Tag Archives: parenting

Divorce, Parenting

Parenting Consultations with Divorced, Divorcing, and Never-Married Parents

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Working with parents who are divorced, divorcing, or living separately can be both challenging and gratifying. In this excerpt from “How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen” we discuss some key issues and provide a case example. The main purpose of this post is to stimulate your thinking about working with this unique and interesting population of parents.

Here’s the excerpt:

Divorce will probably always be a controversial and conflict-laden issue within our society. In part, this is due to moral issues associated with divorce, but it is also due to the many knotty practical issues divorced parents frequently face.

Divorce Polemics

Divorce and single-parenting choices still carry stigma and so parents will be monitoring for any judgments you might have about them. You may have very strong opinions about divorce or about people choosing to adopt or bear children while single. If this is something you can’t put aside and be nonjudgmental about, it’s best to put your views in your informed consent so parents know this explicitly about your practice. In most cases, professionals have values and beliefs they can keep in check while working directly with people who make choices far different than the professional might have made. For instance, you might firmly believe that all children should be born into a two-parent family with parents who are married and committed to the family, but you might still be able to be very helpful to a single gay parent who adopted a 10-year-old disabled foster child.

Because they’ve sometimes faced moral and religious judgments, divorced, divorcing, and never-married parents have substantial needs for support and education. Consequently, you should prepare yourself to provide that education and support. Their parenting challenges can be particularly acute and confusing.

The issue for practitioners working with parents is to avoid laying blame and guilt on parents for divorcing (generally, they already feel guilty about how their divorce might be affecting their children). Instead, your role is to help divorced, divorcing, or never-married parents manage their difficult parenting situations more effectively. What we need to offer is (1) emotional support for divorce- and post-divorce-related stress and conflict; and (2) clear information on specific behaviors parents can engage in or avoid to help their children adjust to divorce.

Providing Support and Educational Information
Most divorcing and recently divorced parents are in substantial distress and so parents and need comfort, support, and information. Consequently, we recommend talking with parents about divorce in a way that’s empathic and educational. In the following case, a father with three children has come for help in planning to tell the children. His children are 4, 6, and 8 years old.

         Case: Talking about Divorce

PARENT: I’m really worried about how to talk with my kids about the divorce. I can’t get the right words around it. I know I’m supposed to say something reassuring like, “Your mom and I love each other, but it just hasn’t worked out and so that’s why I’m moving out because it will be best for us to live separately.” But then I worry that maybe my kids will think even though I love them now, it might not “work out” either and then I’ll end up leaving them, too.

CONSULTANT: This is tough. I respect how much thought you’ve given this. Even though the differences between you and your wife make it too hard to live together, it’s extremely hard to leave the home and torturous to talk with your kids about it.

PARENT: That’s for sure.

CONSULTANT: I can see you love your children very much and it feels really important to talk with them about the upcoming divorce using words that won’t scare them too much and that will help them know you and your wife tried, but you have now decided that the divorce is for the best. But before we do that, I have a different piece of advice.

PARENT: What’s that?

CONSULTANT: You should plan to have more than one divorce talk with your kids. I know you want to do this right and that’s great. But the good news and the bad news is that you’ll need to have this conversation many times. As your children grow older, they’ll have different questions. It’s your job to tell them you love them and to explain things in words they’ll understand, but not to tell them too much. There’s no guarantee they’ll understand this perfectly and so it may relieve pressure for you to know you’ll get other chances. Some people like to think of it like having a sex-talk. Kids will have different questions about sex at different ages and so parents shouldn’t have just one sex-talk. You need to be ready to have a sex-talk at any time as your child is growing up. The same is true for talks about divorce. You need to be ready to talk about it now and whenever your kids or you need to talk in the future. I’ve got a great tip sheet for parents going through divorce and I’d like to go over that with you, too. [See Appendix B, Tip Sheet 10: Ten Tips for Parenting through Divorce.]

In this situation, the family’s educational needs are significant, so the practitioner will probably offer the father a tip sheet, additional reading materials, and a recommendation to attend a group class on divorce and shared parenting.

It can be difficult for divorcing parents to talk with their children without blaming the other parent. This can be either blatant or subtle. We recall one parent who insisted he had the right to call his former spouse “The Whore” in front of the children “because it was the truth.” In these extreme cases, we’ve used radical acceptance to listen empathically to the emotional pain underlying this extreme perspective and then slowly and gently help the parent to understand that “telling the truth” to the children should focus on telling your personal truth and not on the other parent’s behavior. Although it can be difficult for divorced or divorcing parents to hear educational messages over the din of their emotional pain, it’s the practitioner’s job to empathically and patiently deliver the message. Usually divorced and divorcing parents eventually see that criticizing or blaming the other parent can be damaging to their children.

More information on this and other topics related to working with parents is available on this blogsite (see the Tip Sheets) and in the “How to Listen so Parents can Talk” book.

See: http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Parents-Will-Talk/dp/1118012968/ref=la_B0030LK6NM_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403469599&sr=1-9

 

Cool Counseling, Parenting, Personal Reflections, Therapy with Adolescents, Tough Kids, Tough Kids Cool Counseling

How to Listen so Parents will Talk: Strategies for Influencing Parents — DVD filming with Alexander Street Press

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This past week I was in Chicago to be filmed doing three 15 minute TED Talk like speeches for Alexander Street Press. The experience was both exciting and anxiety-provoking. . . as it’s rather challenging to deliver a 15 minute piece in a darkish studio to a camera on one take. Shannon Dermer of Governor’s State University was the smooth as silk facilitator who conducted 15 minute interviews after each speech. I was lucky enough to be filming on the same day as Paul Peluso of Florida Atlantic University. Although it was comforting to see that Paul was just as nervous as I was, it was not comforting watching him absolutely nail a perfect 10 of a presentation on Humor in Psychotherapy just a couple hours before it was my turn in front of the camera.

