Parent-Child Harmony

Dad Backs Off (Recorded in a parent class)

2008-11-12T11:42:24-06:00

I like helping parents focus on their listening as a means of helping children. It means you, the parent, have to back off. Instead of trying to pound something into the child’s head, invite the child to bring whatever is in there out. You have to be patient, back off, and wait till they’re ready. It’s the reverse of what we normally do, how we normally communicate with kids, where we too often boss them around.

Here’s a good example, recorded in one of my parent classes, of how a father started backing off with his seven-year-old daughter and listening to her. He said he had just recently stopped yelling at her and wasn’t bossing her around. Look what happened.

Dad: Now this is, I was telling everybody, she really had a terrible Wednesday. And when she came home I read her assignment notebook, and there was a letter in there from the teacher saying that she hadn’t listened, and she was....completely didn’t do anything all day long. So when she came home, to make a long story short, we didn’t even get home, and she said, “Daddy, my teacher sent a note home today.” And I said, “Well, what was wrong?” And she wouldn’t tell me. So I just......dropped it. And we got home, and I read this note, and, uh, I said, “Well what do you think we should do about this?”

CA: Beautiful!

That really WAS beautiful. Dad expressed interest, but when she wouldn’t tell him what went wrong at school, he just dropped it. He invited. She backed off. So he backed off, too. Good move, Dad! Later she brings it up again, which often happens when they don’t feel pressured. Then,

Dad has a stroke of genius. Instead of lecturing or trying to teach her something, he asks “What do you think WE should do about this?”

Dad: Yeah. I don’t know what possessed me to do that, but I said....what.....what....

CA: It was divine inspiration! (Laughter.)

Dad: And, uh, she said, “I don’t know.” And I said, “Well, okay.” And uh, uh, right before I tucked her in she said, uh, “What I think I’m gonna do, Dad, is write my teacher a note, an apology note.” And she did it on her own.

CA: Wow!

Again, a beautiful thing. Dad let Sheri take the lead on what to do, and when she said she didn’t know what to do, he back off. AGAIN. Good move, Dad! Sheri thinks about it and comes up with her own solution in her own good time. And then she tells Dad, and takes the initiative to do it on her own. Wow. But again, this is not uncommon when kids are given space.

Dad: She wrote in her, ahh, you know, misspelled words, and the whole nine yards, and gave it to her teacher. And then, that was Wednesday, and then Thursday she had an absolutely wonderful day, and the teacher gave her a hug after she gave her the note, and everything. So it was, it was kind of weird.

CA: It was wonderful.

Weird, wonderful, whatever!

Dad: And I mean, like, for years I was trying to get her to clean her room, and the last two weeks she’s actually....like, last night she said, “Dad, what should I do?” And I said, “I don’t know...You got some time? Uh, maybe you could pick up your room a little bit.” So she went in her room, and she picked up her closet and everything, and she put a new bedspread on her, on her bed. And I was doing something on the computer, and she brought me four or five pillows, and my part in helping her was to put the pillowcases on. And she, she didn’t make her bed or anything this morning, but, uh, you know, one thing at a time.

Look at this! She asks dad for his opinion! He keeps it low key–-“I don’t know.” Then, IF you have some time,...” and he makes a suggestion. He’s tried for years to get her to do this, and she has fought him all the way. All of a sudden, what a reversal. Then, she brings him the pillows so he can help her. What child does NOT enjoy doing things in a relaxed, free and easy way with their parents?

CA: Yeah, that’s right! One thing at a time. What you shared with us is great. Something is happening with that kid, and it’s because of you. You are changing something in how you’re coming across. You’re not yelling, you’re backing off a little bit, and this is great. And she’s getting that message. And now she’s responding differently. That’s what happens.

Yes, that’s what happens. Dad is helping his daughter change by giving her more elbow room. He’s backing off, not yelling, not bossing, not trying to force her to do things or to talk. And what happens? She starts to come around on her own. This is a big victory for dad. A victory over himself and his impulse to control her behavior. He’s now controlling his own behavior. That’s a winning formula.

This is why I like to say “listening is 90% of communication.” Try backing off and experimenting with it.

