Tag Archives: parents

Counseling and Psychotherapy Theory and Practice, Parenting

Why You Need Special Training to Work Effectively with Parents

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The following case example is excerpted from a chapter I wrote along with two colleagues at the University of Montana, Kirsten W. Murray and Christina G. Yoshimura. This chapter is titled, “Filial Play Therapy and Other Strategies for Working with Parents.” It’s published as Chapter 15 in Foundations of Couples, Marriage, and Family Counseling.

The first 750 words follow.

Parents constitute a complex and challenging population. When parents come to counseling or psychotherapy, they bring unique problems that can test the competence of even the most well-seasoned helping professionals (Holcomb-McCoy & Bryan, 2010; Slagt, Deković, de Haan, van den Akker, Alithe, & Prinzie, 2012). The nature, range, scope, and intensity of parenting problems are immense.

The following case example illustrates the complexity inherent in counseling parents:

Casey and Pat arrive in your office with the intent to discuss concerns about their 6-year-old daughter, Hazel. Initially, they describe their worries about a small behavioral or motor tic that Hazel has developed over the past year. Repeatedly throughout the day and particularly during novel social situations, Hazel cocks her head to the side, rolls her eyes backward, and then brings the knuckle of her right hand upward to her nose. She then presses her knuckle into the side of her nose while scrunching up her face. When Casey or Pat ask her about the purpose of her behavior, she usually reports that her nose “itches on the inside” and that she cannot resist scratching it.

As is often the case with children, Casey and Pat are worried about more than just Hazel’s nose-itching behavior. They’re also worried about how this behavior will affect Hazel’s social development. Hazel will be starting full-day kindergarten in less than a month and Casey and Pat are terrified that other kindergarten students will pick on her. In addition, as you explore their worries about Hazel’s social development, you also discover she’s having severe emotional outbursts (i.e., tantrums) and that neither Casey nor Pat seem to have skills for effectively dealing with their daughter’s anger.

Not long into your session both parents also tell you that their relationship is in crisis. Pat’s anger has been only marginally in control. Their couple conflicts have become more frequent and more intense. Two weeks prior to their counseling appointment they were fighting so intensely that their neighbors called the police. Pat was nearly cited for domestic abuse. Then, Pat quickly escalates in your session, claiming that Casey is too “easy” on Hazel and that Hazel just needs more firm and consistent discipline. Pat gives a short monologue on the effectiveness of spanking. Casey responds with tears, disclosing a personal history of physical abuse and adamant opposition to corporal punishment. Casey emphatically states: “I will not let Pat abuse my daughter.”

Not surprisingly, all this talk about discipline and abuse may raise emotional issues within the helping professional. You may begin to feel like supporting Casey and chastising Pat—at least up until the point that Pat bursts into tears. Pat then begins detailing their financial stressors and the fact that neither of them has had a full-time job over the past year. They’re living in run-down, low-income apartments within a neighborhood that both Pat and Casey find frightening. Eventually, Pat discloses that he has a 13-year-old son from a previous relationship. In an effort to escape the tension between himself and his stepfather, Pat’s teenage son is intermittently showing up at the apartment late at night after a round of drinking with his buddies. When the appointment ends, you end up with more questions than answers.

This case illustrates how working directly with parents is a unique process that requires special knowledge and skills. Pat and Casey present a profoundly complex scenario—even without adding dimensions related to their sexuality or culture. For example, how might Casey and Pat’s parenting and family issues shift if they were a lesbian or gay couple? And how would potential cultural matches or mismatches between the parental dyad and the therapist—or within the parental dyad—affect the therapeutic process and potential outcomes? Obviously, working with Rosa and Miguel or Minkyong and Liang (and all the stereotypes linked to these client names) instead of Casey and Pat might add complexity to the counseling process. Our main point is that you should try not to fool yourself into thinking you can work effectively with parents unless you’ve obtained specific training for working effectively with parents.

This chapter [published in Foundations of Couples, Marriage, and Family Counseling, which is edited by David Capuzzi and Mark Stauffer] describes principles, methods, and techniques for counseling parents. It’s organized into three parts: (1) parenting problems and theoretical models; (2) general knowledge and skills for working directly with parents; and (3) the history, knowledge, and skills associated with Filial Therapy, a specific play therapy approach to working with parents and children.