In the end, the filming went well, but of course during the live filming my imperfect memory led me to miss a few “lines” and so I’m posting here, a text version of the How to Listen so Parents will Talk THERAPY talk.Although my goal was to post an audio version, WordPress has thwarted that particular plan for now. . . sorry about that.

How to Talk so Parents will Listen: Strategies for Influencing Parents

When I talk with large groups about parenting, I like to begin with a survey. I ask: “How many of you ARE parents?” Of course, nearly everyone raises his or her hand. Then I ask a follow up: “How many of you WERE children.” At this question some participants laugh and a few raise their hands and others joke that they’re still immature.

“This reason I start with this survey is because if you’re a parent, you know that being a parent is an amazing and gratifying challenge. You also know that it’s 24-7; and you know it doesn’t end when your child turns 18. You’re a parent for life. And if you WERE a child, and all of you were, then you know how important it is to have a parent or caretaker who makes it perfectly clear that YOU ARE LOVED. But there’s more. If you were a child, then you also know how important it is to have a parent who not only loves you, but who is skillful . . . a parent who is dedicated to being the best parent possible.

Plain and simple: PARENTS NEED SKILLS FOR DEALING WITH THEIR CHILDREN IN THE 21ST CENTURY. And learning to be a better parent never stops.

Once upon a time I had a mom come consult with me about her five year old son. She said: “I have a strong-willed son.” My response was to acknowledge that lots of parents have strong-willed children. She said, “No, no, you don’t get it. I have a very strong-willed son, let me tell you about it. Just the other night, I asked him to go upstairs and clean his room and he put his hands on his hips and said, “NO.” So I said in response, “Yeah, yeah. He sounds very strong willed.” And she said, “Wait. There’s more. I asked him to clean his room a second time and he glared and me, and said “NO. YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME?” Then she told me the real problem. The problem was that, in fact, she did want a piece of him at that particular point in time and so she grabbed him and hauled him up the stairs in a way that was inconsistent with the kind of parent she wanted to be.

This is one of the mysteries of parenting. How can you get so angry at a small child whom you love more than anything else in the world?

Parents are a unique population and deserve an approach to counseling that’s designed to address their particular needs. In this talk I’ll mostly be using stories to talk about
a. what parents want for their children
b. what parents need in counseling
c. and how professionals can be effective helpers.

Most parents want some version of the same thing: To raise healthy and happy children who are relatively well-adjusted. But what do parents need in counseling. WHAT WILL HELP THEM GET WHAT THEY WANT?

First, parents need empathic listening. They need this big time. Our American culture puts lots of social pressure on parents . . . It’s implied that parenting should be easy and all parents should want to spend 24-7 with their child in an altered state of parental bliss. But this isn’t reality and so we need empathy for the general scrutiny parents feel in the grocery store, at church, on the playground, and everywhere else.

But they also need listening and specific empathy: like in the situation where the mom wanted to tell me about her 5-year-old son. She had specific information to share and it was really important for me to take time to listen to her unique story about her son who, unfortunately, may have been watching too many Clint Eastwood movies.

Parents come to counseling or parent education feeling simultaneously insecure and indignant. They feel insecure because of the scrutiny they feel from their parents and in-laws and society, but they also feel indignant over the possibility that anyone might have the audacity to tell them how to parent their children. As professionals, we need to be ready to handle both sides of this complex equation.

Another thing parents have taught me over the years is to never start a parenting session by sharing educational information. You should always wait to offer educational advice, even when parents ask you directly for it. When they do ask, let them know that your ideas will be more helpful later once you get to know what’s happening in their family.

This leads us to the second crucial part of what parents need in counseling. They need collaboration. We can’t be experts who tell parents what to do, instead we have to recognize that parents are the experts in the room. They’re the experts on their children, on their family dynamics, and on themselves. If we don’t engage and collaborate with parents, very little of what we offer has any chance of being helpful.

Parents also need validation to counter their possible insecurity. We call this radical acceptance or validation and it involves explicitly and specifically giving parents positive feedback. We do this by affirming, “You sure seem to know your daughter well.” And by saying, “When I listen to how committed you are to helping your son be successful in life, I can’t help but think that he’s lucky to have you as a parent.”

And so we begin with empathic listening and we move to collaboration and we make sure that we offer radical acceptance or validation and we do all this so we can get to the main point: providing parents with specific parenting tips or guidance.

And there are literally TONS of specific parenting tips that professionals can offer parents. Most of the good ones include four basic principles:

First, getting a new attitude – because developing parenting skills requires a courageous attitude to try things out.

The second one involves making a new and improved plan. Because a courageous attitude combined with a poor plan won’t get you much.

Third is to get support when you need it. Parenting in isolation is almost always a bad idea.

Fourth, underlying all tips there should be the foundation of being consistently loving.

I’d like to tell two parenting stories to illustrate all of the preceding ideas.

This first story is about a parenting struggle I had. I share it for two reasons: One is that it’s a great example of the need for parents to make a new plan to handle an old problem. And two, often it’s good to self-disclose—but not too much—when working with parents.

When my youngest child was 5-years-old, she ALSO was a strong-willed child. I vividly recall one particular ugly scene on the porch. It was time for us to leave the house. But we lived in Montana and there was snow and my daughter needed to put her boots on. Funny thing, she was on a different schedule than I was. This created tension and anger in me. And so I got down into her face and I yelled GET YOUR BOOTS ON! And her eyes got big and she did. Later that evening I was talking with my wife and she saw the scene and she said to me, “I know John, that’s not the kind of parent you want to be.” And even though it’s not easy to take feedback from our romantic partners, she was right and so obviously so, that I had no argument” which led me to tell her, “I’m not going to yell at our daughter any more. I am, instead going to whisper, because I learned in a parenting book, that sometimes when you’re angry it’s more effective to whisper than it is to yell. That was my new plan. Of course, like new plans everywhere, it needed tweaking. But it didn’t take long for me to have an opportunity to test it because if there’s anything on the planet that’s predictable, it’s that we’ll all soon have another chance to manage our anger toward our children more constructively.