She Won't Listen

2008-10-30T13:34:56-05:00

by Chuck Adam

The single most common complaint I hear about children is this: “S/he doesn’t listen.” It’s a biggie in regard to spouses, too. And really, how can you communicate with someone who won’t listen? You can’t force them to, because you don’t have a remote control to their brain, as if they were a robot.

Another problem is this. Parents often say “S/he doesn’t listen” and they mean, “S/he doesn’t do what they’re told.” Again, what can you do? You can’t force them to, because you don’t have a remote control to their brain.

In each of these situations there is only one solution. That is dialogue. Really, what can you do if you can’t talk something like this through with the other person (no matter what their age)? You don’t have a remote control to their brain, as if they were a robot.

So let’s think about dialogue between you and that other person. How can you get them to listen to you, when you don’t have a remote control to their brain, as if they were a robot? There’s a secret to this. And most of the parents in the class I just finished (called “Teaching Children to Listen”) reported, as they always do, that things started improving almost immediately when they used this “secret” technique. (Luckily, the secret technique is an already-developed strength they all have. And you have it, too.)

The secret technique for getting them to listen to you is to listen to them.

Here’s why. You have to start with something you can control. Now, you can control what you say and how you say it. And you already know that yelling at her to get her to listen to you doesn't work. So you know you might as well try something else. Now, you can't control her listening, but you can control your own (by keeping your mouth shut, paying attention, and astking questions that invite her to say more).

So, start with what you can control. Now it just so happens that listening is the single

most powerful thing you can do in a relationship. That’s why I’ve been saying for 35 years, "Listening is 90% of communication."

God gave us two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. Four out of five of those organs are for taking information in, and only one is for speaking it out. That’s 80% right there! Beyond that, though, listening has such incredible value and power in any relationship that it counts for another 10%, or all told, 90% of what constitutes good communication.

Consider the following.

1. Listening is the one and only thing I have ever found that one person can do for another that is never wrong! Any other kind or loving gesture can, given the person and the circumstances, be wrong, offensive, or unwelcome. Not so with listening.

2. The goal of listening is to understand where another is coming from, to understand something s/he is trying to convey, or his/her thoughts and feelings. And who doesn’t want to be understood? Who does not want to be listened to? The biggest complaint people have about each other is, “S/he doesn’t listen to me.” So when I listen, I communicate “I’m here; I care; I acknowledge you and respect you.” When I listen, I communicate, “I care enough about you to put out the effort to try to understand you.”

3. And guess what! Listening actually does create understanding--understanding where the other is coming from, why they say what they say, how they feel, why they do things I might not like. It means I want to, and actively try to, empathize with their position. This is all the more difficult when they think and feel differently from me. Think about it: Listening is the only way to gain that understanding.

Here’s a few more things that are challenging, and may be the reason others may not be listening to you. Because they are challenging, you may need to teach them to the other person first, before they will listen to you. More reasons by listening is 90% of communication.

4. Listening is harder work than speaking. It’s much easier for me to shoot my mouth off than listen to someone else shoot their mouth off. It takes real mental work to follow what they say, put myself in their place, and not interrupt, especially if I disagree with what I’m hearing, or if I think I know what they’re going to say. I might feel I’m right, and they’re wrong. I might think I must defend myself. When I listen I let go of defending.

5. Listening means I will be changed. This is threatening. If I truly hear and empathize with the other, I will have my own views about him/her changed by new information. And I don’t know how I will be changed. It means letting go of what I think in order to tune in to the other. It’s like being in a rowboat and leaving my safe and familiar little mooring in the fog, knowing I won’t get back to the same safe and familiar mooring, and yet not knowing exactly where I’ll end up. This is indeed kind of scary!

6. I will hear things I don’t want to hear. My ego might say, “This hurts!” Listening might make me feel like I’m giving up, or giving in, or paying attention to stuff I consider nonsense, or insulting. It takes courage. It’s easier to defend my own position than to be influenced enough by another that I must now integrate a new perspective into how I see him or her. Ego says, “s/he should be listening to me,” especially if s/he is my child. Listening requires ignoring all this, and putting my ego its place.

