• TREATMENT WITH DOLIF •
The essence of the DOLIF treatment method consists of deciphering the invisible flow or DISTRIBUTION OF LOVE IN a FAMILY. This is not done according to the conventional thinking of our Adult Mind, where we tend to think of a family consisting of a couple, with a father figure and a mother figure who form the adult grouping, and another group that includes all the children. In the DOLIF schema we follow the Mind of a Child, a newly discovered style of perception and thinking with which all children are naturally endowed. In other words, the DOLIF diagnosis of a family is extracted from the child’s point of view. The task of looking through the lens of the Mind of a Child is admittedly challenging for adults because parents have no familiarity with the Emotion-based undercurrents of LOVE in their family, while children are acutely sensitive to this domain. Moreover, adults often strenuously deny that such an elusive, invisible dimension exists. DOLIF Theory is backed by the author’s near half-century of intensive observation, analysis and empirical research with closely known families, children and adults.
Though it may sound unpleasant, DOLIF is principally concerned with an imbalance in the Distribution Of LOVE that tends to occur spontaneously in ALL families. We refer to this imbalance or inequity as parental Favoritism. Yet parents are very reluctant to confront the idea that there may actually be a difference in their attitudes toward their children, and most especially, that there is actually a difference in the LOVE they hold in their hearts for some children over others. Most parents insist that there is no difference in the way they treat or feel about their children. Nevertheless, a diagnosis can always be made because of the absolute predictability of the Favoritism paradigm in every family, since its origins are derived from pure human instincts that are inborn and inherent in all children.
But the ultimate telling feature that exposes, confirms and proves the DOLIF contention that parental Favoritism is a reality and a viable dynamic force is the predictable outcome in the personalities and behavioral styles of the first two siblings of any family. That is, there is always an substantial difference in the personal characteristics, social adjustment and behavioral patterns of the first two children. This fact reigns true regardless of the differences between the siblings such as age, sex, mental ability, physical ability, whether the older or younger sibling, or twins. The first two siblings always divide into one who is more jovial, compliant and easy-going, while the other is more angry, sad, hardened or otherwise difficult to manage.
Once a diagnosis is made about the Distribution Of Love or Favoritism issue in the family, parents are advised to make their best efforts to shift their feelings of LOVE in order to remedy the problems they face with their Disfavored, LESS well-behaved, LESS well socially adjusted child. In essence, the parents’ task is to actively focus on altering, balancing, or even reversing the LOVE they feel toward their negatively behaved child. That is, DOLIF instructs parents to adjust their innermost feelings such that they increase their LOVING feelings toward their LESS LOVED, poorly behaved child. At the same time, they are advised to decrease their emphasis on the LOVE and intimacy they naturally feel toward their well-behaved child. As much as they possibly can, DOLIF prescribes that parents should try to LOVE their misbehaving child in a similar way to, and as fervently as, they LOVE their well-behaved one. Admittedly, for any parent it is a daunting and challenging task!
Like the positive and negative roles it predicts in the first two siblings, in every family, another essential part of the DOLIF diagnosis differentiates between parents. Going by the inborn preferences in the Mind of a Child that is guided by immutable Emotions and instincts, the DOLIF method seeks to diagnose the parent whom the children sense and respond to as providing MORE Emotional warmth, comfort and MORE LOVE, as compared with the parent whom the children sense, perceive and respond to as more strict, demanding, socially uncompromising and generally LESS LOVING. The parent who is most responsible for changing their feelings with the aim of changing the behavior of the Disfavored child is the parent whom the children perceive as the attachable, easy-going and MORE LOVING one. DOLIF designates this parent as the Prime Love Giver (PLG). The other parent, or Additional Love Giver (ALG), is also an invaluable contributor. Their unique style of parenting supplies Support, Security, Stability and a sense of Belonging to the entire family group. This parent carries the burden of providing all the family members with the essential feeling that we refer to as “belonging” to a group. It is a vital, life-affirming feeling that bolsters the children’s sense of pride, personal identity and feeling of “fitting into” their larger social environment. It is also of great importance in holding the family together during the process of treatment when, much to the children’s surprise, the flow of precious LOVE in the family might become significantly altered by the PLG partner.
Even though children continually annoy us, DOLIF prescribes that, in order to manage the behavior of a child who persistently behaves negatively or tests our patience, parents should bite their tongue, contain their Anger and resist their natural urge to use standard disciplinary measures such as customary, adult, reality-based, reward-and-punishment methods of behavioral control. DOLIF instructs parents to recognize instead that their difficult child is behaving unpleasantly or wildly because ALL children, of which the first two are the best example, are always embroiled in a continuous, bitter SIBLING RIVALRY with their immediately next-born sibling. Due to human instincts that force siblings to be repelled from each other with reverse magnetic force, using their Mind of a Child, siblings naturally behave in opposite ways to attract their own pool of attention and LOVE. Parents should understand that, just like their positively behaved Favored child, their negatively behaved Disfavored child is merely acting up in a misguided attempt to procure MORE of the same kind of LOVE, approval and affection as their rival sibling.