It was the next day or week and my daughter did not get her boots on and she was not on the same schedule as me and I got down in her face, once again, but I remembered the plan to whisper and I did my best to transform my anger from the historical yell to the contemporary whisper and what happened was that what came out was sort of like the exorcist and I said to my daughter: “GET YOUR BOOTS ON!”

Now. I wasn’t especially proud of that, but she got her boots on.

It was the beginning of a big change for me because I learned I could play the exorcist instead of yelling; then I learned to growl and then I learned to count to three and then I learned a cool technique called Grandma’s rule where you use the formula, WHEN YOU, THEN YOU to set a limit and build in a positive outcome. Like . . . “Honey, when you get your boots on, then you can have your cell phone back.” Very cool.

What I learned from this experience is that I could be more than a one-trick parenting pony. I became the kind of parent who, although far from perfect, was able to set limits that were in my daughter’s best interest.

And what I like the best about this particular story is that daughter is now 26 years-old and she still says the same thing she used to say to me when she was 15 . . . that is, “Dad, one thing I really love about you is you never yell.” What’s cool is that I did yell, but I worked on it, I made a new plan, and now she doesn’t even remember the yelling.

I’d like to finish with one last story about how much parents need people like you to have empathy, collaborate, validate, and offer concrete parenting ideas.

I was working with a 15-year-old boy. His mom was bringing him to counseling because he and his dad weren’t speaking anymore. I hadn’t met the dad, but one day, when I went to the boy’s IEP meeting at school the dad was there. I saw this as a chance to make a connection and get him to come to counseling.

I did a little chit-chatting and sat next to him in the group meeting. Then, at one point, I asked the boy a question: “If you got an A on a test, who would you show first?” He answered, “I’d show my dad, my mom, and my special ed teacher.” This inspired me to turn to his dad and say, “It’s obvious that you’re very important to your son and so I’d like to invite you to come join him and me in counseling.” Dad gave me a glare and pushed my shoulder and began a 2-minute rant about how the school had failed his son. Everyone was stunned and then he turned back to me and said, “I’ll come to counseling. I been to counseling before and I can do it again.”

At that point I wondered if I could take back my offer.

The day the dad drove to counseling he and his son weren’t speaking, so I met with them separately. The son was clear that he would never speak to the dad again, but the dad was open. When I asked if I could offer him some ideas, he said, “Well I tried MY best and that dog don’t hunt, so I can try something else.” I was wishing for subtitles.
I told the dad I wanted him to keep his high standards for his son, but to add three things. First, I asked, do you love your son? The dad said “Yes” and so I told him, “Okay then. I want you to tell him ‘I love you’ every day.” He said, “Usually I leave that to the wife, but I can do that.” Second, I said, “Everyday, I want you to touch your son in a kind and loving way.” He asked, “You mean like give him a hug?” I said, “that would be great” and he responded, “Usually I leave that to the wife too, but I’ll give it a shot.” Third, I said, “Once a week, you should do something fun with your son, but it has to be something that he thinks is fun.” He said back: “That’s no problem. We both like to go four-wheeling, so we’ll do that.”

And they left my office for an hour-long of what I imagine was a silent trip home.

The next afternoon, I got a call from the mom. She was ecstatic. She said, “I don’t know what you did or what you said, but they’re talking again.” And then she added, “This morning, when they were in the kitchen, I was in the other room and I thought I heard them hug and when I saw my son walking down the driveway to head to school, there were tears running down his cheeks.”

This was obviously a mom who was listening and watching very closely.

Things got much better for the 15-year-old after that. He didn’t get straight As, but he stopped getting straight Fs. And I learned two things: First, I learned just how much that boy needed to get reconnected with his father. And second, I learned that sometimes, no matter how gruff parents may seem, what they need is some clear and straightforward advice about how to reconnect with their son or daughter.

My final thoughts about this topic are very simple. I hope you’re inspired enough to acquire the knowledge and skills it takes to work effectively with parents. I know their children will deeply appreciate it.

Thanks for listening.

The book upon which the talk is based is available here on Amazon:

. . . and here on Wiley: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118012968.html

Parenting

Parenting, NPEN, Portland, a Parenting Philosophy, and Smell Check

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Yesterday and today it’s been excellent being back in Portland and taking in the fabulous spring showers. To make things even better,  I’ve been at the National Parenting Education Network (NPEN) annual meeting along with an interesting mix of people who are immensely dedicated to helping and supporting parents. It’s hard to get any better than that, but to add even more frosting to the cake (I use this only metaphorically because I’m not really a frosting fan), I got to be here with Chelsea and Nora and Rita and . . . even Waganesh!

Here’s NPEN’s Vision Statement: The vision of the National Parenting Education Network (NPEN) is that all parents/families will have the information, resources and support needed to provide a nurturing relationship and an optimal environment that will encourage their children’s healthy growth and development.

What still surprises me is that very few people seem to understand the deep importance of parenting and even fewer seem to know about NPEN. Just in case you don’t know about NPEN, here’s the website address: http://npen.org/

In this coming year, NPEN will be turning the corner and beginning to incorporate and post original content on it’s website. You can become a member (it’s cheap, only $25) and join the listserv. Additionally, at some point in late summer or early fall, Sara Polanchek and I, along with the many experts and parents associated with NPEN, will be launching a series of parenting podcasts underwritten by the fabulous Engelhard Foundation. So . . . be watching for that.

In the meantime, tomorrow night Families First Missoula is having a fundraiser. Check it out here: https://www.childrensmuseummissoula.org/events/go-mad-spring-soiree/

And FF Missoula asked me to write a short parenting philosophy. . . and so here’s that: Parenting is a balance of many things; it includes balancing joy and disappointment and love as well as anger. This makes consistently parenting well an immense challenge. Perhaps the biggest parenting challenge of all involves being able to simultaneously set limits while communicating empathy. This is difficult because often children need (but don’t want) their parents to be an authority—and it’s easy for parents to become too authoritarian and consequently lose the ability to respond empathically to their children’s developing emotional struggles.