7. Listening takes time that I might not have. So ego pipes up with, “I’m too busy and they talk too much. And they’re not saying anything worthwhile anyway. I don’t need or want to hear it. I know what they’re going to say anyway, so it’s easier to interrupt and get the whole thing over with. Why should I waste my time?”

8. Best of all, listening builds trust like nothing else can. If I can listen to you without judging, criticizing, interrupting, defending, or belittling, you will start to be honest and trust me with your innermost truths. Only then is real dialogue possible.

So, s/he won’t listen? By far the best way encourage him/her to listen to you, since you don’t have a remote control to their brain, is to put the ball in your own court, and you start listening to them. The many parents in my classes who do this and report positive results can’t be wrong!

Our Two Biggest Challenges as Parents

2008-09-22T12:20:09-05:00

Parenting today is a real challenge for most parents–perhaps more so than it was for our parents. There are many reasons for that, and they can be summed up in the idea that this is a far more complicated world than the one in which our parents raised us. Here are the two most difficult challenges I see for today’s parents.

Lack of Awareness

Early in life our parents taught us our values, how to relate to others, how to handle feelings, and how to parent, When we become parents, we typically do what we learned from out parents. This usually means a heavy dose of power-and-control type methods of influencing children to do the right thing, to behave well. Too often, however, they tend to invite resentment and conflict from our children. Thomas Gordon, in Parent Effectiveness Training, says this about the typical power methods of influence used by parents:

“It is paradoxical but true that parents lose influence by using power and will have more influence on their children by giving up their power or refusing to use it. Parents obviously will have more influence on their children if their methods of influence do not produce rebellion or reactive behavior. Non-power methods of influence make it much more likely that children might seriously consider their parents’ ideas or their feelings and as a result modify their own behavior in the direction desired by the parent...I have come to the conclusion that parents over the years have continued to use power because they have had very little, if any, experience in their own lives with people who use non-power methods of influence. Most people, from childhood on, have been controlled by power exercised by parents, school teachers, school principals, coaches, Sunday school teachers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, Scout leaders, camp directors, military officers, and bosses. Parents therefore persist in using power out of a lack of knowledge and experience with any other method of resolving conflicts in human relations.”

So a serious problem for many parents lies in the fact that they simply have not been taught non-power methods of relating.

Pride

Besides simply not knowing much about non-power methods of relating, though, most of us face another significant challenge as parents: our own pride. Virtually all parents want the very best for their children, and they really do know what’s best for them. Still, children often respond with hostility, stubbornness, and even defiance to their parents’ guidance. Part of this is the children’s own determination to do what they want to do. Part of it, too, might be resentment at the mere idea of being “bossed around.” And when we get challenged by them, we often get hooked by our own pride-–our own ego. Our desire for our kids to behave well is often not just a matter of what’s best for the child; it is often rooted in our conviction that their behavior is a reflection on us as parents (especially when we’re in public!). Then too, when those young ones resist or defy us, we can easily get caught up in defensiveness. After all, “I’m the parent, not you, and so I’m the boss.” Giving in to the child feels like backing down, and losing face. If we are further challenged by uncertainty about how best to respond, the our anxiety is made worse. This feeling stimulates us to try harder to exert our influence, and impose our will. It’s the perfect recipe for a power struggle. And power struggles can turn ugly, creating even bigger problems.

Our pride–-ego-–can also challenge us when we try to learn and practice new relationship skills that are not power-based. These methods of relating can feel like backing down or giving in. While they may, indeed, be a way of “backing off,” they are really not backing down. For example, listening to an outspoken child is hard partly because it might feel like we are being attacked, or because it might feel like we’re accepting crazy ideas. Using requests instead of commands might feel like we are weak instead of strong. Besides, what if they say No to the request? Using I-messages instead of you-messages (“I would like you to do X” instead of “You must do X”) also might feel weak or ineffective. To invite the child’s ideas (“Well, what do you think should be done?”) might feel like we don’t know what we should know, or we're letting the child take over.

Conclusion

Non power-based relationship skills are more effective in the long run because they are rooted in respect rather than ego. They invite cooperation rather than resistance. They represent a New School approach to parenting. For more ideas on this see some of my other posts on this site, or check out these authors: Thomas Gordon, Jane Nelsen, and Alfie Kohn.

