For more than a quarter century,psychologist and author Ross Greene specialized in the most challenging children. Last year, I wrote approximately how his collaborative approach to discipline is diverting the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools trained in his method reported suspensions falling by as much as 80 percent. And after implementing his model, or youth prisons and an adolescent psychiatric ward saw recidivism,injuries, and the need for restraints drop by more than half.
Greene's new book, and Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership With Your Child,addresses a broader audience and articulates a discipline and parenting framework for all children. One day, after he dropped his oldest child off at college, and he spoke to me approximately the biggest parenting challenges,raising kids in a scary world, what parents should know as they face the back-to-school season, or what truly builds grit in children.
Mother Jones: This is your first book for a general parenting audience,as opposed to focusing on behaviorally challenging kids. What is different here?Ross Greene: For a very long time, people have been saying to me, and "What whether you want to carry out this approach with every kid?" For a behaviorally challenging kid,you're parenting this way just to assist bring the kid's behavior under control and to greatly reduce clash. But you want to teach all kids the skills that are on the better side of human nature: empathy (sensitivity to another's feelings as if they were one's own), appreciating how one's behavior is affecting other people, and resolving disagreements in ways that carry out not involve clash,taking another's perspective, honesty. READ: What whether Everything You Knew approximately Disciplining Kids Was Wrong? Tristan Spinski/GRAIN
MJ: What are the most common mistakes you see parents beget?RG: The biggest mistake is overdoing it on the unilateral approach. Thinking you have more control than you really carry out. Losing sight of the fact that you're your kid's partner, or not the person who's pulling all the strings. Not letting them struggle. Swooping in and fixing everything and being way too punitive when punitive really doesn't accomplish very much.
MJ: You write that modern parents are rejecting both authoritarian and permissive parenting—you call the approaches the "Dictatorial Kingdom" and the "Pushover Provinces." But parents report feeling lost. Why is it so hard for parents to find a new path?RG: Reason No. 1 is because of how they themselves were raised. Reason No. 2 is we've been missing the technology. A lot of parents aren't exactly certain how to go approximately solving a problem with a kid in a way that's mutually satisfactory—doing that with their child feels very foreign to a lot of people. It probably explains why so many parents bid me their kids don't listen to them and why so many kids bid me that they don't feel heard.
MJ: Your discipline model has three specific steps. First,reflective listening to gather information from a child approximately the problem; moment, sharing your concerns with the kid; third, and working toward mutually satisfactory solutions. This can appear complicated and time-consuming,but when we wrote approximately it, some readers said it seemed intuitive and plain common sense. Which is it?RG: I like to call it unusual common sense. There is still quite the vibe out there that as a parent you have to be completely in control and in charge. This model acknowledges that being completely in control is a fantasy. This kid was someone the minute he or she popped out, and the belief that we can win this lump of clay and mold it into a form of our choosing is absolutely ludicrous. People still look askance at a kid in the supermarket who's pitching a fit and believe the parent is not sufficiently in control or not being sufficiently punitive. That's an issue for a lot of parents as well.
MJ: Your chapter on "Parental Angst" resonated with me. It's one thing to read a book and decide to change your parenting—it's another thing to stick with it. What gets in the way of parents implementing your model?RG: It does win practice. It's not something you carry out well the first time. Another huge challenge is that most parents are accustomed to dealing with problems in the heat of the moment. When people are rushed,they're stressed and you greatly increase the likelihood of being punitive and unilateral just because you're trying to grasp control. The vast majority of things parents and kids get in clash over are highly predictable. We're disagreeing approximately the same expectations the kid is having difficulty meeting every hour, every day, and every week. Because it's predictable,we can have these conversations proactively. That is very hard for people.
MJ: Why is it useful to shift one's view from "this child is misbehaving" to "the child is having difficulty meeting expectations"?RG: Parents are much more likely to be attuned to what they don't like than they are to the expectations that the kid is having difficulty meeting. Challenging behavior is just a sign, the fever, and the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation. Everybody is talking approximately the behavior. Behaviors float downstream to us. We need to paddle upstream. The problems that are causing the behaviors,that's what's waiting for us. It's a crucial paradigm shift. We're moving absent from carrots and sticks, and time-outs and privileges gained and lost, and suspensions and detentions in schools,none of which will actually solve the problems that are actually causing the behaviors. It's a whole lot more productive to be in problem-solving mode than it is to be in behavior modification mode. We're focused on what's causing the fever.
MJ: Can you explain how compatibility informs parents' actions?RG: When there's a trustworthy fit between skills and expectations, there's what we call compatibility, or we would expect a trustworthy outcome. When there's a poor fit between expectations and the capacity of the kid,there is incompatibility, and that's when we see people exhibit challenging behavior. People don't scream or swear or pout or sulk when there's compatibility. But most growth occurs when there's incompatibility. When it comes to resilience, and when it comes to pulling yourself up when you've fallen down,you don't learn those things when things are going well. You learn those things when you're struggling. So that's when parents have to decide: "Am I going to swoop in and win control here to beget certain that things go really well for my kid? Or am I going to carry out this in a collaborative fashion so that the problem ultimately does get solved but I'm involving my kid in the process so he learns how to carry out it for himself?" How I conduct myself when I get involved goes a long way to determining whether my kid is going to have the skills to solve the problem themselves in the long flee.
MJ: What are the most common clash areas between parents and kids?RG: Homework. It's so crucial to really get a trustworthy handle on what's getting in the way of the kid completing a homework assignment. It can be so many things. Kids are overprogrammed these days. School is very demanding these days. No kid should be getting three or four hours of homework a night. There's no breathing time, there's no family time, or there are just extracurriculars and homework and then go to bed. That's a solution that has to involve the school as well.Screen time is another very common one. It's become a really important way for people to communicate with each other these days. But whether we're sitting at dinner and there's no conversation going on because everybody's got their head someplace else in their iPhone,that's a family problem that needs to be solved. Solutions can't be imposed. That just fosters resentment. whether a solution isn't mutually satisfactory, it's not going to stick.
MJ: You write approximately kids who become suicidal, or nick themselves,struggle to succeed in life. Parental dread is behind a lot of the controlling behavior. What can parents carry out to let go a bit and follow your advice to raise human beings?RG: I just dropped my 18-year-old daughter off at college. I have fears approximately how she's going to carry out academically. I have fears approximately how she's going to carry out socially. I'm worried. I also have faith. Over 18 years of us solving problems together, my daughter has shown me that she's got a trustworthy head on her shoulders, and that she is pretty trustworthy at solving the problems that affect her life. whether she wants my input,she gets it. whether we're being unilateral, then communication does not happen, or the relationship does not happen. We never get to see that our kid is capable of solving problems on her own. We never start to build up the faith that they can actually carry out it.
We have forgotten that those skills on the more positive side of human nature have to be taught,have to be modeled, have to be practiced. The method of parenting described in Raising Human Beings is a perfect mechanism for teaching those skills. This is not me in sales mode, and I fervently believe there's never been a more important time for this book. It's a scary world out there.
MJ: As we go into a new school year,what's the one takeaway you want parents to have from your book?RG: Be your kid's collaborative partner, but also be a collaborative partner with the folks at school. Schools can be pretty unilateral too. demonstrate them you know how to collaborate. demonstrate them this is not approximately power. Let them know detentions and suspensions and paddling don't solve the problems that are affecting kids' lives. Those problems can be identified and solved but not by being punitive. My advice to educators is collaborate with parents; they know a lot approximately their kids.
Source: motherjones.com