And finally, here’s a photo of my two daughters engaging in the balance of conducting some sort of smell check with each other. Don’t ask me why.

Pit Smell

Parenting

Strategies for Parenting Teens

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Strategies for Parenting Teens: A Brief Parenting Workshop [This is a handout from an old parenting workshop from way back in my Families First days.]

I. Introduction

II. Opening Stories: Dealing with Yourself First
1. How will you stay calm? The answer to this question is surprisingly simple. Managing emotions doesn’t require years of psychotherapy. It requires the following components.
2. A plan for dealing with your anger/emotions.
3. Rehearsing and practicing of the plan repeatedly, before, during, and after you face situations that trigger your anger.

III. Amazing Parenting Strategies

A. Adopt a New Best Attitude: There is one attitude that, if you’re able to adopt it, will help you respond in a more constructive way to all children. I know it sounds absolutely crazy, but, here it is:

LOOK FORWARD TO THE NEXT TIME YOUR TEEN HAS AN OUTBURST OR TEMPER TANTRUM . . . BECAUSE

1. If you look forward to teen’s outbursts, you’ll be able to deal with them in a more positive and graceful way.
2. If you look forward to teen’s outbursts, you can use them as an opportunity for emotional education.
3. If you look forward to teen’s outbursts, you can use them as an opportunity for greater intimacy. Think about the nightmare analogy.

B. Approach Teens Gently, Empathically, and With The Desire to Comfort Them: Being a teenager sucks. If you recall, your body is in turmoil, everybody is staring at you, and your friends are inconsistent and judgmental. Therefore, we should try to be the sort of parent who is a pillar of strength and support and not a big source of criticism and punishment.

C. Use Boring Punishment: Often we get this backwards and end up yelling at our kids, rather than making the punishment boring. Behavior modification principles suggest that we should be exciting when delivering praise or rewards.

D. Get Curious, Not Furious. Just like in the children’s story about the lion and the mouse, there will almost always be some form of distress under teen’s anger or agitation. As you approach gently, with your new positive attitude, think about what might be underneath your teen’s anger. Is she hurt? Is he upset about not getting what he wants? Is she trying to manipulate you into getting what she wants? Is he just blowing off steam?

E. It IS possible to have both empathy for your teen’s feelings AND to set limits on his/her behavior. For example, you can say, “I can see you’re very upset because you can’t go out tonight.” This statement contains both empathy AND a statement of the limit that you’re setting. Many teens throw tantrums to obtain power and control. Therefore, you should always abide by the following rule:

IF A TEEN IS BEHAVING AGGRESSIVELY OR OBNOXIOUSLY, THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS – NO!

F. Use Encouragement: Praise is a great tool for shaping your teen’s behavior, but try to avoid relying exclusively on praise . . . instead, try using encouragement. For example, after your child handles a difficult situation gracefully, instead of saying, “That was great” try saying, “I noticed you kept your cool.” The magic of encouragement occurs because, by not giving specific praise, you give your child the opportunity to conclude himself or herself that the behavior you noticed was good. And often it’s more important for your child to evaluate his/her own behavior than to always have to look to you for approval or praise. Character feedback is another form of encouragement.

G. Use Grandma’s Rule: This strategy involves using the language, “When You, Then You.” For example, you might say, after having empathy for your child’s upset feelings, “When you calm down, then we can get ready to go to the park.” The key to this strategy is to keep your language perfectly clear.

H. Use Mutual Problem-Solving: Too often parents feel like it’s totally their responsibility to solve their child’s problems. This involves unilateral problem-solving and it doesn’t really teach your teen anything but that she/he should rely on you. Instead, try engaging your child in mutual problem-solving.

IV. Looking to the Future: Four Key Questions

To make sure you’re staying focused and effective, it helps to ask yourself the following four questions (from Choice Theory – William Glasser and Robert Wubbolding).

A. What do you want?
B. What are you doing?
C. Is it working?
D. Should you make a new plan?

For more detailed information on these and other parenting strategies, go to: http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Parents-Will-Talk/dp/1118012968/ref=la_B0030LK6NM_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397876334&sr=1-8

 

 

Parenting

Happy Opposite Day

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In honor of Opposite Day (which is today, January 25), this is an excerpt from our How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen book. You can check it out here:

or here:

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118012968.html

Here’s the excerpt:

“Opposite Day” is a creative, albeit odd, game played by children around the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposite_Day). Interestingly, this game is often advocated by adults as a means through which children can learn about paradox and inverse relationships. When someone declares, “It’s Opposite Day!” it means that everything stated thereafter holds a meaning directly opposite of the statement’s content. For example, “It’s a beautiful day!” means, “It’s an ugly day!” and “I’m so happy to see you” means “I’m so not happy to see you.” Declaring Opposite Day is complicated, because if it’s already Opposite Day, the declaration is false, which has led some to conclude that declarations of Opposite Day should always begin the day before or just prior to the moment the day begins.

If you’re confused about this, you’re in good company. Although we’re tempted to declare it’s Not Opposite Day, doing so could really mean it is and then we’d have to start emphasizing how much we hope you’re hating this book and how much we hate working with parents and children, and . . . .

More seriously, we bring up Opposite Day primarily because it creatively captures the strong natural tendency for parents to use basic behavior modification principles in ways that are directly opposite to how they should be used. This chapter is designed to help you help parents straighten out—or reverse—their backward behavioral strategies in a child-friendly and parent-friendly manner.

Backward Behavior Modification: Using Boring, Natural, and Logical Consequences and Passionate and Surprise Rewards

As we alluded to in Chapter 4, backward behavior modification is endemic. Not only do parents tend to pay more attention to negative and undesirable behaviors than they do to positive and desirable behaviors, they also tend to do so with greater force or affect—which further complicates the situation. As noted previously, we learned about this complicated problem directly from teenagers who were in trouble for delinquent behaviors (see Chapter 4).

