WASHINGTON - To discipline their misbehaving children, parents may use techniques like giving a time out, taking away favorite activities, or spanking. But child psychologist Ross Greene says this controlling style of parenting is not effective. In his recent book, "Raising Human Beings," he explains why and makes a case for rethinking common approaches to disciplining children. He suggests a different approach, which he calls collaborative parenting.
Throughout his career, Ross Greene has noticed that most parents try to control their kids. He doesn’t support that. He says parents don’t need to control, they need to influence their children.
And the way to do that, he says, is to create a collaborative partnership: parents should listen to their kids, take their concerns into account and help children benefit from their parents’ experiences and values.
“A lot of us were raised by parents who were more oriented toward power and control,” he notes. “If they start moving toward collaboration and influence, they feel like they’re losing control, but the reality is they didn’t have control in the first place.”
When parents try to control their kids, they use strategies that are oriented around power.
“[They are using] time out, adult imposed consequences, in schools [they use] detention, suspension, expulsion, hitting. That’s power," he observes, and points out why that doesn't work. "Number one, power doesn’t really solve the problems that are causing the behaviors that we’re using those strategies on in the first place. Number two, power causes kids to stop talking to us, to feel like we’re not listening. And those are not good outcomes, if we want to have a relationship with our kids, if we want to communicate with them and especially if we want to have influence and partner with them on solving the problems that are affecting their lives.”
After 20 years as a child psychologist at Harvard, Greene left the academic life to set up , a non-profit that focuses on kids with significant behavioral problems. That's where he developed his Collaborative and Proactive Solutions parenting model.
The more research he’s done over the years, the more convinced he’s become that this model is also effective in raising kids who have less challenging behavioral problems.
Rather than viewing certain behavior as bad, he counsels parents to see it as an indication that the child has trouble meeting expectations for a certain situation. With Greene’s model, parents can start helping the child get to the real problem behind the misbehavior.
“I find it more productive to focus on the unsolved problems than it is to focus on the behaviors that are caused by those problems,” he explains. “If all you do is focus on the behavior, you might improve the behavior a little bit, but the problems are still not getting solved.”
The collaborative parenting model consists of three steps. Greene lays them out in his book, Raising Human Beings, Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child.
“This is where we’re gathering information from the kid so us to achieve the clearest possible understanding on the unsolved problem or unmet expectation we’re talking with him about. Kids have information we very badly need. So often we adults think of solutions without even figuring out what is getting in the kid’s way in the first place. So the empathy step is crucial.”
In this step, the adult restates the expectation the child is having a difficulty meeting. Let’s say the kid is having difficulty doing his math homework, or waking up in the morning or showing respect to his teachers and classmates at school. Then the parents can express their concern about these unsolved problems by focusing on how they are affecting the child and/or others.The second step is where the adult shares his or her concern about the issue.
“This is where the kid and the adult are collaborating on a solution, but a solution that has to meet a very important criteria. It has to address the concerns of both parties."
"A lot of the times the parents try to solve a problem with a kid, they try to do it in the heat of the moment, reactively," Greene says, adding, "That is completely unnecessary. One of the beautiful things about this model is that it takes us not only away from power and control; it also gets us out of the heat of the moment when both the kids and adults are at their worst, and helps us start solving these problems collaboratively and proactively. That’s a better way to go.”