Julie, our foreign exchange student, returns to China in a little less than a week. She has been accepted to a university here in the US and plans to return to start college here this fall. We are glad that we will be able to keep in touch.


She arrived home early today because school is almost over for her. We just had lunch together, and I found myself explaining “conditioned responses” to her. She had asked me if Amy has a better relationship with my husband than she does with me. I responded that Amy had fewer conditioned responses to my husband, and he to her, than Amy and I share. Julie didn’t know what a conditioned response was, so I explained it… and then I thought it might make a good blog topic as well.


The classic example of a conditioned response is “Pavlov’s dogs”. This is a well-known and classic experiment where dogs that were fed after a bell sounded soon began to salivate just by hearing the bell. The food didn’t have to be present to cause the salivation.


There are countless examples of how conditioned responses play out in our family dynamics. All of us recognize that there are certain sounds, body postures, facial expressions and words that our family members can express that cause an immediate response in us… a response that occurs without “executive thinking” making it happen. Sometimes those triggers can evoke a positive conditioned response. BUT, in the case of our tough kids, more often those behaviors presented by our kids trigger a negative response in us. And soon we generalize—and they generalize—that a particular reaction or response applies to a broader and broader array of behaviors or feelings.


Conditioned responses can poison relationships, but how does one step out of such a loop? And it is a loop… Much like the loop I described in the Love and Respect marriage conference post. Person A does this… and Person B reacts like this… and Person A reacts a predictable way… and Person B reacts predictably as well. If one of those two people steps outside the loop and changes their reaction, by default it will change the dynamics.


Ahhh, but there’s the rub. It can be nearly impossible to step outside the loop… especially after years and years of responding a certain way. And in the case of therapeutic parenting, the parent has to respond differently with no hope or expectation that the child will respond more appropriately. The dynamics will change, to be sure. A parent who responds to nastiness with a smile will create different family dynamics than one who snarls in response. But the child’s response may not change. And it can be nearly impossible in my opinion not to develop an apathetic response and a conditioned reaction when one is met with apathy or rebuttal at every turn... for years and years and years.


An example that occurred in my life centered on school. I was badly abused by the school district when Tommy and Amy were working their charms. I have many, many conditioned responses to the school staff and even to conversations with other parents about their personal experiences with schools. I actually received EMDR to deal with my PTSD related to the school. I had to learn to quell my conditioned responses. Did the school change? Not much. Did I change? Yes. And therefore the dynamics were better… because I handled it better.


Examine your conditioned responses to your children. See which ones you can reprogram… for everyone’s sake. It isn’t good for any family member to get in a rut and stay in a rut. We should all be works in progress…


Here's another article on conditioned responses.

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