If parents engage in too much anger, yelling, or passion when their children misbehave, several problems can emerge: (1) The child will experience her parent’s passion as reinforcement for misbehavior; (2) the child will feel powerful and in-control of her parent (which is quite strong positive reinforcement); or (3) the parent will feel controlled by the child, or out-of-control, both of which further escalate the parent’s emotional behavior.

To address backward behavior modification problems, we teach parents how to use “Boring Consequences and Passionate Rewards.” The opening case in Chapter 1 is an example of the power of boring consequences. If you recall, the parents of Emma, a very oppositional nine-year-old, reported their “family was about to disintegrate” because of continuous power struggles. However, when they returned for their second consultation session, their family situation had transformed largely as a function of boring consequences. In Chapter 1, we quoted the father’s report on how he found boring consequences to be tremendously helpful. Emma’s mother was similarly positive:

Thinking about and then giving boring consequences helped us see that it was about us and not about our daughter. Before, she would misbehave and we would know she was going to misbehave and so we would go ballistic. Giving boring consequences suddenly gave us back our control over how we reacted to her. Instead of planning to go ballistic, it helped us see that going ballistic wasn’t helping her and wasn’t helping us. It felt good to plan to be boring instead. And the best thing about it was how it made the whole process of giving out consequences much shorter.

The inverse alternative to boring consequences is the practice of passionate rewards. Parents can be encouraged to intentionally pay positive and enthusiastic attention to their children’s positive, desirable, and prosocial behaviors. Passionate rewards include parental responses such as:

  • Applause or positive hoots and hollers
  • Verbal praise (“I am so impressed with your dedication to learning Spanish”)
  • Pats on the back, shoulder massages, and hugs
  • Family gatherings where everyone dishes out compliments

Passionate rewards are especially important for preadolescent children. As you may suspect, because of increased self-consciousness accompanying adolescence, passionate hugs and excessive compliments for a 14-year-old may function as a punishment rather than a reinforcement—especially if the hugging and hooting occurs in front of the 14-year-old’s peers.

Surprise rewards, presuming they’re provided in a socially tactful manner, are extremely powerful reinforcers for children of all ages. For example, with teenagers it can be very rewarding if parents suddenly and without advance notice say something like, “You know, you’ve been working hard and you’ve been so darn helpful that this weekend we’d like to give you a complete vacation from all your household chores or this $20 bill to go out to the movie of your choice with your buddies; which would you prefer?”

Surprise rewards are, in technical behavioral lingo, variable-ratio reinforcements. Across species, this reinforcement schedule has been shown to be the most powerful reinforcement schedule of all. Everyday examples of variable-ratio reinforcement schedules include gambling, golf, fishing, and other highly addictive behaviors where individuals can never be certain when their next response might result in the “jackpot.”

When coaching parents to use surprise rewards (variable-ratio reinforcement schedules), we emphasize that the surprise reward should be viewed as a spontaneous celebration of desirable behavior. Overall, we prefer this informal reinforcement plan over more mechanized sticker charts and reward systems (although we don’t mean to say that these more mechanized systems should never be used; in fact, when children are put in charge of their own reinforcement systems, these systems can be especially effective).

 

Cool Counseling, Parenting, Therapy with Adolescents, Tough Kids, Tough Kids Cool Counseling

Electronic Classrooms of Tomorrow — Powerpoint slides for “How to Listen. . .”

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This coming Thursday and Friday I’ll be in Columbus, OH for the Electronic Classrooms of Tomorrow (ECOT) conference. For Thursday, I’m presenting several break-out sessions on “How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen.” The powerpoints for that presentation are here:

How to Listen for ECOT

On Friday I doing an all-day workshop with the ECOT counselors with a little of everything (Tough Kids, Cool Counseling, Suicide Assessment/Intervention, and Working with Parents). Here are the ppts for Friday’s workshop:

ETOC TKCC No Tunes

Thanks very much to Emma Baucher who has been incredibly helpful in arranging this.

 

Parenting

If You Work With Parents . . . Check This Out

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This case example is used to illustrate the model Rita and I describe in our “How to Listen so Parents will Talk. . .” book.

The key principles or attitudes (similar to Rogerian approaches) are:

1. Empathy

2. Radical acceptance

3. Collaboration

Here’s the case example:

Theory into Practice: The Three Attitudes in Action

In the following example, Cassandra is discussing her son’s “strong-willed” behaviors with a parenting professional.

Case: “Wanna Piece of Me?”

Cassandra: My son is so stubborn. Everything is fine one minute, but if I ask him to do something, he goes ballistic. And then I can’t get him to do anything.

Consultant: Some kids seem built to focus on getting what they want. It sounds like your boy is very strong-willed. [A simple initial reflection using common language is used to quickly formulate the problem in a way that empathically resonates with the parent’s experience.]

Cassandra: He’s way beyond strong-willed. The other day I asked him to go upstairs and clean his room and he said “No!” [The mom wants the consultant to know that her son is not your ordinary strong-willed boy.]

Consultant: He just refused? What happened then? [The consultant shows appropriate interest and curiosity, which honors the parent’s perspective and helps build the collaborative relationship.]

Cassandra:           I asked him again and then, while standing at the bottom of the stairs, he put his hands on his hips and yelled, “I said no! You wanna piece of me??!”

Consultant: Wow. You’re right. He is in the advanced class on how to be strong-willed. What did you do next? [The consultant accepts and validates the parent’s perception of having an exceptionally strong-willed child and continues with collaborative curiosity.]

Cassandra: I carried him upstairs and spanked his butt because, at that point, I did want a piece of him! [Mom discloses becoming angry and acting on her anger.]

Consultant: It’s funny how often when our kids challenge our authority so directly, like your son did, it really does make us want a piece of them. [The consultant is universalizing, validating, and accepting the mom’s anger as normal, but does not use the word anger.]