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn: Excerpts from the Introduction

2008-08-22T19:23:33-05:00

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
(A Provocative Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom about Discipline), by Alfie Kohn, 2005

Excerpts from the Introduction

Obedience: The Temptation to Control Children

We may be tempted to focus our energies on overcoming children’s resistance to our requests and getting them to do what we tell them. If we’re not careful, this can become our primary goal. We may find ourselves joining all those people around us who prize docility in childlren and value short-term obedience above all. I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved. A “good” child–from infancy to adolescence–is one who isn’t too much trouble to us grown-ups.

Over the last couple of generations, the strategies for trying to produce that result may well have changed. Where kids were once routinely subjected to harsh corporal punishment, they may now be sentenced to time-outs or, perhaps, offered rewards when they obey us. But don’t mistake new means for new ends. The goal continues to be control, even if we secure it with more modern methods.

Long-term Objectives of Parenting

In my workshops for parents I like to start off asking, “What are your long-term objectives for your children? What word or phrase comes to mind to describe how you’d like them to turn out, what you want them to be like once they’ve grown?”

Take a moment to think about how you would answer that question. When I invite groups of parents to come up with the most important long-term goals they have for their kids, I hear remarkably similar responses across the country. The list produced by one audience was typical: These parents said they

wanted their children to be happy, balanced, independent, fulfilled, productive, self-reliant, responsible, functioning, kind, thoughtful, loving, inquisitive, and confident.

Is what we’re doing consistent with what we really want? Are my everyday practices likely to help my children grow into the kind of people I’d like them to be? Will the things I just said to my child at the supermarket contribute in some small way to her becoming happy and balanced and independent and fulfilled and so on–or is it possible (gulp) that the way I tend to handle such situations makes those outcomes less likely? If so, what should I be doing instead?

Today’s Parenting Books Aim at Control

More than a hundred parenting books are published in the United States every year, along with countless articles in parenting magazines, and most of them are filled with advice about how to get children to comply with our expectations, how to make them behave, how to train them as though they were pets. Many such guides also offer a pep talk about the need to stand up to kids and assert our power. This slant is reflected even in the titles of recently published books: Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline; Parents in Charge; Parent in Control; Taking Charge; Back in Control; Disciplining Your Preschooler–and Feeling Good About it; ‘Cause I’m the Mommy, That’s Why; Laying Down the Law; Guilt-Free Parenting; “The Answer Is No”; and on and on.

Some of these books defensively stand up for old-fashioned values and methods (“Your rear end is going to be mighty sore when your father gets home”), while others make the case for newfangled techniques (“Good job! You peed in the pot, honey! Now you can have your sticker!”). But in neither case do they press us to be sure that what we’re asking of children is reasonable–or in their best interests.

It’s also true, as you may have noticed, that many of these books offer suggestions that turn out to be ineffective, it’s much more dangerous when books never even bother to ask, “What do we mean by effective parenting techniques?” When we fail to examine our objectives, we’re left by default with practices that are intended solely to get kids to do what they’re told. That means we’re focusing only on what’s most convenient for us, not on what they need. Many experts define a successful strategy as anything that gets kids to follow directions. The focus, in other words, is limited to how children behave, regardless of how they feel about complying with a given request, or for that matter, how they come to regard the person who succeeded in getting them to do so. The evidence suggests that even disciplinary techniques that seem to “work” often turn out be much less successful when judged by more meaningful criteria. The child’s commitment to a given behavior is often shallow and the behavior is therefore short-lived.

We might say that discipline doesn’t always help kids to become self-disciplined. But even that second objective isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not necessarily better to get children to internalize our wishes and values so they’ll do what we want even when we’re not around. Trying to foster internalization–or self-discipline–may amount to an attempt to direct children’s behavior by remote control. It’s just a more powerful version of obedience. There’s a big difference, after all, between a child who does something because he or she believes it’s the right thing to do and one who does it out of a sense of compulsion.

