14. Effective Parenting, Part I
When I worked in the Chicago area from 1971 through 1986, I had two internships for graduate school and then was employed at several different family therapy agencies. Training therapists to learn effective tools for helping troubled children and their families was the main focus. Delinquent adolescents were often referred to us. I learned quickly that these youngsters were not motivated to work on making changes with their issues in therapy, nor did they usually feel they had a problem.
Fortunately, we used the family therapy system approach and focused on what we could do to help change occur in the least amount of time, with the greatest possibility for effective results toward goals. This approach is based on the Brief Strategic Therapy (BST) model, which comes from the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA.
I learned to identify what we referred to as the CUSTOMER, the person who wanted things to be different and was motivated to work on doing something to create change. We primarily worked with the CUSTOMER in therapy sessions.
The IDENTIFIED PATIENT (usually the adolescent) was the reason the family came in for therapy. The IDENTIFIED PATIENT was brought in for a session or two, in order to gain rapport with the parents and gather information to set up an intervention with the parents. I found that most children did not want to be sitting in a therapist’s office talking about their problems. On occasion, I did find a youngster who wanted someone to talk to and I was more than happy to be available to them to address what we could.
When I worked with parents to assess their perception of the problem, they would often report that they felt their child was “out of control” at home and sometimes in their community. We would discuss goals for therapy, which tended to be various forms of getting their child to “behave” and manage their emotions better. I would then gather information about what they had already been trying to do to get this to occur. As I discussed in last week’s article, this was their Attempted Solution, which actually contributes to perpetuating the problem. The main focus of the Brief Strategic Therapy model therapeutic intervention is to determine and interrupt the Attempted Solution.
The Attempted Solution many parents used was some form of trying to reason with their children. I suggested to these parents that they might as well be giving their child candy or money. These youngsters were getting exactly what they wanted. When we are young, we don’t have many ways to feel we have control in our lives. The experience of being able to get their parent to react gives children some sense of power and control. And, when we reason, we get pulled into discussion, which gives the message that we are open to negotiation. What does that communicate? Children will escalate their attempts to get what they want. Parents have to be firm and Just Say NO - especially if they want to help their children to be able to Just Say NO and set their own boundaries when they grow up!
The BST model refers to the Attempted Solution as the “land mine,” areas to avoid getting caught in doing more of the same. Often parents wanted me, as the therapist, to continue to try to reason with their children, feeling someone with greater authority could finally get through to their child through reason. I knew better. I usually suggested that we have the best success in changing patterns with children when they get a clear and consistent message on a daily basis from parents.
Children will always push and test boundaries until they know where the boundaries are. I teach Effective Parenting designed to help children learn to make good choices, to develop impulse control, and the ability to take responsibility for their actions. My passion lies in helping parents learn effective parenting, which involves giving clear and congruent messages, having their words match their actions. When clear limits and boundaries are established, children can move forward with their best chance of “healthy” development to reach their full potential.