Theory According to Finn and Jacobson (2008),

¶ … Theory

According to Finn and Jacobson (2008), "Theory is thought of as intangible, highly academic, and entirely intellectual." In other words, we study "theory" while rarely making the connection to how we apply it in our practice. In discussing the "child's-eye view" of theory, Finn and Jacobson refer to the question we so often hear from little children: But why? It seems like a simple enough, straightforward question. However, if this is the case, why is it often so difficult for adults to come up with a simple, straightforward response?

In my early life experience, I do have memories of trying to understanding events, situations, and behaviors that did not seem to make sense to me, and of the ways I tried to deal with them. For the most part, my childhood seemed to be a happy one. I had two biological parents and two siblings, and outwardly we functioned as a normal, "traditional" family unit. However, inside our household, things could change quite instantly from a calm, peaceful evening to a loud, sometimes violent, and very frightening night.

The cause of these frightening nights was my father's unpredictable, sometimes violent, and always upsetting behavior at certain times (usually in the evenings, but with no regularity that I could tell). I remember thinking, as a child, that I had to be careful around him at times because saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move would end up in a violent fit of shouting. It was unclear to me at first that I had to be careful. However, after being yelled at a number of times, I began to realize that when my father was in a certain mood -- usually loud, pacing up and down the hallway and kitchen floors, and gesticulating more than usual with his hands -- that these were the warning signals that some kind of storm was brewing. When I began to witness this behavior in him, I knew that I had to behave differently: to remain quiet and out of sight if at all possible.

It was not always easy to tell that he was in one of these violent moods. He could be laughing and joking one minute, and then suddenly snap as if out of the blue. It did not really make sense to me what the actual trigger to this behavior was. As I grew older and began to understand the nature of his disease and his behavior, I came to see that certain types of comments seemed to set him off on a rampage. For example, anything that made him feel angry or upset, or that he was not a good provider for his family, might suddenly change his sunny nature into something dark and scary. Most often, I later learned, these comments were not intentionally made to upset him; they may have been off-handed and casual, made as normal conversation in the course of a day in our household. They were frequently spoken by my mother or by one of my other siblings, who were older than I and therefore more vocal in the household. However, something in the tone or content would trigger a violent reaction in my father, and I soon knew that trouble was coming.