Parent-Child Harmony

Want to be the best parent you can be?

Looking for new parenting Ideas? Read this first. It provides an orientation to this site.

If you’re looking for new and better parenting ideas, you came to the right place!

Hi. I’m Chuck Adam, a life and relationship coach, after having practiced psychotherapy for 33 years. During that time, and for my past five years as a coach, I have been focusing on educating parents on relationship skills and attitudes to use with their kids. (Adults can use these skills in all their relationships with other adults as well.)

I am thoroughly convinced that the parent-child relationship is the most important of all  relationships any of us ever has, and it is key to the future of humanity as well. Please see my Philosophy statement for more on that topic.

On this website I am posting many articles I have written for my various parent education classes as handouts. I invite you to browse them, read them, leave your comments about them, and share them with others if you think they might benefit from them.

Central, guiding principle

The central guiding principle behind everything I write is a conviction that I have come to while working with families and individuals since 1971. I have never seen any other author talk about it quite like this, and I am puzzled about why this is so. It comes down to this:

                  The core problem in interpersonal relationships is the delusion of control.

By this I mean that the great majority of people are erroneously focused on trying to control other people’s behavior--for example “getting” them to change–-when in fact that is not even a possibility.

Dad Backs Off (Recorded in a parent class)

by Chuck Adam

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

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

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

CA: Beautiful! 

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

She Won't Listen

by Chuck Adam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Two Biggest Challenges as Parents

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

Lack of Awareness

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

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

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

Pride

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

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

Conclusion

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

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn: Excerpts from the Introduction

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

                                           Excerpts from the Introduction

Obedience: The Temptation to Control Children

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

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

Long-term Objectives of Parenting

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

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

Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn: A Review

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

A Review by Chuck Adam

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

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

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

Anatomy of a Volcanic Eruption

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

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

The Volcano Theory

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

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

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

Six Parent Leadership Roles: A Brief Explanation

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

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

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

1. The Sheriff.

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

Six Parent Leadership Roles: A Continuum

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

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

Download parent_leadership_rolescontinuum.pdf

Six Parenting Roles: A Leadership Continuum

Please click on this link to download the chart:

Download parent_leadership_model.cht.pdf