Cassandra: It sure gets me! [Mom acknowledges that her son can really get to her, but there’s still no mention of anger.]

Consultant: I know my next question is a cliché counseling question, but I can’t help but wonder how you feel about what happened in that situation. [This is a gentle and self-effacing effort to have the parent focus on herself and perhaps reflect on her behavior.]

Cassandra: I believe he got what he deserved. [Mom does not explore her feelings or question her behavior, but instead, shows a defensive side; this suggests the consultant may have been premature in trying to get the mom to critique her own behavior.]

Consultant: It sounds like you were pretty mad. You were thinking something like, “He’s being defiant and so I’m giving him what he deserves.” [The consultant provides a corrective empathic response and uses radical acceptance; there is no effort to judge or question whether the son “deserved” physical punishment, which might be a good question, but would be premature and would likely close down exploration; the consultant also uses the personal pronoun I when reflecting the mom’s perspective, which is an example of the Rogerian technique of “walking within.”]

Cassandra: Yes, I did. But I’m also here because I need to find other ways of dealing with him. I can’t keep hauling him up the stairs and spanking him forever. It’s unacceptable for him to be disrespectful to me, but I need other options. [Mom responds to radical acceptance and empathy by opening up and expressing her interest in exploring alternatives; Miller and Rollnick (2013) might classify the therapist’s strategy as a “coming alongside” response.]

Consultant: That’s a great reason for you to be here. Of course, he shouldn’t be disrespectful to you. You don’t deserve that. But I hear you saying that you want options beyond spanking and that’s exactly one of the things we can talk about today. [The consultant accepts and validates the mom’s perspective—both her reason for seeking a consultation and the fact that she doesn’t deserve disrespect; resonating with parents about their hurt over being disrespected can be very powerful.]

Cassandra: Thank you. It feels good to talk about this, but I do need other ideas for how to handle my wonderful little monster. [Mom expresses appreciation for the validation and continues to show interest in change.]

As noted previously, parents who come for professional help are often very ambivalent about their parenting behaviors. Although they feel insecure and want to do a better job, if parenting consultants  are initially judgmental, parents can quickly become defensive and may sometimes make rather absurd declarations like, “This is a free country! I can parent any way I want!”

In Cassandra’s case, she needed to establish her right to be respected by her child (or at least not disrespected). Consequently, until the consultant demonstrated respect or unconditional positive regard or radical acceptance for Cassandra in the session, collaboration could not begin.

Another underlying principle in this example is that premature educational interventions can carry an inherently judgmental message. They convey, “I see you’re doing something wrong and, as an authority, I know what you should do instead.” Providing an educational intervention too early with parents violates the attitudes of empathy, radical acceptance, and collaboration. Even though parents usually say that educational information is exactly what they want, unless they first receive empathy and acceptance and perceive an attitude of collaboration, they will often resist the educational message.

To summarize, in Cassandra’s case, theory translates into practice in the following ways:

  • Nonjudgmental listening and empathy increase parent openness and parent–clinician collaboration.
  • Radical acceptance of undesirable parenting behaviors or attitudes strengthens the working relationship.
  • Premature efforts to provide educational information violate the core attitudes of empathy, radical acceptance, and collaboration and therefore are likely to increase defensiveness.
  • Without an adequate collaborative relationship built on empathy and acceptance, direct educational interventions with parents will be less effective.

The amazon link to the book is here: http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Parents-Will-Talk/dp/1118012968/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380502481&sr=1-2&keywords=how+to+listen+so+parents+will+talk+and+talk+so+parents+will+listen

 

Parenting, Personal Reflections

Sweating my Way through Charlotte, North Carolina

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As my sister likes to say, “we’ve got excellent pores in our family.” By “excellent” she means to say that our pores open up and leak like the Titanic. One time, way back when I was teaching at the University of Portland, I didn’t let enough time pass between playing noon-time basketball and lecturing in an Introductory Psychology class and ended up sweating so much that my glasses fogged up.

And so you can imagine how much my pores enjoyed being in Charlotte, NC in August.

When I showed up at the Ice Cream Social on Tuesday evening I was sweating so much that I was sure everyone was thinking, “Great. It’s the night before he’s scheduled to speak and our keynote for Wednesday morning is ALREADY having a panic attack.” [It’s funny how self-consciousness about something like sweating can suddenly turn on my psychic powers, because I’m pretty sure I was able to accurately read everyone’s mind at that Ice Cream Social.] But really, it wasn’t that terrible because I only had to retreat to my room to change my shirt once during the 20 minutes I spent at the Ice Cream Social.

Note to self: When visiting high humidity regions, always pack clothing that doesn’t accentuate my excellent sweating ability of my pores.

But the real point of this blog post isn’t my personal struggle with perspiration—despite the fact that writing about my sweating is, I’m sure, intrinsically interesting as well as cathartic and desensitizing. The real point is to do some flat out bragging about the Communities In Schools of North Carolina (CIS-NC) programs.

If you don’t know about the Communities in Schools organization, you should. In North Carolina this organization includes an amazing staff with boundless positive energy that they direct toward dropout prevention. If you click on the link to their organization you’ll find a cool website with excellent information http://www.cisnc.org/. Here’s their mission statement:

The mission of Communities In Schools is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. We are part of the national Communities In Schools network, which is the leading dropout prevention organization in the country, and the only such organization that is proven to decrease the dropout rate and increase on-time graduation rates.

I have to admit that before I arrived in Charlotte, I was skeptical about their claims of being “the only organization proven to decrease the dropout rate and increase on-time graduation rates.” This skepticism came from two sources: (1) decreasing drop-out rates is just extremely difficult for everyone, and (2) I’m skeptical about everything. But, after being with the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING administration and staff of CIS-NC for only a few hours, it was clear to me how and why they’re able to help students succeed. Here are a few things I learned.