Raising Kids to Think for Themselves

Most of us, I’m convinced, do indeed want our children to think for themselves, to be assertive and morally courageous...when they’re with their friends. We hope they’ll stand up to bullies and resist peer pressure, particularly when sex and drugs are involved. But if it’s important to us that kids not be “victims of others’ ideas,” we have to educate them “to think for themselves about all ideas, including those of adults.” Or, to put it the other way around, if we place a premium on obedience at home, we may end up producing kids who go along with what they’re told to do by people outside the home, too. Author Barbara Coloroso remarks that she’s often heard parents of teenagers complain, “He was such a good kid, so well behaved, so well mannered, so well dressed. Now look at him!” To this, she replies:

From the time he was young, he dressed the way you told him to dress; he acted the way you told him to act; he said the things you told him to say. He’s been listening to somebody else tell him what to do...He hasn’t changed. He is still listening to somebody else tell him what to do. The problem is, it isn’t you anymore; it’s his peers.

Indeed, there are pragmatic as well as moral reasons to focus on long-term goals rather than on immediate compliance, to consider what our children need rather than just what we’re demanding, and to see the whole child rather than just the behavior.

What This Book Aims to Do

In this book we’ll be talking about why it makes good sense to shift away from the usual strategies for doing things to kids, and toward ways of working with them. It’s true that plenty of people, adults as well as children, are subjected to “doing to” tactics. But it won’t do to respond, “Well, that’s just the way the world is” when presented with a case against, say, using punishments and rewards to get people to fall into line. The critical question is what kind of people we want our children to be.

Chuck's Comments

This is subversive stuff–literally. It subverts the conventional advice we receive about raising kids, and it challenges a shortsighted quest to get them to jump through our hoops. For some of us, it may call into question much of what we’ve been doing–and perhaps what was done to us when we were young. It challenges conventional thinking in our society--and every society, as far as I can tell--because it totally destroys the ages-old rationale for autocratic, heavy-handed, and cruel treatment of children by parents, teachers, law enforcement, criminal justice personnel, and everyone else who would seek to do the impossible: control children's behavior.

The subject of this book is not merely discipline, but, more broadly, the ways we act with our children, as well as how we think about them and feel about them. Its purpose is to help reconnect you with your own best instincts and to reaffirm what really matters. It asks us to reconsider our basic assumptions about parent-child relationships, and offers practical alternatives to the tactics we’re sometimes tempted to use to make our kids behave, or to push them to succeed.

This is wonderful reading, and a very, very persuasive, HIGHLY DOCUMENTED, masterpiece on New School parenting. It should be required reading for all adults who deal with children!

Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn: A Review

2008-08-22T19:10:52-05:00

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishment to Love and Reason
Alfie Kohn, Atria Books, 2005

A Review by Chuck Adam

I was first introduced to Alfie Kohn when I read one of his earlier books, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (Houghton Mifflin, 1993). The theme of that book was that rewarding people for good behavior is a mistake, because in the long run rewards actually hinder (instead of helping) people do their best. That’s because rewards distract the performer from the intrinsic reward of living and performing responsibly in school and in the workplace. Superficial extrinsic rewards cheapen the work and encourage the performer to do less well by sloughing off once the reward is earned. His ideas struck me as somewhat radical, but they also made an awful lot of sense. Obviously, the same reasoning applies to punishments!

So, when I saw his Unconditional Parenting, I knew it would be thoughtful and challenging. One of the subtitles on the cover calls it “A Provocative Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom About Discipline.” It is just that, with a great deal of persuasive thinking, lots of examples, quotations from other authors, and tons of citations to research on parent-child interactions as well as behavioral motivations in children and adults over the past thirty years.

The dominant theme of the book is Kohn’s constant insistence that power and control parenting techniques--that is, bribes, rewards, threats, and punishments (including love withdrawal)--do more than just miss the mark when it comes to raising caring and responsible children. They actually damage kids because they teach, encourage, and fuel children’s resentment, resistance, rebellion, and low self-esteem. These qualities are just the opposite of what almost all parents want to encourage in their children by using power and control methods of discipline.