instead of punishing the negatively behaved child, feeling Angry, comparing them with their well-behaved next born sibling, or becoming resentful of her/him, DOLIF advises parents to respond with positive LOVING feelings to this disguised plea for LOVE from their difficult child,
It is admittedly a daunting task and a strategy that tests the limits of patience and tolerance in parents. A remedy such as this, that goes against the natural intuition of the Adult Mind, can even cause serious discord among parents, as well as between parents and their treatment advisors, and even parents and their religious beliefs. The question parents will face is whether to use conventional methods of discipline, or subscribe to the DOLIF method where discipline is avoided or minimized. In making the decision about which course of action to follow, parents should bear in mind that disciplinary methods first originated with ancient religious beliefs, and were later incorporated into mental health theories where it was found that animals could be trained and their behavior “shaped” by using simple reward and punishment. These methods follow the natural Intelligence-based thinking of the Adult Mind, and take no account of the Emotion-based thinking of the Mind of a Child. DOLIF Theory maintains that this common advice about child-rearing is inappropriate for use with humans due to the supremacy of the human WILL, that is unique to humans and distinguishes us from all other animals.
There are many advantages to using the DOLIF method. One is that if parents both cooperate, they can usually figure out how to correct the situation with their difficult child on their own. Since most parents are fully capable of changing their attitudes and responses to their children’s behavior through private parent-to-parent discussions at home, it means there would be no need to ask for the help of a therapist or other type of intervention. However, to this there is one very important caveat. It should be absolutely clear that NO CHILD should have anything to do with this process of improving, adjusting, altering or redirecting the parents’ feelings of LOVE, and that NO CHILD should ever, in any way be involved in the discussions about Favoritism or changing of LOVE patterns. This is true about the negative child who should NEVER have to confront their parents’ opinions about the comparative distribution of LOVE in their family. And the same is true about this child’s well-behaved, positive, adjacent Favored sibling. This sibling often shows themselves to be more than eager to offer their opinion about how to manage their naughty next-door sibling’s behavior. However, parents should know that the positive sibling (whom they likely believe was endowed with perfect genes) carries the same Emotion-filled agenda as the poorly-behaved one, and the same hostile, Anger-generated SIBLING RIVARLY intentions of “stealing the show” for themselves. This is due to both the children’s fundamental, instinct-driven wish to eject their next born sibling from the desirable turf that engages their mutual PLG in a LOVING relationship. Parents should remember that both siblings are driven by the same raw instincts and Emotions, and that they both seek to protect their claim to the elusive POT OF LOVE they perceive as emanating from their PLG parent. It is important as well for parents to recognize that children are NOT aware of their rivalrous motivations, and that any amount of determination to convince the children of their jealousies or of the fairness of the parents’ actions are futile. Parents are forewarned that any such discussions with either sibling may cause the children serious emotional harm.
Another advantage of the DOLIF system is that, because of its pinpoint accuracy in reading and understanding the Mind of a Child, children often respond instantly to the prescribed remedy. It means that significant changes in negative behavior and in the children’s personalities can occur immediately, or in very short order, just as soon as the parents change their attitudes. It means that parents may reap the rewards of their efforts very quickly, sometimes almost immediately. Their new attitudes could instantly improve the quality of their family life as well as their own personal circumstances. As one client commented after one session: “I’m waiting for the fighting to start and it’s not starting!” Finally, by using DOLIF, parents have nothing to lose. With little effort and by simply adopting a positive attitude to their negative child, they stand the best chance of sparing themselves the long-term agony and grief of facing an Emotionally alienated adult child who may eventually express their defiance by rejecting and working against the family interests. Alternatively, they may become socially rebellious, turn to substance abuse, crime, mental illness or even suicide. For society at large, the use of DOLIF gives us the best chance of raising socially compliant, upstanding individuals, and avoiding the horrors associated with long-term social/emotional problems.
In order to accomplish the monumental task of trying to LOVE their negatively-behaved child as much as they LOVE the well-behaved sibling, parents should first and foremost put aside any prejudice about genetic factors being responsible for the often glaring differences among their children. In DOLIF the disparity in children’s character and behavior is NEVER assumed to be due to inborn ‘good’ or ‘bad’ genes and there are many sources of proof offered in the blogs. One proof relates to the enormous disparities among identical twins, who share the same DNA but usually have vastly different personalities. But the most powerful practical proof is that opposite personalities occur in the first two siblings with 100% certainty in every family. Not only is it statistically impossible to be such a fixed pattern without some reasonable explanation, but this same factor leads to the predictability of the personalities of the first two children as reliably “opposite” every time. Unfortunately this phenomenon and its remedies are unheard of as yet in any psychological literature, and are only elaborated for the first time by this author in the blogs of her website and in her textbooks. Finally, over and over again, the successful application of DOLIF in treatment situations provides continual empirical proof of its validity.
For further explanation of how to apply the DOLIF treatment method refer to the case studies.
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