 Hello and welcome to Pookie Ponders, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. Today's question is, is there really always a reason behind bad behaviour? And I'm in conversation with Susie Heyman. Yes, my name is Susie Heyman. I am an Agony Arnt, a relationship counsellor. I'm the author of 31 books. I write about Agony Arnt-ish stuff, step families, teenagers, having a happy family, all those sorts of things. I'm a step mum. I have a son. I'm not his mother, but he is my son. And I have a granddaughter. When they were pregnant, they announced it by saying, I'm not going to be a step granny. I'm going to be a granny. Yay! I've got a lovely husband. I've got a cat. I live in Lake District. And I broadcast and I talk about families and relationships and young people and all that sort of thing. I'm the trustee of a national charity called Family Lives, which is a sort of family, you know, general. And I'm also, I was, I'm retired now, trustee of the charity Become, which is for kids in care. So I have a particular interest in kids in care and a patron of a local charity called Unikids, which is helping kids with autism. Wow. Do you ever sleep? John Staples said, and when he introduced me and said an all round smart ass. I love it. I love it. That's, that's a lot of stuff that you're doing. So how, how did you come to become an agony aunt? Did you, you know, grow up thinking that's what I'd like to become? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I worked for the Family Planning Association and then for Brook Advisory Centers. And I was the information officer, press officer, doing a lot of writing. I was sort of aiming towards journalism in a way, but I got very caught up in the whole thing about sexual health, young people, families, things like that. And when I was working for Brook Advisory Centers, we had a fabulous wonderful woman called Dr. Faye Hutchinson. It was just like a sexual doctor. Delightful woman. And I was once approached by 19 magazine suggests somebody to be their agony aunt. And I suggested Faye. The thing about Faye, God bless her, was that she couldn't, she didn't know a deadline if it hit her in the face. But anyway, I could get her to actually, you know, submissive every month was to sit her down and do it with her, which Medaille sort of gave her a bit of a training in journalism. And she gave me a training in counselling and, and in agony aunting. And I really tasted it. And then sometime later, I had the same thing happen to me that magazine called, goodness, I was so long ago, which one was it? But they went to, to the FPA and said, can you suggest someone? And they suggested me. So I began, that was a monthly magazine. And then I was headhunted by woman's own and then moved to one. Wow. And are there kind of particular issues that people come to you with as an agony aunt over the years that are your kind of preferred niche, if you like, are there particular areas that you feel you're especially able to help with or that you've enjoyed? I suppose I've got a particular expertise in step families that particularly interests me. Families generally because the family lies, I suppose, and kids in care because of kids generally in families with, whether it's conflict because of become. So I suppose there's sort of an expertise in, in step families, having done it, a t-shirt, know what it's all about and that sort of sense. But you can't necessarily advise better just because you've experienced something. And often the sort of help you're giving people is not to tell them what to do. You might be unpicking their story. You might be reflecting it back to them because they may not really have heard themselves and quite understood, you know, what are the real issues. So it's a generalist and that's why I did my relationship training because it's a generous sort of experience in counseling. That's the important thing to help people work out their problems because you're not telling them what to do. You can never tell something. You help them arrive at a problem, a resolution to a problem that can work for them. And so really what you're trying to do is to get them to understand as well as, you know, you understand what is going on and what's really there and then work out the solution that works for them. I see. And the question that, you know, we came to for today's episode was about whether there's always a reason behind bad behavior. And I suppose this feels like a moment segue in there because it looks like you're looking for reasons behind things and helping people to actually understand the problem. Yeah, always because the three stages of counseling are exploring, understanding and taking action. And so in exploring what you're looking at is not just the presenting problem. You're coming to me and saying, this is my issue. And you explore that. But you also explored behind because you have to know what's underneath that makes that particularly difficult. I'll give you one of my sort of classic explanation, one of my classic illustrations of this was I helped a family who came to me with step family issues. A man with his children, woman with her child got together. And the problem was that they presented it to one child. His daughter was the problem. Sons were okay. Her son was okay. Everything was fine except this one child was the problem and making things difficult. Because all of a sudden she'd be kicking off at school and being sort of cheeky and not doing her work and things like that. She was the issue. Solve her, cure her and we'll all be okay. And the question I asked, and this is the question I think you should always ask, which is what happened? If somebody starts doing something behaving in particular ways that are difficult, what happened? And the what happened may not be immediate. It may not be last week. It can be five years ago that something's triggered that off. And I discovered with this girl, okay, her mother had died. Well, yes, they knew that. But that was years ago. Surely we've got over that. Recently his father had died. His father. Hang on. That's her grandfather. Her grandfather was died. That's the last link she had to her mother's family. Oh, and recently her best friend's mother had died. Oh, wow. And the dog got locked and knocked over and killed the couple of days before she started. And, you know, when you actually looked at that, what happened? There was a list of things that this child had experienced loss over a list of things that were really upsetting her and worrying her and triggering her off. And it was as if nobody had actually looked at, but it was a list of things that were really upsetting her and worrying her and triggering her off. And she looked at the what was happening and seeing how much this was affecting her. That in a sense, the losing the grandfather and the grandmother was triggering off her feelings about her mother being lost. And even the dog, everything was culminating in this child feeling upset and un... And she couldn't