There are many reasons why so many of us tend to parent this way, Kohn says. They include these: that’s how we were raised; that’s what we see most other people do; our beliefs (about kids, people, God, motivation, competition, and other things) tend to support our desire to take the easy (but more primitive) route; and by behaving this way as parents we can feel better about ourselves when we can pressure kids into doing what we want. Ultimately, he says, these reasons all boil down to one overriding reason: fear. The specific things we fear are: parental inadequacy, powerlessness, being judged by others, children getting hurt; babying our children; and being permissive. The end result of parenting from a position of fear is conditional parenting: we love, accept, and nurture our children mainly on the condition that they conform to our desires and thus make us feel good about ourselves. He says the fact that so many parents seem to accept their children only conditionally doesn’t make that practice any less damaging or any more acceptable.

What all children need is just the opposite: unconditional parenting, or love without strings attached. They need to know we love them unconditionally, at all times, no matter what they do--when they fail, goof up, make mistakes, cause us problems, get angry with us, and....always. No matter what. How do we do this? Kohn suggests we start by being mindful of the whole question of unconditionality, asking ourselves often, “If what I just said or did had been done to me, would I feel loved unconditionally?” No matter what is happening we have to not only keep accepting them, but we have to let them know we still accept them. Of course, we’ll fail at times. But our objective should be to come as close as possible to this ideal: that we accept and love our children for who they are, with no strings attached, and that we communicate that to them.

He suggests that we minimize criticism, giving orders, praise, rewards, punishments, threats, and other forms of withdrawing our love. Instead we should maximize sending messages of unconditional acceptance, which is not only something that all children deserve, but also a powerfully effective way to help them become nicer people. He says that a reliance on punishments (including time-out and other forms of love withdrawal) and rewards (including positive reinforcement) makes it much less likely that children will feel loved unconditionally. This practice is not achievable through a specific technique, Kohn says, but rather it consists of many things discussed in the latter half of the book, which he summarizes as three specific ways: expressing unconditional love, giving children more chances to make decisions, and imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.

He identifies the following principles of unconditional parenting, each of which has practical implications that are far more challenging than they sound on the surface.

1. Be reflective.
2. Reconsider your requests.
3. Keep your eye on your long-term goals.
4. Put the relationship first.
5. Change how you are, not just how you act.
6. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
7. Be authentic.
8. Talk less, ask more.
9. Keep their ages in mind.
10. Attribute to children the best possible motive consistent with the facts.
11. Don’t stick your no’s in unnecessarily.
12. Don’t be rigid.
13. Don’t be in a hurry.

A thoughtful, reflective reading of this book will provide any parent with a goldmine of insights and a very well-reasoned game plan for improving one’s parenting attitudes and skills. It goes far beyond the typical power and control tactics that many parenting experts advise.

I rank this one right up there with the “cream of the crop”: the masterpieces by Haim Ginnott (Between Parent and Child), Thomas Gordon (Parent Effectiveness Training and Discipline That Works), John Gottman (Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child), and Jane Nelsen, her Positive Discipline series.

Anatomy of a Volcanic Eruption

2008-08-22T18:55:47-05:00

The human being is like a volcano. Eruptions can be very unpleasant, messy, and even violent and dangerous. Parents often interact with children in ways that invite negative behavior. For a diagram of the interaction between parent and child that might lead to an explosion of angry or otherwise unacceptable behavior, please click on the following link: Download anatomy_of_a_volcanic_eruption.pdf . The parent often has only about three or four opportunities to say or do something (under increasing pressure!) before the explosion occurs. Three strikes and you're out!

For a diagram of the Volcano Theory, along with some crucial insights about control of child behavior, please click on the following link: Download volcano_theory.pdf . Notice especially the kicker: #8, and think about my recommendation, #9.

The Volcano Theory

2008-08-22T18:49:04-05:00

I like to use the volcano as an analogy to represent the human being. It's alive, and beautiful, and when it erupts it can be dangerous and destructive. What we see above ground, a beautiful mountain, represents the body, the behavior, what's on the outside. This is what we see and hear coming from another person. But even more important than that behavior (as unacceptable, defiant, or disrespectful as it might be), is what motivates and determines it. And that motivation is hidden inside, invisible to outsiders. That is where the heat, tension, passion, and pressure are being generated that can erupt in angry and even violent behavior. And it's always two things that motivate and determine all people's behavior, at all times, even young children: thoughts and feelings. These are not directly visible to parents, and parents cannot control them in their children. But too often parents don't deal with them effectively, and they instead focus just on the child's disruptive or disagreeable behavior (e.g., "Stop that right now!" "Do what I told you!" "Go to your room!"). When this happens, they are missing the boat. In fact, they might very possibly be sparking even greater anger (and pain) in the child. They might be thus unwittingly inviting an even more intensely negative behavioral response from the child--just the opposite of what they are trying to achieve in those critical moments before the "volcano" erupts.