  • Not only is the staff positive, energetic, and funny, they’re also smart, savvy, and fully dedicated to improving the lives of young people.
  • They utilize a rational balance of evidence-based approaches in combination with approaches that are designed to meet the unique needs of individual schools, staff, students, and settings.
  • They operate using the “5 Basics of Communities in Schools.” These common sense AND evidence-based principles include:
  1. A one-on-one relationship with a caring adult.
  2. A safe place to learn and grow.
  3. A healthy start and a healthy future.
  4. A marketable skill to use upon graduation.
  5. A chance to give back to peers and community.

In addition to all that, I learned that their staff is sensitive, supportive, and compassionate. After all, when I delivered the keynote, they nodded and smiled (showing their listening skills), laughed at all of my jokes at exactly the right time (laughing with special vigor when I did my exorcist voice), and gave me lots of positive feedback for the rest of the morning.

Now it’s up to me to determine if they were just being especially kind to their sweaty keynote speaker or whether they really enjoyed the presentations. I’m hoping for the latter.

Parenting

Praise or Encouragement or Something Else?

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On the National Parenting Education Network listserv (go to: http://npen.org/ to check out their flashy upgraded website), there has been a very interesting recent discussion of the relative merits of praise and encouragement. In keeping with this topic, I’m posting a homework assignment for parents from “How to Talk so Parents will Listen and Listen so Parents will Talk.” (see: http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Parents-Will-Talk/dp/1118012968/ref=la_B0030LK6NM_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1370905715&sr=1-5). The following assignment is designed to help parents experience the nuances between praise, mirroring (one form of encouragement), character feedback, and solution-focused questions.

Parenting Homework Assignment 8-2

Exploring the Differences between Praise, Mirroring, Character Feedback, and Solution-Focused Questions

If you’ve been given this homework assignment, you’re probably already using many good parenting techniques with your child. This assignment will help you refine your parenting approach to intentionally include even more ways of being positive with your child.

Imagine that a father is busy taking care of household chores while he’s parenting his 5-year-old daughter. She’s creating some excellent 5-year-old crayon art and approaches her daddy with a finished product and a beaming smile. Dad looks up and takes a break from his chores to admire his daughter’s artwork. He returns her grin and says one of the following:

  • “This is beautiful!” (An example of praise—a form of direct power)
  • “Thanks for showing me your drawing. You look very happy with your picture.” (An example of emotional mirroring or encouragement—a form of indirect power)
  • “You love doing artwork!” (An example of character feedback—another form of indirect power)
  • “How did you manage to create this beautiful drawing?” (An example of a solution-focused question—a form of problem-solving power)

If you can increase your awareness of these different strategies, you’ll feel more capable of being intentional and positive when interacting with your children. The result usually includes fewer power struggles and more positive parent–child relationship dynamics.

Using Praise

Using praise is simple. For example, praise includes statements like: “Great work,”  “I’m proud of you,” and “Look at what a good job you’ve done cleaning the bathroom!” When you use praise, you are clearly communicating your expectations and your approval to your child.

Think about how much praise you use with your children. Are you being clear enough with them about what you want and are you letting them know when they’ve done well? As a part of this homework assignment, consider increasing how much you praise your child and then see how your child reacts.

Using Mirroring

Sometimes children don’t have a clear sense of how their behaviors look to others (which can also be true for adults). The purpose of mirroring is to help children see themselves through your eyes. After seeing (or hearing) their reflection, your child becomes more aware of his or her behavior and may choose to make changes.

For now, we recommend that you practice using mirroring only to reflect your child’s positive behaviors. For example, if your daughter has a play date and shares her toys with her friend, you could say, “I noticed you were sharing your toys.” Or if your son got home on time instead of breaking his curfew, you might say, “I noticed you were on time last night.” The hard part about using mirroring is to stay neutral, but staying neutral is important because mirroring allows your children to be the judge of their own behaviors. If you want to be the judge, you can use praise.

Using Character Feedback

Character feedback works well for helping your children see themselves as having positive character traits. For example, you might say, “You’re very honest with us,” or “You can really focus on and get your homework done quickly when you want to,” or “You’re very smart.”

Usually, as parents, instead of using character feedback to focus on our children’s positive qualities, we use it in a very negative way. Examples include: “Can’t you keep your hands to yourself?” “You’re always such a big baby,” and “You never do your homework.”

For your homework assignment, try using character feedback to comment on your children’s positive behaviors, while ignoring the negative. You can even use character feedback to encourage a new behavior—all you have to do is wait for a tiny sign of the new behavior to occur and then make a positive character feedback statement: “You’re really starting to pay attention to keeping your room clean.”

Using Solution-Focused Questions

Problem-focused questions include: “What’s wrong with you?” and “What were you thinking when you hit that other boy at school?” In contrast, solution-focused questions encourage children to focus on what they’re doing well. For example, “How did you manage to get that puzzle together?” “What were you thinking when you decided to share your toy with your friend?” and “What did you do to get yourself home on time?”

Solution-focused questions require us to look for the positive. For practice, try asking your child questions designed to get him or her to think about successes instead of failures. After all, it’s the successes that you want to see repeated. Of course, when you ask these questions, don’t expect your child to answer them well. Instead, your child will most likely say, “Huh? I don’t know.” The point is that you’re focusing on the positive and eventually these questions get your children to focus on the positive as well.

Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Parenting

Practicing Cultural Humility with Parents

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Alfred Adler (1958) claimed that every child is born into a new and different family. He believed that with every additional member, family dynamics automatically shift and therefore a new family is born (J. Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2004a). If we extend Adler’s thinking into the cultural domain, it might be appropriate to conclude: “Every family is born into a new and different culture.”

