Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Amplifying norms in family relationships?

As most of you know, my life has been consumed with my daughter and granddaughter lately (she's actually on my lap drinking a bottle right now) and so I have been thinking about everything within that context. When my daughter decided to move back home, one of the things I was really happy about was the fact that she would be exposed to a different set of social norms. Up in Canada, staying up late was one of the normal behaviors.  Additionally, no one was modeling how to be a new mother and no one around her had a new baby, much less a new baby with special needs. My family tends to focus more on stability, education, and personal growth so I thought that just being present in that changed environment would alter her behavior. However, just a few weeks after returning home, my daughter slipped back into her old schedule and no matter how our family and I try to tell her and try to show her that the norm is for a mom to sleep at night and get up during the day with the baby, she rejects the message. So, I was trying to figure out if there was a way to amplify the norm for her or if this is something that is near impossible to pull off for family members and perhaps she needs more outside influence.

Perhaps reciprocation could be utilized by appealing to her sense of fairness? If I get up early and take care of Ana one morning, allowing her to sleep in that day, would she be more likely to agree to getting up early and caring for her the next day?

Consistency is not much of an issue for me. I tend to be rigidly consistent because unscheduled changes affect me negatively due to an anxiety disorder. I am pretty strict about keeping my commitments as well. However, my daughter seems to have figured out that if she refuses to give an affirmative response to a request to take care of something, it means that later she can say she never agreed to anything. So getting a promise or commitment out of her is rather difficult.

Because she is spending most of her time lately playing a video game with others, who in all likelihood do not have children or the same responsabilities that she has, she receives mixed signals with descriptive norms. Half of the time she sees what I model and the other half what her online friends model. This makes social validation of the types of norms I want her to be exposed to less salient. I'm certain she feels like she gets a lot more out of her interactions with her friends than she does out of praise from me for doing the dishes or getting up at a descent time in the morning. This is where I wish I could get her to socialize with other new moms in the area or other moms of kids with AMC but, my daughter also has a lot of social anxiety which makes that type of intervention more difficult to employ.

In regard to liking, it's no big surprise to me that I would have this factor stacked against me. I know my daughter loves me and she probably does like certain things about me and wishes to emulate them but I think the fact that she dislikes me "telling her what to do" and feels "we have nothing in common" is much harder to overcome. She still acts like a 16 year old rebellious child in many ways and so cooperation can be more difficult for us to accomplish. I can see how this would be an issue within many family dynamics.

However, it is true that she is sensitive to the authority at the same time. Not just my authority but my mother, her aunts, her step-mother, etc. I believe anytime their message backs up my message it gives the takeaway more salience since they are all "elders" and have that experience and credibility. I also see how this is more effective when clarity and efficacy are low because she is much more inclined to listen to me or fall into an action that is normal for our household when she is too tired to argue or doesn't feel like she has to fight for something she feels strongly about.

Finally, scarcity could certainly play a role in amplifying messages to her and this is one place where I could potentially be undermining myself, by being so available and accommodating. If I weren't watching Ana in the mornings so often, would she get up more frequently? If I made her keep her with her in the evenings instead of taking her when I get home, would she stay off of the video game more? My experience over the last few weeks tells me no but since norms change slowly, perhaps I haven't given it enough time?

Have you all had similar experiences with difficulty sending or receiving normative messages among family members? What could I do to stage a normative intervention in my home?




2 comments:

  1. Well it certainly sounds like you've got the descriptive norm covered, but it does sound like the injunctive norm she is receiving from her friends is in direct contrast. This lack of alignment between the descriptive and injunctive norms may be undermining any potential progress. By then amplifying the norms and subsequently their differences the response to the descriptive and injunctive norms seems to be quite varied. Is there any way to expose her to a different injunctive norm that comes from her peer group? Perhaps friends or coworkers with a different attitude? Could she potentially go to a Mommy-daughter group where the injunctive norm presented would be more in line with the one that you and your family present?

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  2. I agree that exposing her to another type of social circle of individuals of her age and role models that promote the desired behavior is the way to go. I think that she is really missing a supporting group of peers that make the norm more relatable: her peers don't promote the norm at all and the people in her life that promote the norm are people that while she cares for and listen to, are not peers, so the desired behavior is not relatable to her.

    How about looking for online groups of support for young parents? She probably does not communicate well face to face but she surely seems to be skilled in establishing relatonships in the virtual world.

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