necessarily tell me. She couldn't necessarily herself put her finger on what happened. It was that she knew she was restless and happy and nobody was paying her attention. And so she was kicking one. So that when you unpacked all that and started looking at it, actually the answer to the question was, why wouldn't she be behaving badly? So I think that's often what happens. If you actually look at the what's happened, you start realizing why people are behaving in particular ways. They're kicking off about something recent in the past, recent that has triggered the past, all those sorts of things that they may be angry about. They may have experienced loss about. They may have affected their self confidence. They're feeling of where they were in the world, where they were in a family. I mean, step family is one of the thing about step families. Of course, one of the things that upsets with you is that it upsets your place in the family. You might have been the youngest child, and all of a sudden you're no longer the youngest child. You may be the oldest child, and all of a sudden you're not. You're a middle child, and all of a sudden there's more middles around you. Your place in that family has been upset. Your place in the world has been upset on top of all the things that have led you to being in that particular situation. So whatever, step families or anything, the question everybody needs to ask when something happens, when something's a child or an adult is feeling unhappies. And do you think there's always something? Do you always find something when you begin to pick it apart? I think so. I mean, I was thinking this over. I made a somewhat sarky comment on Twitter you might have seen about, you know, that if I had the time machine and could go back and change things, the usual one is, you know, go back and assassinate Hitler. Well, actually no, because somebody would have stepped in this place because that was the whole point that was happening in the political situation at the time. Trump, I think he's pretty unique. Let's get rid of him. Yeah, exactly. Really, really triggered. Anti-vaxxers have been around forever, but there's one particular man, and I will not mention his name, who in a sense gave them the excuse of, well there you are, a doctor said, remove him. Yeah, that might be a good idea. But somebody else remarked quite rightly, knowing me, yeah, but you might have changed them if you've gone back and done something about their upbringing. And it's quite true. Look at somebody's upbringing, what their parents were like, what their grandparents were like, whether they had parents and grandparents, that affects them. I mean, even somebody who is psychopathic or sociopathic, something triggered it, whether it was physical illness, physical brain chemistry, or whether it was an event or a succession event that actually has done this to them. And this is what counseling is often about. It's unpacking, it's telling the story, and then starting to see, shaking that spider's web, all those things that have led that person to be where they're at the moment, and starting to understand. And so many times I've been with people where you go through this, and you'll get somebody saying, oh, oh, I never thought, I never realized, oh my God, when you say it, I get this uprush of emotion and I can now actually put my finger on what, in a sense, is underneath all this, that is triggering off a lot of my feelings and a lot of my actions. And once you know, often, it rather melts away, not always, but at least sometimes you can help people to take different decisions, make different choices when they understand what might have triggered off the behavior that they are now showing. And how do you go about finding that out, because that's something that scares a lot of people, isn't it, opening up these kinds of cans of worms, when you're not quite sure what you might discover? Exactly, exactly. And not just you, but the other people around you may actually find this very frightening, because often, it's almost as if they, you know, they don't want the blame to attach to them. So if you can say it's that person, then it's their fault and it's nothing to do with you. And sometimes when you start unpacking stories, people start thinking, well, maybe it's me. It's interesting, you know, when people come for counseling, sometimes the person who is very keen on coming to counseling may not be the one who actually wants to do most of the work in it. And in fact, what they want you to do is say, oh yes, you're right, it was the other person's fault. And then look at me, I've come to counseling, I'm open to change, but in fact they're not. So that counseling can often be a very, you know, it's a very tricky type roping situation, because you are trying to help people tell their story and start understanding their story and understanding where it fits in with everything else. But often what you're dealing with is these different agendas. I don't want to be to blame. I want to blame them. I don't want to be involved. I want to, you know, I want to say that I'm doing the work, but I'm not. It's a lot of work. And so the answer is, okay, yes, it can often be very, very tricky and very difficult. And sometimes it's even painful with the people involved. If they go through with it, the results can be transformation. Yeah, but it's hard work. It's hard work for everybody. And I really admire people who come. I can, the particular family I can think of is I've kept in touch with that I did television series with. And my goodness, did they grab it and run with it? And they really did want to know, they understand what was going on and want to make changes. And when the two adults concerned were doing this, the younger one started to get into it too. And what are we talking? God 10 or 15 years on, my goodness, what a changed family that is because they did the work and understood that they had to do the work. I mean, you know, when counseling, you say, it's sort of 50-50. It's 50% path, what you're bringing to it, insights you may have, the understanding you may have, the ability to put your finger on what's going on here and explain it back. But it has to be 50% of the other person. It's the actual person who's problem it is, they have to put in 50% of the work. And if they don't do that, you are very unlikely to get anywhere. If they do, poof, as I said, transform. And how does it work when you're supporting families where the child is in care? So you said that's a particular interest of yours and it's a particular interest of mine as well. But potentially there, you're in a situation where it's a lot harder to get the full picture or to get everyone on board. I mean, how does that work? It's going to be difficult. It's one of my, one of the things that I feel very strongly about, and I don't think it happens enough, which is when kids are taken into care, I don't think enough help is given to the people whose children have been taken away