Offers of help, that are perceived as criticism, can be rejected or dismissed, writes David Coleman
I WOULD REALLY appreciate your advice about my sister and her two children, a boy aged 13 and a girl aged eight. She lives in a small village in France with her partner and the two children.
She runs her own business (a bakery) and is in charge of all of the family and domestic chores, school runs, homework help, meals, cleaning, laundry, bedtime stories and doesn't have any time to herself. Her partner, who is French, is not around all of the time; he works as a travelling sales rep and spends his spare time and money on adventure sports.
The children are not asked to help in any way around the house, and it seems they have no awareness about the mess they create when they shed their gear in transit across the rooms.
If they don't like something, the reaction is always atomic: cursing at their mother, swearing and often hitting. I worry about this happening when both children are bigger, stronger and worry mostly that it's happening at all.
Any of these situations I have witnessed when her partner is present are worse. They do not agree on how to handle the children, so it is unpredictable whether or not he will choose to back her up.
From what I can tell, father and son time is intermittent and father and daughter time does not exist.
I have tried to talk to my sister but she seems to be too busy or too enmeshed in her situation to see it or change it herself.
I THINK YOU have hit the nail on the head when you describe your sister as too enmeshed in her current situation to see that it might be problematic.
However, it is also possible that she is too exhausted to acknowledge the problems or deal with them. Given the pace you say she is operating at, she is likely to burn out quickly if she hasn't already done so.
One of the key determining factors to making any change is that the person making the change must see some value or reason for changing. So if your sister is not motivated to change, then no amount of exhortation from you will make a difference.
The situation you find yourself in with your sister may be exactly the situation that parallels the old saying, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink".
In many ways, it is interesting that you feel so strongly about the way things are for your sister, that you seem more actively motivated to change it than she does.
Perhaps this is because you can spot a problem that she is indeed too enmeshed in to see clearly. Perhaps it is because you feel bad on her behalf that she is being hurt, or taken advantage of, or being treated badly. Perhaps there is a protective big sister at work.
Whatever the reason, I would always suggest that you be wary of trying to rescue someone else in a situation like the one you describe. Offers of help, that are perceived as criticism, can be rejected or dismissed and can cause hurt and offence in both directions.
Equally, no more than a rescuer swimming out to sea to help someone drowning, it is very easy to become sucked into the same difficulty and become overwhelmed in the process.You could become as ineffectively caught up in your sister's family dynamic as you feel she has become.
So, as much as you might want to "mind" your sister, you also need to mind yourself. You can't solve her problems and so there is little benefit for you or for her if you carry lots of anxiety and distress that you can't actively resolve.
Your best approach to helping your sister is to remain a grounded sounding block. By sounding block, I mean that you take on the role of reflecting back what you observe, not in criticism but in reality. Try to use empathy statements like, "I imagine you feel very dismissed by the children when they ignore you, no matter how often you tell them to help" as your means of reflecting.
Avoiding criticism is harder than it sounds and despite your best efforts, your sister may perceive your observations as criticism even though they are simply intended to let her see the way things are.
Reflecting back the issues that are there, in her family and her relationship with her partner, may lead to the first step towards recognition that those issues are indeed problematic. This is the point that she might start to see value in making a change and then you can take on a new role of providing her with the skills or the emotional support to actually do it.
This stage at which your sister starts asking for help is the only time that such help will make the difference; and who knows, then it might make all the difference in the world.
David Coleman is a clinical psychologist, author and broadcaster with RTÉ television. You can also listen to him on The Moncrieff Show every Wednesday at 3pm on Newstalk 106-108
Readers' queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence.
Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement @irish-times.ie