Children are commonly triangled into emotionally reactive marriages. When you and your husband argue about how to handle your son, you are triangling him into your marriage. This is a predictable result of emotional tension and distance developing between you. Triangles are universal, and there will be many interlocking triangles in any emotional system, but they are more visible when anxiety is high and less evident when anxiety is low or being managed. You want your husband to see that he is too hard on your son, while he probably insists that you are too soft with him. The stuckness of this reciprocal pattern, and the fact that a marital conflict is being fought “through” your son is what makes this triangle a problem.

It is incumbent upon the adults in the family to take responsibility for how they manage themselves in the interlocking triangles. Trying to change each other will only make the situation worse. Look at the ways you might be parenting out of anger, fear, pity and the anxiety of the moment. Work instead toward making parenting decisions based on your personal values and beliefs, keeping your long term goals in mind. Focus on being a mature and responsible family leader and everyone will benefit.

Cut off is the term used when family members stop interacting with one another or become extremely distant, like your husband and his father.  Surprisingly, cut off is not the result of a lack of feeling between family members, (despite what people may protest to the contrary.) Cut off results from too much unresolved emotional intensity between the generations. Often, people cut off because they feel they cannot “be themselves” around certain family members. Many young people believe that cutting off by moving far from the family is the road to independence. But you cannot be dependent on distance to achieve true independence, which only comes from being yourself while also staying emotionally close to important others.

The tendency to cut off is more prevalent in some families than in others.  If there is a pattern of cut off in your family the result will predictably be more emotional pressure on your remaining relationships, thereby increasing the risk of future cut offs.  If you are also cut off from portions of your family it would be a good idea to work toward establishing some level of contact with them.  If the people you are cut off from tend to be very difficult to deal with, this re-connection may best be accomplished with the help of a therapist who can help you to develop the relationships in the most thoughtful way.  If your husband will not work toward a rapprochement with his father, you can discuss with a therapist the pros and cons of reaching out to your father-in-law yourself.  This may be an important first step in eventually lowering the level of chronic anxiety in your family.

This concept describes the observable patterns of emotional functioning in a family in a single generation. Family members react to varying amounts of anxiety in the family system yet tend to maintain the status quo by engaging in repetitive patterns of behavior, even when the status quo is very unsatisfying. These patterns are: marital conflict, dysfunction of a spouse, and impairment of one or more children through the family projection process. The nuclear family relationship patterns of the current generation are highly related to the emotional process of past generations and will likewise influence future generations.

The Family Projection Process is one of several possible emotional patterns employed in reaction to chronic anxiety in families.  If you worry excessively about your child you will project that anxiety onto him which he will then absorb and act out.  (In some families parental anxiety can result in neglect, abuse, or over-focus in an overly positive way which can create its own kind of pressure.) It sounds like your oldest son is absorbing the lion’s share of the family anxiety. He reacts by rebelling, which increases the anxious focus on him, in a circular pattern. You can modify this by learning about similar patterns in other branches of the family, including yours and your husband’s families of origin.  This will enable you to deal more effectively with the situation you are currently facing.

This concept describes the transmission of the family relationship patterns through multiple generations.  You can see this process at work in your own family; your son has adopted the same position in the family that his father had.  There are undoubtedly similar patterns inherited from your own family tree.  All families are heavily influenced by the many generations that have come before them. Understanding this and taking the time to learn about your own family history is a vital part of therapy.  This point cannot be emphasized enough!

Certain personality and behavioral traits can be heavily influenced by the combination of a child’s birth order and gender. More is often expected of oldest children, like your son, while youngest children might be babied more. It can be helpful to heighten your awareness of how you parent each child differently, based on their birth order and personality characteristics that are in part projected on to them based on your and your husband’s expectations.

The good news is that it only takes one motivated family leader to make significant changes in the family system over time.  If you can recognize when you’re stuck in an unhelpful relationship pattern you can figure out different, more productive ways of relating. A therapist who works from these concepts will help you to understand the patterns at work in your home, to define your position in your family, and to hold firm when there is internal or external pressure to return to old patterns.