Parenting

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

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Last June I had a chance to go to Chicago to be filmed doing three professional THERAPY TALKS. It was a challenging situation; just me and a camera and a few production folks. One of the TALK topics focused on how to work effectively with parents. As it turns out, this video and others I’ve done with Microtraining are now available at their website: https://www.academicvideostore.com/publishers/microtraining (you have to search for Sommers-Flanagan).

Here’s the text, more or less, from the “How to Talk so Parents will Listen” TALK.

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 seen 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.

John and Nora

Boys and Men, Parenting, Personal Reflections

Wishing for a Super Bowl that Promotes Non-Violence

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It’s been a tough year for the National Football League. There was renewed emphasis (for a while) on the devastating brain damage caused by repeated concussions. Then there was the Ray Rice domestic violence incident. And then there was the Adrian Peterson child abuse incident. And now there’s the Aaron Hernandez trial for murder and weapons charges that started a couple days ago. All these scandals added up to big, bad publicity . . . so much so that the Fiscal Times noted in a recent headline that these incidents “Rocked the NFL.”

Then there was deflate-gate, the ridiculousness that led us to wonder if our football heroes might just be a bunch of cheats.

But wait.

Through all these scandals the NFL has continued laughing its way to the Bank with obscene gobs of money that could be used to wipe out Ebola or end child abuse. Last year, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell made about $44 million. Vegas odds are that he’ll do better this year. Super Bowl advertisings are doing just fine, thank-you. And Katy Perry may or may not have a wardrobe malfunction tomorrow evening, but you can bet there will be millions of viewers. The NFL is right on pace to increase its economic worth to something well over being a $9 billion dollar industry. Not bad. Talk about Teflon.

It’s clear the situation is hopeless and that the Juggernaut that is the NFL will stroll into the future without substantially addressing anything that might be remotely linked to a social virtue. Nevertheless, I can’t stop cheering for underdogs, and that leaves me with an array of dreams that are so silly that I’m embarrassed to admit them. That said, I’ll go ahead and embrace my embarrassment and tell you what I’m watching for tomorrow.

I’ll be watching to see how many advertising bucks are used to promote domestic violence or child abuse prevention. Will we see NFL players, coaches, owners, and the commissioner go on record to support sexual assault prevention? Might there be room for the tiniest of sprinklings of valuable educational public service announcements during the four hour Super Bowl feast?

I think not; but I hold out hope.

And here’s my biggest irrational wish. I’m wishing for the NFL to provide educational information about the dangers of corporal punishment. Adrian Peterson said something to the effect that all he did was send his kiddo out to get a stick so he could beat him with it, just like his Momma did to him. Peterson was talking about our great American tradition of believing that it’s a good thing for parents to hit their children.

Even more disturbing than the single Adrian Peterson incident is the fact that during a typical 4 hour time period (about the length of the Super Bowl broadcast) there are approximately 1,500 reports of child abuse . . . and so maybe, just maybe, we could use a little NFL-sponsored education here.

But what really smacks my pigskin is the fact that Adrian Peterson’s parenting philosophy is still alive and well on the internet. In particular, it’s featured on the website of Christian “parenting expert” James Dobson. Seriously. It’s on a Christian-based website. This is stunning not only because there’s a truckload of science telling us that hitting kids is linked to bad outcomes, but also because it’s pretty difficult to imagine the Jesus that I read about in the Bible hitting children with a stick . . . or advocating the hitting of children with a stick.

Now that it’s the 21st century and time for Super Bowl XLIX, shouldn’t we know better? Shouldn’t we know that we shouldn’t send our kids out to get sticks so we can beat them? Come on NFL . . . just share that fun fact. Just come out and say you don’t support beating children . . . and how about you take 0.001% of your net worth and use it to launch an educational campaign that will teach parents what to do instead of hitting kids.

That’s what I’ll be watching for tomorrow . . . if I can manage to stomach turning on the game at all.

Parenting

The Montana Parenting Podcast Needs You!

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In about 10 days Dr. Sara Polanchek and I will produce our first parenting podcast. This is a project supported by grants from the Engelhard Foundation and the Morris and Helen Silver Foundation. We are very grateful for this support.

If you’re reading this, consider offering us some assistance. Nope, I’m not asking for cash (not yet anyway). What we need is a little of your fabulous creative input. In particular, please email Sara or me or post on this blog your answer to the following question:

WHAT COOL, CATCHY, AND PROFOUND TITLE SHOULD WE GIVE TO OUR PODCAST?