[This is an excerpt from “How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen.” It’s at: http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Parents-Will-Talk/dp/1118012968/ref=la_B0030LK6NM_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1369460232&sr=1-5%5D

To be sure, culture is not a static condition; it’s a malleable and powerfully influential force in the lives of parents and children. Vargas (2004) stated,

“Culture is not about outcome. Culture is an ever-changing process.  One cannot get a firm grip of it just as one cannot get a good grasp of water.  As an educator, what I try to do is to teach about the process of culture—how we will never obtain enough cultural content, how important it is to understand the cultural context in which we are working, and how crucial it is to understand our role in the interactions with the people with whom we want to work or the communities in which we seek to intervene. . . .  I do not want to enter the intervention arena (whether in family therapy or in implementing a community-based intervention) as an “expert” who has the answers and knows what needs to be done.  I am not a conquistador, intent on supplanting my culture on others.  I have a certain expertise that, when connected with the knowledge and experience of my clients, can be helpful and meaningful to my clients.” (p. 429)

In part, Vargas was making the point that it’s more important for professionals to practice cultural humility than it is to view ourselves as culturally competent.

A Cultural Dialectic

All professionals should strive to be culturally sensitive and humble, seeking to respect and prize human diversity for the richness, variety, and surprises it brings to life.  But while embracing culture, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s no perfect culture, and sometimes cultural practices need to change or evolve for the sake of a given child, parent, or family.  Therefore, although we value divergent cultural perspectives, it’s also reasonable  to question whether specific cultural beliefs and rituals are useful or healthy to individuals, families, and communities. This is a cultural dialectic—similar to the radical acceptance dialectic discussed in Chapter 1.

When working with parents, it’s the professional’s job to do the cultural accepting and the parents’ job to do the cultural questioning. You should accept the parents’ cultural background, heritage, and parenting practices. However, if in the process of examining cultural influences on parenting, parents take the lead in questioning their culturally influenced parenting practices, you can and should remain open to helping parents push against cultural forces to make positive changes. For example, parents may want to discuss any of the following topics with you:

  • Whether or not to have their infant son circumcised
  • Their daughter’s body-image issues as they relate to American cultural values toward thinness
  • Whether it’s acceptable for their Muslim daughter to attend school or pursue higher education
  • Traditional Native American values and their children’s potential tobacco use

Helping parents determine whether their own cultural values clash with individual and/or family well-being is a delicate and potentially explosive process.  The challenge is to remain relatively neutral while helping parents evaluate cultural practices using their own parent-child-family health and well-being standards.

Case: Tobacco, Culture, and Addiction

Parent: I’m worried about my son and whether he’s started smoking. I use tobacco, in traditional Indian ceremonies, but I usually end up smoking more than I want to, and I see it as a bad habit, too. I’m not sure how to approach this with him because I don’t want to be a hypocrite.

Consultant: Tell me some ideas you’ve had, from your cultural perspective, about how to get the message you want to get to your son.

Parent: I want him to know that tobacco use should beceremonial or sacred, even though I use it more often than that. I know regular smoking is very unhealthy and so I don’t want him to have it as a habit, but I don’t know how to tell him that.

Consultant: If you think about someone from your tribe whom you really respect, how do you think that person would handle it?

Parent: In my tribe it’s really important to respect your elders. I’m my son’s mother and he should respect me, but you know how that goes. Maybe if I asked someone else, someone older and with even more respect than me, maybe that would help.

Consultant: Whom would you pick to help you talk with your son about this?

Parent: My older brother, his uncle, is pretty high up in the Tribal Government and maybe I could ask him to tell my son it would be better not to smoke, even though lots of Indian people smoke.

Consultant: Do you think your brother would be willing to give your son that message?

Parent: Yes. He’s traditional in some ways, but he’s very much against all smoking and drinking.

Consultant: You and your brother are both right about the dangers of regular tobacco use. As I imagine this discussion, I can see the two of you having a big impact on your son. But I guess there’s also the issue of your smoking and your son’s knowledge of that. Can you have your brother talk about that with your son, too? Or maybe both of you should do this together. How do you think this might work best?

In this case example, for the most part, the consultant is remaining neutral and respectful of the parent’s cultural traditions and yet, at the same time, helping her explore how to get her son a strong and clear message about not smoking tobacco.

Following the Parents’ Lead in Cultural Identity and Cultural Understanding

For most of us, culture is so deeply woven into our lives that it travels below awareness. From time to time we may glimpse it and wonder how it came to be that we choose to engage in specific cultural behaviors, such as:

  • Sitting on the couch with our children watching The Simpsons
  • Getting eggs from the store rather than directly from backyard chickens
  • Going to church on Palm Sunday where a processional, complete with a donkey, waits quietly in the sanctuary
  • Deferring to one’s husband
  • Expecting our oldest son to take care of us
  • Gathering with friends to overeat and watch the Super Bowl
  • Wearing a yarmulke, burkha, or other garments or pieces of cloth to cover our bodies or heads

Culture carries with it many questions, answers, and mysteries. As you can see from the preceding list, culture is ubiquitous; it’s impossible to escape its influence. It’s also impossible to accurately judge someone else’s cultural identity on the basis of physical appearance or initial impressions (Hays, 2008).

When working with parents, you shouldn’t assume parents’ cultural attitudes and experiences in advance. This is true no matter how similar or dissimilar to you the parents appear.  It’s best to begin with a clearly stated attitude of openness and then follow the parents’ lead.

Consultant: So, you grew up in Malawi?

Parent: Yes. I came to the United States when I was twenty-four.

Consultant: I don’t know how much of your Malawi tradition influences your parenting and so I hope it will be okay with you if, on occasion, I ask you about that.

Parent:  That’s no problem at all.

Consultant: And, as we talk, I hope you’ll feel free to tell me about anything that comes up or seems important about your particular cultural approach to parenting.

Parent: Yes. I’m comfortable with that.

Whether the parent is Laotian, Belizean, Argentine, French Canadian, or from any other cultural tradition, you should remain open to his or her particular and potentially diverse parenting approaches. However, you should also be open to helping parents question whether their own approaches to parenting are bringing them the results they desire. This is your professional duty. Again, the basic principle is to follow the parents’ lead in questioning cultural parenting practices and not become a cultural conquistador who tells all parents the one right way to be a parent.