This proposal consists in working on the methods and the results of a small piece of research into the dysfunctions of learning.

Of 251 families seen in interview for their diagnosis, 81 of them received systemic family treatment. Among these, 21 cases were grouped together for the research presented here.

Reason for consultation

In every case it was defined by the parents as “learning disorders” and/or “behaviour disorders” at school or at home.

Once the cases had been grouped together for study and research, it was found that the constant was the difficulty of government that these parents encountered with their children at home. They were consulting at the teachers’ request, or because one of the two, or both, felt they had failed in their attempt to control the identified patient, who “is hard to handle, disrupts family life in various ways and, in many cases, is also the object of complaints about their conduct at school or at nursery”.

They are called dysfunctions of learning because there is a disturbance in the teaching and the learning of how to take in and respect the rules of social conduct passed on by the parents. There is a difficulty in learning-changing-taking in, as a response to a parental guidance that is “unclear”, which is in turn circularly fed by the complexity of these children’s conduct. It is defined as “unclear” because, according to our study, it is an educational guidance that is imprecise, changeable, hesitant, made up of inappropriate requests and demands, the product of the disagreement that always appears between the styles of the two parents. Styles which each of them sees as an error on the part of the spouse, and not as a different vision of the world or of things.

The family system

• Anger or disappointment of one of the parents, or of both, towards the identified patient.
• Explicit or masked disagreement as to what is “good” for their child.
• Serious difficulties in setting limits.
• Disagreement about how to intervene or to help with homework and school obligations.
• They believe one can educate without frustrating.
• They seek the child’s assent to their own educational conduct.
• Most often, mothers feel responsible for the difficulty, or are designated as such by the father.
• They experience the child as unmanageable, “almost possessed or dominated by something”.
• Opposition as to the method to be used with the child.
• They readily set up the consultation as a kind of “arbitration”.
• Mutually disqualifying interactions between the parents.
• One of the parents often occupied the child’s place in their own family of origin.
• They usually speak of the school in disqualifying terms, and still more so of the country’s education policy.
• The IP (identified patient) appears little concerned during the interviews, as though absent; they interact by interrupting their parents.
• The IP generally appears provocative (in adolescence).

Model of work

One or two exploratory joint family interviews, in the course of which:

• the reason for consultation is clearly delimited;
• each person is asked for their opinion of it;
• the attempted solutions are enquired into;
• information is gathered on the family style of life;
• the activities they share, and whether there is anything else they find hard to handle.

Work is done on: the delimitation of boundaries, an adequate hierarchical order and the other structural manoeuvres aimed at clarifying and discriminating in order to “put things in order”.

It is worth recalling what the word disorder says: “inversion of the order of things; disturbance; turning things upside down”.

One observes the balancing power of symptomatic conduct, a stabilising focus of the marital situation (Madanes, 1984).

At the end of the second joint interview, we announce to the parents that, for the time being, we shall go on meeting with them alone. This move is in itself restructuring, since they generally present the IP as “possessed” by a force (which they are unable to master) that drives the child to develop these forms of conduct. By working with them alone (Bowen, 1974), we show that responsibility for this change will fall to the adults, since the “effecting capacity” to establish a new order is in the parents’ hands.

At the following interview with the parents, the value of working together is made explicit, so that it is they who, through shared daily life, modify the situation that concerns them (this is how the “disorder” that brought them is redefined). They can resolve it themselves: they automatically cease to see themselves as helpless and incompetent (as they had arrived) and move to an active position, but a systematised one, directed and guaranteed by an expert with whom they are establishing a pact of collaboration. We make an alliance with the parents’ conflict-free zone, in order to work by increasing the transforming function that every system possesses.

We work with them on their families of origin as models, on the wish to repeat them or to modify them, on the small or large difference that exists between the models of the one and of the other, and on what it is possible for them to negotiate in order to bring their criteria into line despite their differing positions — indicating this attitude to them as the basic condition for the effectiveness of their “ordering” work.

We know that behind every symptomatic child there are couple problems (Bergman, 1985); depending on the degree of marital conflict, we shall therefore manoeuvre so as to obtain as early as possible their commitment to collaborate, suggesting that they approach this circumstance as the optimising of the performance of one of their functions as a couple, the parental function, setting aside for the time being the marital function. By working on their lack of parental agreement, the field opens before us onto a space where it is possible to plan and to move into action. An action which — they are told — they will not undertake until they are fully convinced that it is a position they share, because it is new, jointly created, and has nothing to do with their earlier disagreements. It aims directly at taking back control.

They are asked for a very detailed account of an ordinary day in the family, clearly recording what happens with the problem child. Multiple situations then always appear in which they were unable to obtain adequate responses to their requests, and they are shown the ineffectiveness of the escalations they were engaging in. These concrete interactions make it possible to work directly by framing the adults’ activity, bringing them to respond better to the demands of each circumstance, even the smallest ones in the children’s conduct. Between the three of us, we study the difficulties of control or of guidance, and an order of priorities is established with a view to a programme of clear conduct.

These interviews excite and amuse them, because they are like a game that will make them more effective.

Depending on the IP’s age and on the specific characteristics of the problem presented, different strategies are devised. Plans are made for the limits and controls that will be established, who will put them into practice and how, the specific tasks in which the more peripheral parent is involved, as well as spaces and attentions better suited to the needs of the child or of the parents.

They are asked to keep a notebook in which they will record in writing the agreements and the arrangements made, so as to be able to return to them each time they depart from them. It will also contain each person’s comments and reactions, as well as anything they judge important. They are instructed as to the private and confidential character of what is said and decided in this interview and in those that follow.

At the following meetings, the work bears on what has happened in the interval: the difficulties, the successes, the reactions, the responses, and so on. Care is taken always to keep the focus on the initial proposal. It is usual for a marked easing of the family’s initial climate to appear around the seventh interview, accompanied by a growing attitude of effectiveness and progress in the parents, who generally develop isomorphic forms of conduct in other areas of their lives (*).

The treatments are short: they generally range between 10 and 15 interviews. The meetings are weekly at first, then become more spaced out, taking place fortnightly.

Once a certain change has been obtained, the parents are encouraged to go on developing this model by themselves and to call if a difficulty should arise. They are advised to get back in touch three or six months later, by way of follow-up.

It is very frequent for them to call two or three times in the days following the end of the work, for reassurance or about minor questions that a telephone call settles.

Conclusions

We can say that the parents have learned to teach their children to relearn and to comply, “accommodating” to norms of common life. It is they who direct, thereby establishing the adequate hierarchical order. They take the leading of things back in an orderly way. They are the material and affective support of the family they have formed and the responsible directors of their children’s education (Haley, 1973). The change towards an agreeable common life was accompanied, in parallel, by similar conduct at school. The adequate setting of limits and rules also laid down the conditions indispensable to learning in other domains. Without any specific work on the learning problems, these improved and then disappeared. This situation would indicate an isomorphic reaction in the school context.

Statistical analysis of the data

1. Objective

Statistical research carried out a posteriori of the therapeutic work. The aim is to see whether significant results are found, despite the small size of the sample.

2. Population and sample

The population consists of the children and adolescents who, as IP (identified patient), are the reason for consultation of families arriving for learning disorders or behaviour disorders at school and/or at home (described in 4.2). Sample size: 11 children and 10 adolescents (n = 21).

3. Design used

Descriptive.

4. Definition of the variables

4.1. Independent variables

Sex.

Age group: it comprises two categories — children (up to 12 years) and adolescents (over 12 years).

4.2. Dependent variables