By Heather L. E. McKay
Because if you are truly connected – you won’t need to “correct”.
Correcting people after superficially connecting is an ABA/PBS technique that is abusive, manipulative and controlling. It’s sometimes called positive reinforcement, which we all know is detrimental to ND people and truly abusive. It tells the child that you say things like “I love you: and the answer is no” to guilt you into behaving the way the adult wants – not what the child needs.
My grandmother did this to me when she was having one of her BPD episodes before she was medicated. She had a habit of manipulative control and guilt/shaming and saying and doing hurtful things but using connection as the excuse for her hideous behaviour. Don’t get me wrong, I know she couldn’t control it, as she wasn’t diagnosed with BPD until her 70’s, and medication wasn’t as good then as it is now – and if she’d been medicated perhaps (I hope) that she wouldn’t have done those things.
But it’s pure conjecture because we never got to know a side of her that wasn’t hurtful to others, and I mourn that loss. And I’m now grateful that diagnosis is more available and medications are better for people with BPD and other conditions that were largely ignored or stigmatised in the 80’s and earlier (and sometimes still stigmatised today).
The people who use this type of manipulation and shaming to control children shouldn’t be allowed around children in my opinion. My grandmother would hit me and then say: “I only hit you because I love you”. It was her form of “connecting and correcting”, it was her way of ‘redirecting my behaviour’ and ‘teaching skills’. But what it really was – was abuse.
Even if you eliminate the hitting – it’s still abuse!
Some quotes will say things like “Connect before you correct and increase the likelihood of co-operation”. That’s not cooperation – that’s control and manipulation. It’s “discipline” at its worst, because it’s teaching children to understand and learn fake connection – that it’s alright to mistreat people, and to cause mental health issues; as long as you add some sort of arbitrary and nonsensical “I love you” or “I care” statement to your oppression, influence, hatred and dominance.
True co-operation comes from mutual respect and caring. Not pretend caring to get what you want, and to ignore the needs of others.
I saw one quote recently that said: “Before we redirect behaviour, we offer understanding”. This pissed me off! If you truly “understood” you wouldn’t have to redirect the behaviour. All behaviour is communication, and if you really understood -you’d remove the thing that was causing the ‘negative behaviour’ – the thing that is causing their pain.
Once you’ve truly understood the reason behind the behaviour – the ‘behaviour’ goes away – because you have solved the problem for the child. You have ‘listened’ to their form of communication, and you have (hopefully) truly connected with them – so no ‘correction’, ‘teaching’, or ‘redirecting’ is necessary.
The real development and growth of the child occurs when they learn that adults can be truly nurturing, caring, and responsible for their own actions AND help / support those more vulnerable than them. It’s called modelling!!!!
We model how to look for the things that hurt us, we model how to remove those things, we model how to communicate that those things are hurting us, we model how to communicate that we are now feeling better, we model how to ask for help – but more importantly – we model how we GIVE and support with help.
But we do NOT model ‘typical’ ways of doing these things – because that only promotes masking and mental health issues and promotes NT ways of doing things over ND ways. Instead – we model how we as ND adults do these things for ourselves, we offer alternatives that might help their unique needs, in ND ways – so the ND child can learn natural ND ways of coping and surviving in an ableist world.
This is when true development of the child occurs. They have now learnt through body doubling, true love, caring and nurturing how to be authentically themselves – to neuroqueer in their own way and support themselves or co-support through co-regulation. How to use support tools and strategies to live happy healthy lives.
NOT through manipulation and PBS/ABA/behavioural techniques that hinder our development, cause us to mask and hate ourselves and forces mental health issues.