auto Rank. So you. But the problem is that we can't talk about something we don't even have a term for. And that's the problem. We can't bring it into consciousness. So we interact with, with children as if this dynamic doesn't exist. Now when we talk about this, you'll see that it applies to children of all ages. It applies to adults as well.

2:51 It applies to our own self as well. And you can use this material in all venues. Apply this material in all venues. You'll need to do some transposing. I won't be able to use examples, of course, from all venues. My focus is, is on making sense of this in children. And as we can make sense of it, it will inform our interaction. But this is an insight approach. And so as the title says, our first attempt here will to make sense of this material and as we do, we'll draw the implications for application.

3:29 I'm going to take four hours, of course, this is a four hour course to walk around this problem, this perplexing phenomena. This material is in other areas or in other material that I've published. The book hold on to your kids. There is material in there as well as my co writer Gabor Mate. He was so frustrated with the fact that I wasn't getting this material written up soon enough that it is in his books as well, Counterwill.

4:04 And it's also introduced in some of the other DVD material, Relationship Matters as well as the Power to Parent series. So we'll begin, we'll begin to take a four hour walk around this phenomenon. It's very, very simple on one hand. But sometimes simple things, the simplest things can be quite complex in how they enact themselves. And the more we can walk around this, the more an appreciation you will have of this instinct in the children in your care.

4:38 I'll start with the fact that this is the counterwill is deeply rooted in instinct and emotion. Every single child, every single adult possesses this family of instincts that we have dubbed counterwill. It is there and it's important again to keep this in mind because most relate to children as if this does not exist.

5:10 And that's always. You're going to trip over what you don't accept in existence and parents and teachers trip over this all over the place. It does not inform our education, it is not informing current parenting. And so we've got to know what exists. So every child possesses the instincts to do the opposite of what is expected. Every single child. This shouldn't surprise us and yet somehow it does. To break the rules, to work, to rule, to disobey and defy every single child is as it gave the wrong impression some 200 years ago that children were in inherently evil.

5:54 Because this instinct is there rather than understanding it as a family of instincts that every single person possesses to resist and to counter, to balk and talk back. The very fact that you say to a child hurry up, makes them want to slow down. And again, that should be self evident to us. That should be self evident. Yet it does not inform or our interaction the fact that it can produce exactly the opposite effect.

6:28 We can become preoccupied with taboos. If somebody would say to us, don't you dare look at anybody with blue eyes and said it enough, we'd become absolutely preoccupied with looking at blue eyes. We know better than to say to children, don't touch your genitals. Because that's exactly what they'll be compelled to do. And yet that very simple understanding, again does not inform our interaction. To be obstinate and stubborn, to be quarrelsome and argumentative, to be belligerent, incorrigible.

7:06 Some of these are old words. Now we don't use them very much, but we used to be able to even jail children for being incorrigible. No longer can we do so, but we could some 30, 40 years ago. Obstetric. I love that word. And non compliant and defiant. What is this non compliant and defiant? The defiant is where we run into trouble because we assume that a child is doing this on purpose.

7:38 Same with belligerence. We assume that a child is doing this on purpose. Same with defiance. We assume that a child is doing this on purpose. That is instrumental, that it is there. It isn't. It is instinctive, driven by deep instinct, by deep emotion. It is not done on purpose. And that is the whole, the whole understanding here. It is an instinct if, if we push the wrong buttons in a child, or if these emotional buttons are pushed in us, it calls forth this reaction which we've dubbed counterwill here.

8:16 For these family of instincts to be able to talk about it again. We need a word. We need a word. And I borrowed this word from Otto Rank, a turn of the century theoretician, European theoretician of the last century rather. And this was. He couldn't make sense of children without this, and we can't make sense of children without this dynamic.

8:48 I'll introduce this instinct in this first session. We'll walk around it in terms of introducing it, and in the next two sessions we'll take a look at the purpose it serves. What function does it serve, what is it there for? But first of all, to introduce this and the counter will instinct, if we bring it to its essence. The counter will instinct is a defensive reaction to perceived control and coercion. It is simply a defensive reaction to perceived control and coercion.

9:23 So if you perceive, in other words, nobody likes to be pushed around. Nobody likes to be pushed around. Somebody comes up, you're at the checkout stand in a grocery store and in the lineup, and somebody comes up behind you in that lineup and starts nudging and pushing you in the direction you are going, you don't turn around and say, thank you very much, I could use a help. Everything inside of you box and pushes back because we don't like to be pushed around, even if it is the direction we're going in.

9:57 If you're in a restaurant with your favorite partner in your favorite place, eating your favorite food, having your favorite discussion. You are where you want to be. It is your will to be there. It is there. And suddenly you overhear a waiter saying to somebody else, there's something wrong. Or all the doors of the restaurant are locked from the outside. Nobody can go out. Now, that should be just absolutely fine with you, shouldn't it? You're in your favorite place with your favorite partner, having your favorite discussion.

10:29 Oh, what a white and white. Oh, this is great. But as soon as you have to be there, there's something inside of you that doesn't want to be there anymore.