from them for reasons. And this is where you often get a repating situation, because if you've got somebody who has a baby and the baby is taken into care, they'll probably get pregnant again. And again, and you have some people where this is a succession of pregnancies where the child is taken away. Because what they're desperately trying to do is they want somebody to love and to be loved by. They want to succeed, but they're not being given any help to do so. And I think we do invest enough attention and help into people who have had children taken away from them. A hard job. Because often, if you've got to that stage where your children are having to be taken away from you, you probably are absolutely layered in defensiveness and pain and anger. And so it can be extremely hard to offer help because you can't change other people. They have to change themselves. They have to be invested in doing something about it. But as I said, I don't think as a society we do enough in helping people in that sort of situation. We help the kids. But you see, this is it. And I've got a couple of people, you probably know them as well on Twitter, who there's one particular man who's written some very, very good stuff about being in care. And he's been tweeting recently about being so proud of the fact that he was in care, his mother was in care, his son did not go in. He's broken that cycle. And my goodness, he deserves to feel proud of that. Absolutely. Because it is often a cycle, because that's what you've learned. You haven't learned how to love and look after or be loved and looked after. You've learned in a sense to be disappointed and to be angry and be all sorts of things. And so that's why you get those cycles. If it's broken, isn't that wonderful? So yes, I would like to see a lot more invested in helping people who have got issues around. And I don't think we put nothing to it. What kind of help do you think that those people would really benefit from? What are the, you know, is there a sort of, I don't know, particular sort of skills or understanding that you think, I'm guessing there's not a one-size-fits-all, but what do you think we will? Well, I think parenting skills. I think understanding also what maybe you have lost out on, recognizing that if you haven't had the training to be a parent from your own parent, then it's very difficult to learn how to do it for yourself. One, I thought was very interesting thing. I know that I'm a triple P accredited parenting expert, whatever they call it. This is the positive parenting program from Australia. And I know that was it around them, they did some work on what had better outcomes if you offered parenting skills training to people, or if you offered relationship skills. But if you're having a family come forward, they've got issues, they've got difficulties, conflict, there's all sorts of things going on. And what you do is you put them through a parenting course and what were the outcomes of that? Or you put them through a relationship course and what were the outcomes of that? And what they found was actually the parenting course did better. Okay, it's transferable skills. And because when you think of it, what is the best basis for being a parent is to be somebody in a loving relationship knowing how that works, able to relate to your partner and therefore able to take those skills to relate and understand to your own children. And so I think, you know, maybe what we ought to do, I mean, if I was the Empress of the world, what I would do is make sure that what school started off on. I mean, yes, it's absolutely lovely to know the, you know, the data that Spanish aren't modern, boiling point of nitric acid, all those sorts of things. Fascinating bits of information that you might use in the future. Although, let's face it, you can now Google and you don't have to learn them in school. What we ought to be learning in school is how to relate and how to understand ourselves and why do we do certain things and how to be friends and what is friendship and what, you know, what are the ways where we can be confident about ourselves and be confident about other people and have respect for other people and ask them to have respect for us. All those things, that to me should be actually the basis of any education. It's now being bolted on. I mean, it's an extremely good parenting course, family courses going around in schools. Very good ones. And there's some exceedingly good parenting courses that my family lives are on, fabulous. And they do help. But necessarily they're coming in late. They're coming in bolted on to where there is a problem rather than starting right from the beginning. And it seems to me we're all recognised. Being a partner, being a person, being a friend, and certainly being a parent, these are not skills that you're innately born with. No. They're things that you learn. And of course you learn them from the people around you. And if you don't get a very good, you know, skills based in parenting from your own parents, how on earth are you going to be able to do it yourself unless you have some help and support and understanding what goes on? And do you think that that is worsened by the fact that in today's age, you know, the thing we might be comparing ourselves is to the stories that people present online rather than actual real life and communities? I like to say in a sense, you know, what goes around comes around. It's all the same. I mean, the sort of problems that I get, I can be patient for the last 20 years to a certain extent can be very, very similar. People are more prepared to be explicit maybe than they used to be. And they've got more information now than they do. But on the whole, it's sort of the same. But, yeah, I think that there isn't enough talked about these sorts of issues. There really isn't. We don't do it enough. Yeah, I think, you see, one of the things I find challenging as a parent with the online thing in particular is that kind of everyone else's perfect lives thing. And you always feel like you're failing. Well, this is the point, it's the airbrush. It's the fake news. And so that what you do tend to get online, of course, yes, is, you know, and I was like, Dastli Man some time ago actually printed his daughter's school report on. You know, I was a wonderful parent, look at how well my child has done. I mean, let's not go there and I don't know what the situation is. But even if he did, did she understand what was going on? But it's the attitude of, you know, that the success of my parenting is shown in her marks, not necessarily. But it does set up a situation where everybody else feels jealous and they don't actually know what really is going on. Because airbrushing occurs. And you could tell I'm not airbrushed. I don't airbrush. But you do, to a certain extent, compare yourself to the people who are presenting a picture which may not be entirely accurate. It's, you know, it's written. It's curated. Isn't it fascinating watching the