For a diagram of the interaction between parent and child that might lead to an explosion of angry or otherwise unacceptable behavior, please click on the following link: Download anatomy_of_a_volcanic_eruption.pdf . The parent often has only about three or four opportunities to say or do something (under mounting pressure!) before the explosion occurs. Three strikes and you're out!

Six Parent Leadership Roles: A Brief Explanation

2008-08-21T12:23:10-05:00

I would like to present a framework for thinking about how parents interact with their kids, and how they demonstrate leadership with their kids. I’m going to talk about it in term of roles that parents can take in relation to their children.

There are six roles. Think of a continuum, a line, going from left to right with six boxes right next to each other on the line. At the far left is a parent role which signifies the maximum use of parental authority, power, and control over the child, and the absolute minimum of child exercise of freedom and choice. At the other end is a box representing almost no use of parental authority, power, and control, with complete domination by the child, who exercises total freedom and choice. The child or children are running the entire family, and the parent is in the role of being a servant to the children. Impossible? No, it's rare, but it does happen.

Now let’s look at what the six boxes contain, and how they are labeled. As you probably can guess, I’ll be recommending that parents avoid the ones on the outside ends of the continuum (Old School approaches to parenting), and aim to function within the two roles in the middle of continuum (New School approaches).

1. The Sheriff.

The role on the far left, with absolute domination by the parent, who exercises complete control over the children, and where the children have practically no freedom and choice at all, is the parent in the role of the sheriff. Like the sheriff, the parent feels responsible for their child’s safety, and so the parent makes lots of rules to protect the child, teach the child right from wrong, etc. The children have

no say. The parent also tries to strictly enforce the rules in the family, and is quick to catch children breaking the rules and correct, them, scold them, yell at them, judge them, and punish them. The intent is instill fear in the child–fear of breaking the rules or doing “wrong” and not making mistakes. While the parent is well-intentioned, and truly wishes to help the child, their overly strict approach often backfires. Children resent being treated so harshly and punitively, because it hurts, and they will often respond in anger and defiance. The parent is trying to control the child’s behavior, which is impossible to do, and children resent that. The parent’s approach is essentially disrespectful, and so they end up teaching the child how to be disrespectful. They end up inviting exactly what they don't want: the child's anger and defiance.

2. The Boss.

In the work world, a boss and employee have a basic agreement: You do these things for me and I will pay you. If the employee doesn’t like the way the boss is treating him/her, s/he can quit and leave the situation. Not so for children. They didn’t voluntarily choose to come and “work” for this family, and they can’t just quit and leave. In this role the parent gives orders, commands, and punishments, but is not quite as abusive as the sheriff. But if the parent is too “bossy,” and does not involve children in making rules and consequences, then the results with the child are similar to what the sheriff gets from the child: disrespect and defiance. Again, the parent’s approach is essentially disrespectful, and so they end up teaching the child how to be disrespectful. Again, the parents end up inviting exactly what they don't want: the child's anger and defiance.

3. The Guide.

The guide on a safari or a canoe expedition is hired to show a person the way and keep them safe from risks on the journey. S/he knows the territory, and has traveled it before, and knows what when to give recommendations that s/he expects to be followed. The canoeist trusts the guide, and will usually follow the directions of the guide when they are given. However the guide does not try to make all decisions for the traveler, and even when s/he has suggestions to make does not make them by being bossy and disrespectful , like the boss or the sheriff. This is true for the parent-as-guide, too, where the parent involves the child in decision making and allows them the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. The guide role is the most appropriate one for parents of young children. The result of a parent consistently using this role with young children is that the children earn to trust the parent and welcome their suggestions--because that is precisely what the parent-guide is doing: welcoming the child's ideas and suggestions, allowing them to take the initiative and make mistakes, and recognizing that it's not worth trying to control the child's behavior because that is usually resented by the child. It's also impossible to do. The parent-guide instead invites the child's cooperation.

