16. Effective Parenting, Part III
As I mentioned in Effective Parenting, Part II, when a child or adolescent was referred to me for therapy, I usually found that working with their parent(s) to help change daily interactions was most helpful. Utilizing my training in the Interactional View, which recognizes that people do not operate in a vacuum, I instructed parents to establish clear limits and boundaries. This significantly contributed to assisting the child in resolving inner conflicts and having the opportunity to experience “normal” and healthy development. As parents began to give clear messages and establish effective rules and boundaries, power struggles between parents and their child discontinued, contention resolved, and the problems with which the child initially presented improved significantly.
It is the parent’s job to help their children develop as a contributing members of society. Guiding children to use and develop the forward-thinking part of their brains, and thus teaching them that there are repercussions for their actions when breaking rules, is an essential parental responsibility. Children need to be taught to know there are consequences for unacceptable behaviors and responses. This experience helps children develop impulse control and a sense of responsibility. They do not come into the world knowing what is right from wrong or what is expected of them or what is appropriate behavior in the world. When parents help teach them, children learn to live responsibly.
The problem I see repeatedly with parents is they are inadvertently reinforcing unwanted behaviors. Too much attention is given to the child when parents spend hours ranting, raving, lecturing and trying to reason. If the parents keep giving them attention, why would the child do anything different?
The most effective parental response is: NO attention for unwanted behavior.
That is the concept of time-out for children of all ages: If it takes parental time and attention to try to get children to follow rules, the children have control and parents don’t.
As a therapist, I am trained to notice patterns and responses in people, their interactions, and if they are getting the responses they want. The tendency I have seen with parents is they have been getting into power struggles with their children and making ineffective demands and idle threats. It tends to not be effective in getting children to do what parents want. It does not create a sense of motivation to do what they are supposed to do and instead builds resentment and generates more rebellious behavior, which generalizes into their responses in life and future relationships. Children in this environment learn to externalize responsibility. They come to believe that others are doing things to make their lives miserable and tend to become a victim to their circumstances.
In Part IV, we will look at what happens when children are given choices to begin with, receive positive reinforcement when they make positive choices, and short-term immediate consequences when they get off track and make “wrong” choices.