backgrounds of people? Mine's fairly, there's not much in there. But if you watch a politician or, you know, a lot of people doing zooms, it's a wonderful wall of books. I have to think, you know, is that actually a picture? Is that a scene? You are presenting an image of yourself that you want other people to understand. And that's one of the problems about, you know, how parenting works, that an awful lot of people are presenting a picture and it's not entirely accurate. And particularly with celebrities. And if you look at the, you know, where the sad record of so many celebrities in how well their relationships was eaten, how well their parenting proceeds. And even when they're probably limiting how much information you get, you can see behind it. It's not very good. Because what they're looking at is the external show rather than actually what's going on underneath. And I think, you know, this is what we need to recognize. Parenting is difficult. It's hard. You have to learn how to do it. Actually, you do learn how to do it. Whether you learn it from your parents or the people you see around them, or whether you'll be lucky enough to actually sit down and say, okay, you know, this may be a way of doing it. How can I do it better? Let's learn. It's one of the things I find myself telling schools is about when they're engaging with parents and families about how much the schools have got to share that sort of value. Because sometimes I think that there's this fear that it will seem condescending because parents are experts in their children. But actually, when you work in a school, you've parented hundreds of children and often you've got really good practical ideas about how to get this right, don't you? Absolutely. And you're not necessarily an expert in your own child. You might have been an expert in your young child, because your young child shares things with you. As soon as your child gets to, certainly teenage and maybe even tweens, that shift happens. This is the task of adolescence is to pull away, is to become your own person, is to actually look to your friends for who you compare yourself to and who you learn from than your parents. So when it was with your parents, you would tell your parents things and ask your parent questions. When it becomes your friends, you share things with them and you tell them things. You don't necessarily tell your parents. And I'm afraid whenever I get a parent who says to be confidently, oh, my teenage daughter or son tells me everything. I, you know, warning signs go off because if you think that you're not listening and you're not realizing what's really going on because in a sense, properly you shouldn't. Properly speaking, your adolescence shouldn't be sharing. And in fact, that's why the teachers probably do know more about your adolescent child than you do because they see the adolescent child without the filter that you've put on with this fond idea that you know all about. And also interacting with other people in a way that actually reveals a lot more, you know, what comes out maybe in there. Parents will often feel like they've done something wrong if they're finding out for example that their child is self- harming and they've told the school before they've told a parent. What's your view on that? No, no, no. As I said, I don't think you should expect your child, your teenager to come to you first thing, really, because it's so intent on trying to be adults and to grow away from you and to do it themselves and stand on their own two feet. You probably are the last person they would talk to. You haven't done anything wrong. What you may want to look at is what, again, is the what's happened. What's going on in the family, what's going on in my child that they've chosen this as a solution. That's one of the important things I think we need to recognize that when young people start doing something weird, self-harming, dabbling in drink and drugs and anything like that, arguing, whatever, to them you see it as a problem and so what you might want to do is let's solve the problem of whatever it is they're doing. They see it as a solution. They're doing it because it's a solution to whatever it is that is bothering and so self-harming, cutting, that's a solution. It makes me feel better when I do this. It releases something. Drinking, drugs, all of these things are from the child's point of view and for anybody who is doing this sort of thing, it's part of your coping mechanism and your solution and so therefore what you ought to be looking at is not the thing itself. My child is drinking too much, my child is dabbling in drugs, why might they be doing this? What may be going on in their life that this is their way of trying to cope with, solve whatever answer this particular problem in their life. Do you think that's true of a sort of wide range of behaviours that we're kind of looking at, the kind of why and then maybe looking how else might one manage? Absolutely, absolutely because behaviour comes out of feelings and you have the deep feelings which is the need for love and attention and a feeling of self-confidence, feeling of self-esteem, that's what's the underlying thing and then on top of that you then have the feelings of need, of anger, of pain, whatever, love, those sorts of things and then you get the behaviour that comes out of that and so if you look at the behaviour you have to dig down into the initial thing of why they're doing this and then right down into what's actually at the bottom. To a certain extent right at the bottom it always is a wish for acceptance, a wish, a need for feeling good about yourself, all of those but how have they come up into the next level of feelings and then how do they actually emerge in the behaviour? How do you go about defining, it feels to me like maybe there's different roles that the different adults play things, we talked about the difference between school and home for example and how do adults worry about a child for whatever reason, seeing some behaviour that's interesting that's different how do we work out what we should be doing and what our role is within that child's life? Sometimes I ask in the question what can I do and that's always in a sense where you begin with rather than saying you should be doing this or I don't like this so I disapprove of that, it's what can I do to help it seems to me there's an issue carrying on there's a problem going on here, what can I do to help? Is there someone else you'd like to talk to? I think it's having the courage to also realise you can't be all things to your child and therefore you do need to actually harness other people, could be teachers, could be counsellors, could be youth club, there could be an important add out, sometimes things like the child I mentioned about what had gone on in their background, all these things, why wouldn't that child be actually showing, if I mention the actual, the other thing was that her best friend's mother had died as well in a