4. The Consultant.

The consultant is hired by a company’s boss to analyze and make recommendations. But no good consultant will try to get “bossy” with the boss and give critical or disrespectful feedback, or even suggestions, if they are not wanted. This is really the only effective role for parents of teenagers in most cases, unless the teen is very compliant, because the parent has been fired by the teenager as the teen’s boss. It’s usually the parent’s job to get rehired by the teenager as a consultant. In playing this role the parent does not give orders and commands, but instead makes requests and asks lots of questions in order to understand where the teenager is coming from and help them think through solutions for themselves. The consultant gives suggestions only when they are asked for. It’s not that the parent is giving up his/her authority or power. S/he is simply using it in a new way to help the teen learn responsible decision making. The parent-consultant keeps his/her ego in check, recognizes the teenager's autonomy, and works toward securing cooperation and agreements with him/her.

5. The Friend.

In this role the parent fails to exercise proper leadership by trying to act like they are the child’s little buddy, and always on the child’s side. This parent gives in a lot to the child inappropriately, hoping the child will like them, and then be more willing to obey, conform, or act more responsibly. This parent is feeling a little desperate and helpless, and hopes that if s/he is a friend, the child will decide to be friendly and cooperative. This role is actually disrespectful too, because the parent is not giving what the child needs and is inappropriately expecting the child to do what the parent cannot do: guide.

6. The Servant.

In this role the parent is a complete marsh mellow, or a jellyfish, or a doormat. The parent is missing in action, let’s the child call the shots and in the process gives all of his/her power away to the child, and, usually based on fear, tries to placate of humor the child so the child won’t get angry, think poorly of the parent, or do something wrong. This parent needs to develop a tougher skin, and learn how to appropriately assert themself and stand up to the child. If s/he can’t the child is in charge of the home, or (as they say) “the inmates are running the asylum.”

Application

So, the roles I recommend that parents use are the two in the middle: that’s the guide (with younger children and preteens), and the consultant with teenagers and maybe preteens too. I recommend making conscious efforts to catch yourself in action with your children, and frequently ask yourself, “Who are you now?” Meaning, “What role was I in just now when I said (or did) that?” If you’re aiming at being in the guide role with younger children, and the consultant role with teenagers, you will be doing and saying the things that most effectively give children the maximum use of choice, freedom, and decision making, while at the same time you are remaining present, and available to them, and aware of what their needs and capabilities are, relative to their ages.

In my parenting classes we spend some time discussing these roles, and where the parents see themselves functioning most of the time, and also where they think their own parents functioned most of the time. It’s important to have some understanding of this because of where we all learned to be parents. We all graduated from parenting school, didn’t we? Where was that, and who were our teachers? Our childhood home, and our own parents. I’d say that 99.9% of us learned all our parenting methods, attitudes, and values from our own parents when we were kids, and so understanding where your parents were on the continuum of parent roles will pretty well tell you where your own tendencies are going to focus.

Six Parent Leadership Roles: A Continuum

2008-08-21T11:53:29-05:00

Here is how each of the leaders (sheriff, boss, guide, consultant, friend, servant) talks to the person(s) they are leading. Application to how the parent, playing each role, would talk to the child is easily seen. The Old School parenting model (how most of us were raised) favors the sheriff and boss roles. Some Old School parents try to be friends or servants. Most of the tine, these Old School roles are effective, and some are harmful in terms of their effects on children. Much depends on the personality of child and the flexibility of the parent On the other hand, the New School approach to parenting uses the two middle roles almost exclusively (the guide and the consultant), and these roles are far more effective in fostering children who "cair," that is, children who learn and demonstrate cooperation, accountability, integrity, and responsibility.

Please click the following link to download a one-page chart showing the communication style of each role:

Download parent_leadership_rolescontinuum.pdf

Six Parenting Roles: A Leadership Continuum

2008-08-21T11:35:13-05:00

Please click on this link to download the chart:

Download parent_leadership_model.cht.pdf