Weekly Psyche

Its important for individuals, parents, teachers, even the care givers in elderly homes, to realize that whenever they’re focusing on a behavior for change, they have to determine whether or not that is a behavior they would like to change because it bothers them or it’s good for the child or good for the patient. In other words, is it a natural behavior or is it an unnatural behavior.

Diane, my wife, years back wanted to get a German Shepherd and we were both very exited about shopping for it. She knew German Shepherd’s. She had been raised with them and had raised three or four of them and knew their personalities. In the mean time, there was a family that had pedigreed Border Collies and they found out their children were allergic to the dogs and they couldn’t keep them. We took our family down to look at them and they were just beautiful dogs. The boys fell in love with them almost immediately and we decided we would take on Border Collies rather than a German Shepherd.

Border Collies were originally bred to herd sheep and so they attach themselves to people. They attached themselves to my wife Diane. At the same time, whenever they would get excited, they would bark a lot or yap. I went to talk to a canine trainer and I said “what can we do about the yapping?” and the canine trainer said “Jeff, you purchased dogs that were bred to bark. If you didn’t want barking dogs, why did you get Border Collies?” So it wasn’t a behavior. It was a behavior that annoyed me. It wasn’t an unnatural behavior. And like kids and elderly, we have to ask ourselves the same question; is it a yapping behavior that annoys us and is it natural.

This came up with a family with an only child and the only child continues to interrupt the parents in conversation, at dinner or wherever they are and they asked if we could change this behavior. I said “Do you realize that you are in a very unnatural situation because you have an only child. Family aren’t supposed to have only children; they’re supposed to have a herd of children, a pack of children, where they begin to model and take care of each other.”

They had chosen to be the parents, the siblings, the child’s friends. All those things wound up into one. When she is constantly interrupting and it is annoying to your relationship, you have to realize that this is probably a yapping collie and it’s natural. We’ll talk about how to create a few pauses and teach an only child how to listen. I compared her interruptions to that of the yapping collie; natural or unnatural. This is Dr. B saying, Remember, we are not alone.