litany of horrible things that had happened to her, but the point there was that the best friend's mother was very important to her because her own mother wasn't there and I think that's the thing that sometimes there's a chosen adult in your child's life and it might be maybe not quite realised that they're there but it may be a teacher, it may be a relative, it may be the next door neighbour, it may be a friend of a friend, parent of a friend, something like that, there may be that adult that you could in a sense say to, can you help, not you tell me what my child has been telling you, not you tell your child what I want you to say, but just do they come to you and can I encourage them, encourage you to feel it's okay to actually help the child but you also have to understand about sometimes confidentiality so that you are saying maybe to your child yes, please talk to a teacher, talk to a counsellor, talk to a chosen adult and I'm not going to ask them what you've said because that's your way. So it's about having a bit of trust and letting go a little bit almost very much so and that's when I talked about the task of teenagers is pulling away, the task about lessons is to pull away from your parents and become eventually an adult in your own right and it goes in and out so you want to sit on their lap and suck your thumb one day and be the adult the next day but basically that's what you're an apprentice adult working your way through that but I think also that it's about your recognizing you have a task which is to let go as you said, it's letting go and that's what lessons with your child is all about is them pulling away and you letting them go and it takes an enormous amount of courage to actually say I am no longer the central person in my child's mind, what a loss and you know if we're talking about losses that's a loss that every parent needs to actually recognize and encompass you are losing being the central person in your child's life. If you let them go they'll struggle and take the first sort of way out as soon as they can it's about having that courage to say I'm here for you, I will whatever you want I'm here my love is unconditional, I may not like exactly what you're doing but my love is unconditional I'm here for you if you need me but I'm not going to insist that you do it this way that's hard isn't it I mean I'm very lucky I mean again you know sort of walking the talk here I have this boy who is my son although I'm not his mother and I adore him but I can remember times when I could sort of sit back and say well okay but that's his mom and his dad that deal with that I don't have to now with my granddaughter she's my granddaughter so maybe I sort of feel more part of that but that's a bit you know that's that's likely more of a distant relationship than with your own child with your own child your own child's successes and triumphs and miseries are a reflection on you and so it's very hard to actually lose control of that and say go and do your own thing and I'm there for you but I'm not going to steer you because I shouldn't but my goodness how many parents find that very very hard I remember someone saying to me when we're going through a challenging time with one of my daughters that you're only ever as happy as your least happy child and it was so true and it's hard though because you can't fix things for them can you you can try and create an environment in order for things to improve but you can't fundamentally change how they feel I think that's the point it's the fix you know that when our children are young we do feel that we're there to fix things for them we're there to solve the problems to make it better to kiss it better to resolve any arguments to smooth the path when they get to be teenagers that is actually the very wrong thing the very worst thing you can do is to try and in a sense curate their life and if you keep interfering they're never going to learn and they're always going to feel I'm not good enough if I can't do it for myself if I can't make my own mistakes making mistakes is fine it's just failure I really do think we ought to be much more open about failure is good because it allows you to see what did I do wrong how can I do it better but we're so frightened of the idea of failing that we call people losers or failures if they make a mistake we ought to see it as a natural progression and it's the same with young people we need to let them fail and make mistakes and we as parents need to fail and not think it's the end of the world we can't be right all the time we can't be passive of our teenage children not the absolute guides and certainly not in children so we should be wrong modelling that mistake making that's right I think so, I think showing damn I did that wrong how am I going to get it better next time that's okay not hiding failure or making excuses or being in denial good grief America at the moment is taking such a seminar I lost it's the most ghastly model that you're being given it's like a little child toddlers are allowed to have toddler tantrums when they do something wrong because that's part of learning how to deal with it and to show your horror and displeasure that it didn't go your way you have a toddler tantrum and then you get up and you try again and you can have an argument or you can have a display and slam doors and all sorts of things as a teenager to do eventually as adults is when something goes wrong and doesn't go our way to say okay try again do that and do it a different way but you know models you say I think the model thing is so important we should model to our young people how to have an argument and resolve it how to look at things and do it differently you know how not to do the definition of insanity which is try the same thing again and again and again and be quite surprised if it results in the same thing again and again it's always trying to get different with models are so important how we do it that's what we show our children and loving them is an incredibly important model I mean I'm so pleased in the last few years the way that men have come into the family instead of being the better earners the people outside there who don't show weakness and failure and happiness and unhappiness they're now just with women as well being with toddlers and being hands-on I think the disgeneration of the teenagers now are so much more fortunate that ones let's say 50 years ago who only had one person in their family who was showing that you could love and you could cry and you could do all those sort of emotional things men didn't do it, only women did it now they're getting the example in so many families of men do it as well that is so much better for the men and for their children and for their partners Absolutely, it's one of the things I'm constantly blown away by actually when I do youth engagement work is the emotional literacy of our teenagers right now it's phenomenal I mean I learn from them every time I work with them Exactly, same