Okay, maybe you need more information.

The plan is for Sara and I to produce about 50 parenting podcasts. Each one will be about 15-20 minutes long. We’re trying to be interesting, sometimes provocative, and cutting edge. For example, our first podcast will be on spanking or corporal punishment and, among other things (like our pithy and educational anecdotes),  we’ll be weaving science and Adrian Peterson and Chris Carter’s commentary on corporal punishment into the show. In fact, we have so much to say on this that it may end up being a two-parter.

We have many planned topics, but since our goal is 50 “episodes” you’re also welcome to provide us with your thoughts on topics YOU think we should cover.

We also have lots of expertise (IMHO), but if you happen to be an expert or know an expert whom you think we should have as a guest on our program, feel free to offer that too.

The goal of the podcast is to provide interesting and helpful information for parents and parenting educators. The podcast will be posted on the National Parenting Education Network (NPEN) website, as well as other websites interested in promoting positive, research-based, developmentally sensitive parenting for the 21st century. You can check out NPEN at npen.org. We advocate FIRM, but NONVIOLENT parenting.

In summary, please share any or all of the following:

YOUR IDEAS FOR A SMASHING PODCAST TITLE

YOUR IDEAS FOR FUN AND INTERESTING TOPICS

and (here’s the money thing)

YOUR IDEAS FOR COMPANIES OR INDIVIDUALS WHOM YOU THINK WOULD LIKE TO SPONSOR INDIVIDUAL SHOWS FOR THE BARGAIN PRICE OF $200 (OR MORE).

Thanks for reading and have a fabulous weekend!

John SF

 

 

Divorce, Parenting

Ten Tips for Parenting through Divorce

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In a previous post today there was a mention of a Tip Sheet for Parenting through Divorce and one astute blog reader noticed and asked about it . . . and so here it is. It’s also excerpted from the book “How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen.”

Ten Tips for Parenting through Divorce

To parent well through divorce and into the future, you should educate yourself about the unique challenges you’re likely to face and how to manage them. The following short list is a beginning. Additional resources are listed in Appendix A.

 
1. Make a commitment to good self-care. There are two big reasons why this is good advice. First, divorce is emotionally painful and stressful. If you don’t take care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually, you may suffer. Second, if you’re suffering, your children will suffer right along with you.

2. Cultivate a support system for your children. You can’t do it all. Therefore, when you’re feeling exhausted your children will need other healthy adults with whom they can spend time. Identify who these adults are and ask them for help and support.

3. Listen to your children, even when it’s hard. Your children may or may not want to talk about the divorce or their feelings. In most cases, they’ll suddenly become angry, irritable, or sad and possibly direct those feelings at you. If so, listen and comfort, even if what they’re saying is hard to hear.

4. Set limits for your children. Sometimes during and after a divorce parents will start letting their children do whatever they want. This isn’t healthy. Children need limits; they need you to be a firm and loving parent.

5. Work on communicating respectfully with your child’s other parent. Practice positive communication skills. It can also help to change your language and not call your former spouse, “My ex,” but instead, “My daughter’s father” or “My son’s mother.” See Ricci’s book, Mom’s house, Dad’s house, for more information on this.

6. Develop smooth transitions from one home to another. Child exchanges can be traumatic for everyone. Having a regular and positive routine when you get your children ready to go to their other home can help. Also, avoid conflicts with the other parent during child exchanges. Exposing your child to parent–parent conflict is very unhealthy. Consider finding an outside person to help you establish a positive exchange.

7. Set limits with your child’s other parent. Consider establishing guidelines for parent–parent meetings. Don’t meet for long hours alone or make yourself spontaneously available anytime the other parent wants to talk. Instead, set up official meetings at a safe and pleasant (but not intimate) location.

8. Educate yourself. Consider taking a class or reading a book or watching an educational DVD on divorce and shared parenting.

9. Educate yourself II. Consult with legal and mental-health professionals as appropriate. Neither legal or mental health professionals should be used in an effort to manipulate or punish the other parent or the children.

10. Embark on a healthy new life. Give your child’s mom or dad privacy and maintain your own. Encourage your children to have good times with the other parent (never make your children feel guilty about having a good time with their mom or dad). Establish new family rituals to help you and your children adjust to your new lives.

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

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).

 

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