From the author: In this article I talked about the atypical reasons for the appearance of hyperactivity and “disobedience”, of course, this does not exclude quite standard reasons, which can be found in numerous other sources. 

For me, as a psychologist, there are several types of inquiries and work in consultations and therapy.Working at the first level of the request is working with the symptom itself, i.e. “Here is a child for you, he is naughty – treat him.”This is very superficial and ineffective. It’s like treating the pain of a splinter with pain pills, but isn’t it easier to remove the splinter?Work at the second level is work with a reason (often not at all obvious) – work at the first level of the hierarchy of the generic system, i.e. children-parents or at deeper levels.The third level – the deepest – is working with “meanings” and understanding why this situation is happening and what it teaches, but most people never get here even during their entire life. Hyperactivity is just a symptom, like a headache is also a symptom of some kind of ailment, and the cause itself needs to be treated in an amicable way. This is just the tip of the iceberg, the reason is deeper, it is hidden from the conservative view and sometimes it may even seem absurd. There may be several such reasons, and as a rule, they are all associated with the generic structure. Example: a child of preschool age, hyperactivity, “uncontrollability”. His mother has a second marriage, relations with her ex-husband are, to put it mildly, tense, there are many blocked and unexpressed feelings towards her ex-husband, including subconscious anger and hatred, very skillfully hidden under the guise of “slight resentment and discontent”.The child does not exist in the generic system in isolation, all elements of the system are united by energetic and emotional connections. And the child, of course, subconsciously feels this hatred of the mother for his father. But the boy loves his mother and because of such loyalty to his mother he also feels hatred for his biological father, but how hard it is for him to do it, for him it is simply unbearably difficult and he is looking for a more suitable way to “drain” his energy and what he does ? That’s right – it behaves “uncontrollably” and thus releases this colossal amount of energy, so it is hyperactivity. How does this manifest itself in the relationship between the child and the mother? The system is “stormy” from that load of unexpressed emotions of the mother to the father, and she needs to somehow deal with these emotions. And what does she do? Of course, she “pours” it onto the child and does it unconsciously, thus she stabilizes this family system. Only these emotions are not at the right place. What does the child do then? With all his actions, he creates such situations so that his mother would be angry and cursed at him, this is how the negative circle of energy circulation was closed. But this is a road to nowhere. Such mothers usually do not want to recognize such processes, it is easier for them to give the child to some specialist, for example, a psychiatrist, a defectologist and say – here he is treating him, but you don’t touch me. Well, this is also a path, albeit a long one, energy-consuming in terms of resources.  The choice is yours – work with the cause or the symptom.I value your time and mine, so I choose the first path!In therapy, this situation can be easily resolved in 2-4 sessions, but be prepared to seriously work on yourself and your emotions. Then the child will simply no longer need to behave as before, the situation will change radically!Leo Tolstoy begins his novel “Anna Karenina” with the words “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”I think this is the best description of this situation in parent-child relationships, there are many such cases. They all come to consultations with similar requests, but each of these families is “unhappy in its own way,” that is, each parent finds a “symptom” with which to come for a consultation, but the reasons are usually very similar and very deep, and you need to have the courage to look at them, to recognize and be willing to work with them.