here looking at my granddaughter talking to her and about her friends absolutely brilliant, it is actually quite and I'm not sure where exactly that comes from because I'm sure there are fantastic schools that do that sort of misuse but it's also what they see around them and it's the models that they are seeing far more in their families of being able to show emotions deal with emotions but all sorts of things Absolutely Is there anything that you have had to significantly change your mind on obviously you've been agony arming and advising for a while you've written many books is there anything that you do very differently now than you might have advised I think it probably begins through the training it's understanding bad people who do bad things that actually usually it's because bad things have happened to them so it's being much more understanding about people who behave badly and understanding why and understanding what's going on and seeing how people can be redeemed I think that's the important thing one of the the organisations under the umbrella of family lives for some time was one that helped families who had a partner in jail and one of the things we know is that particularly men particularly men if they are plugged into the family if the family are still keeping up a connection they are so much less likely to come out and go back to crime and they are so much less likely to have mental health issues if they're still in the family and they come out to their family it's so much better and yet again we don't support that enough in this country we tend to have this feeling that if somebody is committed to crime and goes to jail they need to be punished rather they need to be changed helped, supported and one of those supportive things is looking after the family as well the families themselves often are serving just as much as a sentence as the person who's actually in the jail and usually less supported in a sense than the person who's in the jail so it's seeing the importance of actually helping people who've done the wrong thing and this is again back to the families who've had children taken into care helping anybody if all you're saying is they did a terrible thing they were abusive to their child get rid of them but understand why they did that what was the failure, where was the failure what was going on there and help and support now that doesn't mean to say that you put all the attention on that person and this is the baby pee scandal because I think the social workers were so concerned with the mother what was happening to the child and so sometimes you have to be as a social worker or a counsellor, very good at splitting your attention, making sure that everybody in the picture is actually getting full attention but it's about that therapy and that support going to everybody in the mix in order to have better outcomes absolutely and one of the things that I'm working hard on at the moment with schools and it's still an earlier area for me in terms of understanding is thinking about our trauma informed work and how so often those issues are hugely intergenerational and if we're trying to support a child through trauma informed practice, actually often there are traumatised adults there who've never had this kindness and caring and love and support that the child is receiving and unless they can receive it too often it's very hard to sustain because if that what you do then is send the child maybe to the same situation in an additional level perhaps of the adults feeling why did they get all the attention and what about me which is actually quite justifiable because things tend to come in families because these sorts of things do as you say they are intergenerational we need to actually extend that help not just to the next level up even to the next level above that as well that there needs to be support for anybody involved in that sort of situation and care and concern and that's why there is a problem not because I mean I have an absolute committed deep belief that people do not behave badly because they want to be behaving badly because they're bad people they behave badly often because bad things have happened to them and they react to it act to it in ways that are not helpful to them or anybody around them because they don't have the insight because they haven't had the help in doing something about it and so you know if you've got horrible things happen look up why and put some I mean if you think about it financially speaking we would actually be saving so much money if we were putting a lot more money into therapy and help and support than we do at the moment because the end result at the end of the line as it were of people not being supported is crime and suicide and illness mental illness physical illness all those sorts of things which are far more expensive be far better to absolutely sink our billions into supporting and helping people absolutely and do you think that in terms of supporting those adults like whose role should that be because again you know I find myself doing this work with schools and there does come that question where does their job end you know we expect them to do everything and yes I mean teachers I started a teacher myself that's what my initial training was and this is one of the things that I was seeing was that you can't teach if people are traumatised or someone who is coming from a home with issues they're not receptive to learning so if you want to do your job you cannot say my only job as a teacher is to teach is to impart information because actually what you should be doing anyway is not imparting information but imparting the ability to find out information for yourself to inspire to give confidence to people to guide them in learning which is not in parroting what you've got to say to them so you're starting off already with an idea of learning is not just sit there and I'll tell you things it's a bit more than that I think to a certain extent therefore we should recognise that we have to extend it sideways people can't learn if they're in conflict situations if they're in traumatic situations if things are going wrong in their families and they often can't learn from themselves but they also stop the people around them learning because these are the kids who kick off and are disruptive so when you have a kid who is disruptive and where should we be putting that and if it's not the teachers actually doing it the teachers maybe should trigger it and we should have teams of counsellors available to schools to do this sort of thing if it became something that everybody knew was okay and was taken for granted it wouldn't matter a shame or a matter of you know I mean they'd always avoid to a certain extent because again it's a question of personal denial there's nothing more than me it's all about you so it's always going to be hard to get people perhaps to access help if we had it as something that was always there and everybody used it I think it would become a little bit more acceptable for people to sort of say I've got a broken leg I've got a doctor I've got a broken heart I've got a heart Yeah it feels like we're moving a bit more in that direction but there's always that issue around resources isn't there and I think that you know those yeah that support is available if you can afford to pay for it or if you've got time if you can wait for a very long time to talk about today are perhaps in either of those situations and that goes back to my argument it would save money in the long and it's a great pity that we look at budgets as discreet so in other words you have a school budget you have an educational budget you have this budget you have that budget instead of seeing actually it's all society what is happening society and what is costing money when you look at it that way and you start saying well okay people in prisons people doing crimes people doing hooders people committing suicide people getting ill that budget that you know that we have to expend to help people at the end of all of that actually could be you know we'd save a lot if we put that budget in at the beginning and didn't let them get to that situation right at the end we you know them all for the past as it were and it would be cheaper I think that they have worked out there's some ideas about how to put money into counseling how much would you I think it's something like for every one pound you save 11 pounds billion pounds you save 11 billion pounds I mean it's asinine that we have to expend that amount of money in a sense on bandaging people instead of preventing them getting the damage in the first place it can be hard with those sort of prevention strategies though to get people to invest in them it's very you know you're working on the long term and you're preventing something you don't know who it was going to be it's very hard isn't it I remember when I was doing my PhD trying to work out outcome measures for prevention it's very very very difficult but yeah my wholeheartedly agree prevention is always going to be better thank you it's an attitude to society I mean it seems like if you look at for many many years I think the figures are not as bad as they used to be but looking at teenage pregnancy and you know you looked at because what they ended up realising is in fact aspiration is what prevents kids getting pregnant if they have a life to look forward to they tend not to get pregnant so if you raise kids as young people their aspirations that does actually take a cut out of the teenage pregnancy but if you were comparing let's say you know the Netherlands to England at one particular time I think it was something like eight times the number of young people in this country got pregnant then out there because what they were doing is having explicit sex education in schools for decades and you know and teenagers would talk to their parents far more than our teenagers would because the whole area around sex and relationships was so much more sensible was so much more open was so much more understood now we're getting there and our teenage pregnancy rate has dropped yes fantastic but I'm just thinking about you know so many other things are also better in the Netherlands and it is things like mental health and teenage suicide and things like that because young people feel they have a voice they're being respected to be given information about which they you know so they can make choices in their lives that shows a respect which I don't think we have enough of in this country we still tend to rather have you know young people need to be looked after and told what to do we can't trust them and I think that trust actually you know ends up with better behaviour what do you think would need to happen for that to change Good question we need to import the what's that wonderful lady who's the PM in New Zealand can we have her please who run countries you know Scandinavia I think it's about attitudes that we though we still seem to be having our country run by men who went to public school know what their attitudes tend to be about sex and relationships you know not terribly healthy I suppose we need to have more women at the top we have to have more women making decisions about budgets and not feeling that they have to do it the way that men have always done it more mums I suppose more dads who actually are hands on dads the ones who separate themselves off from being parents I have a phrase which is think like a parent if there are so many decisions you make in society as a politician if you thought as a parent you might actually do something which is different and kinder and more respectful and more helpful if you were thinking in terms of would I want my child to be in this situation and I mean you look at kids in care the care system is shocking absolutely shocking that you can still have in this day and age a situation where children are being sent from one home to another to another not because it's actually to save money to get still going on you have kids who have 13 placements in a year nothing to do with them or their behaviour because the authority is saving money by sending them to these different places would you want your child to go through that if everybody who was running childcare organisations or anywhere in this country was thinking in terms of I want my child to be in that situation I think you'd have better outcomes but I think it's also in a sense you know running banks, running schools whatever I think this is why teachers can often be so good because what they're also doing is looking at these are my children and I do for them what I would do for my own child because that's because you're face to face with those kids if you're in a political situation in the office you may not be thinking in that way you're many steps removed aren't you and you don't think of your own child in that sort of situation and I think we need to start doing that we need to start running our countries for our children yeah and I I think the one thing that worries me though is hit the nail on the head there my experience of why teachers school staff are so brilliant with our children is because they treat them like their own and they care so deeply but I think that's also sometimes their detriment I mean right now I'm really worried about the well-being of staff in our schools because they seem to have had to hold it together for everyone during the course of the pandemic and how do you I mean you must have to do this you're taking on other people's problems all the time how do you protect yourself when you're doing that and you care the brief and this is why I have a bit of a boring thing about agony people who are not trained because part of my training as a relate counsellor I started being an agony aunt before I was actually trained by relate although as I said I was trained by the psychosexual so I was already trained in the recognition that for a start 50% the other person and you have to let go but when I did my relate training what was really really useful was to recognize this ability to stop at the door as it were I work from home but I still have this idea of at the end of the day I close down and I leave it and while I can offer help I suppose while I can offer information while I can offer insight in the end it's that person's decision and it has to be that person's responsibility because I can't be there all the time saying do this do that they have to take responsibility themselves and so I have to be handing it over so whether I'm doing face-to-face counselling or whether I'm doing radio work telephone work writing work it's always with the aim of handing it over and that means that I have to recognize the limits of my help terribly frustrating sometimes as an agony aunt and even as a counsellor you know this you get to a certain point when you have to say go off and go on writing your own story and I don't know the end of the story first one all you have is one letter and you don't know the end of the story you don't know whether they took your advice you don't know if they did something that made you better you don't know and you have to live with that and you have to let go that sounds really hard don't you just find yourself wondering absolutely absolutely and I suppose this is it that I dealt with in step families in the series who I kept in touch with afterwards yes it was lovely to see the development, to see the end of the story was so good but yes you have to get used to that and you have to know to step back and so you have to debrief yourself at the end of the day you know in a sense rituals are lovely so generally at the end of the day it's a bath and you know take my kindle in a bath and read and that's the separation between the working day and the evening and it absolutely separates it and so I do let go and that was one of the things that I think is incredibly important whether I'm as I said Agony Anto or Counselor whatever you draw that line and step away from it and know that you have to let it go and I really worry about some of the people that I see doing some of this work when you know they haven't had that training to start they're getting hooked so you get yourself in a situation where you're talking with somebody it's an issue perhaps that actually speaks to you and so you're giving advice for yourself not necessarily advice for that person you're seeing things that in fact are not really there because you're seeing your own story rather than their story training helps you not do that if you're doing counseling having a supervisor where you could discuss things where you can do that having somebody else's eye helping you untangle what's really going on incredibly important anybody who gives advice who does not have that sort of background that sort of support I think is dangerous for themselves and dangerous for the people that they're helping wow that's a big and I think this is one of the things that many of the people I work with worry about is how much is it safe for them to do because there aren't enough trained professionals out there for the number of problems that there are and so many people find themselves stepping into the breach and needing to be that person but not feeling qualified to do so absolutely and when they get to the point where maybe they've got burnt out because there's a limit to how often you know how long you can do this being able to say I have to step back I can no longer do this or I need to take a sabbatical I need to take some time off that is very hard to do and you can yes I think you can get pulled in to continuing when you shouldn't and as I said it's then affecting you or you're trying to help other people in a way that you actually are actually you're trying to help yourself through them you need them more perhaps than they need you yeah yeah and I suppose that's a really useful touch point isn't it, is am I doing this for me or am I doing it for them yeah who is really being helped here who's cup of coffee is that the lovely sort of thing that we have in training I'm trying to think it's a relate or is it family lives but it's about who's cup of coffee is this there's a cup of coffee there is that my child's cup of coffee and I'm trying to deal with it thinking it's mine or is it actually mine and it's your problems then you need to deal with your problems if it's theirs you have to say this is yours and as the adult do you think it's ever okay to share your problems with the child that you're trying to support if they feel kind of relevant pertinent familiar I think it's extremely important and I think very advisable to recognise that for them to recognise that you're a person with problems that you're not divorced from all of this that you're not perfect so to have some insight into what might have happened yes but if you're leaning on them if you're using your child as your therapist or your friend no that is an absolute no no I think it's terribly important however much respect to teenagers letting them take charge of their own decisions and their own feelings and being able to have opinions of their own that's incredibly important but you are the parent not the friend and that's another of my red flags that people say oh yes with my daughter we go out and we're like sisters and we're deep friends she doesn't need a friend she's got friends she wants you to be the parent and occasionally as a parent you need to make yourself very unpopular by saying no and you don't say no in the same way to a friend as you do to a child and you need to hold on to that but when that person is a teenager yes to know that you have fallibilities and problems and have had problems I dealt with it this way perhaps this has happened to me I can remember that and this is how I dealt with it or this is how I did not deal with it well and I'd hate to see you going through the same problems that can be quite valuable but leaning on them using them to help you or just doing it as a hey look at me I've done the same thing I mean that's an awful thing where the child comes to you with a problem and you instantly think oh I have the same problem they don't want to hear that they want to hear you saying oh dear can I, that's tough what can I do to help you they don't want just to have you one-upping them with I've got problems even worse than you and they don't want you to lean on them they really don't need that there's an important role there wow we've covered a lot do you have a kind of closing thought you would like to leave people with um be kind I think it's incredibly important listen yes be open about your emotions and feelings but don't lean on your children in that sort of way don't invest them they're not your therapist for a start and you're not their therapist you're their parent and their helper and sometimes you need to pull in the therapist to help them properly I think it's just about listening and that's really the most important thing listen and communicate