A young boy and his mother sat in front of a group of parents at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase YMCA Youth Services classroom. The cute 8-year-old initially charmed the audience, eliciting giggles around the room. Soon, however, he was poking his exhausted mother over and over, ignoring her instructions to stop, and even crowning her with bunny ears. He scanned the audience with a devilish grin to observe any reactions he’d won.
The boy and his mom were the family on display at the “Open Family Forum,” which allows the parents of children with behavior problems to get advice and feedback from counselors and other community members. Rob Guttenberg, director of parenting education for the Y, and Barbara Karpas, a youth and family counselor, run the weekly program. They are specially trained in the teachings of Alfred Adler and Rudolf Dreikurs, two psychologists from the early 1900s who focus on stimulating cooperative behavior in children rather than punishing them.
According to Dreikurs, children who lack an adequate sense of contentment and belonging are motivated to misbehave in order to achieve attention, power or revenge, or in order to avoid failure. The solution under this school of thought is to teach children to cooperate reasonably as useful contributors to society rather than punishing them in the traditional sense, which could worsen their discontentment and their behavior.
“Alfred Adler, in the early 1900s, used to counsel families in the halls of Vienna with hundreds of audience members,” said Guttenberg. “He was developing a model of democratic involvement.
“Rudolf Dreikurs systematized Adler’s model and made it grassroots and practical,” he added. “He set up family education centers in the U.S., Israel, Switzerland and Brazil.”
Karpas is a devotee of Adlerian psychology.
“When I saw my first family forum and saw the look of goal recognition on the child’s face, that did it for me,” she said.
GUTTENBERG DEMONSTRATED attention-seeking, the first level of misbehavior, by scratching on his chair repeatedly, creating an irritating noise.
“The child’s inner logic is saying, ‘I only count when I can get people to notice me.’”
Guttenberg then began hitting the chair to produce a louder, more destructive sound, representing the next level of misbehavior, which is seeking power.
“This one says, ‘I only count when I’m powerful.’”
To demonstrate revenge, the third level of misbehavior, the counselor abruptly flung the chair onto its side, making audience members jump.
“This says, ‘I only count when I hurt others the way I feel hurt.’”
The fourth and most severe level of misbehavior is avoidance of failure. Children at this stage have lost their sense of self-esteem and given up hope. They may become unmotivated and unresponsive, often eliciting frustration and hopelessness from their parents.
What’s the solution?
“We need to help a child that wants power have it in a useful way,” said Guttenberg.
The goal is to reconfigure the parent-child relationship as one based upon mutual respect rather than power. Excesses of power can exist on either side.
“When you let a child run over you, that’s disrespectful,” said Guttenberg. “When you push down a child, that’s disrespectful.
“Children need leadership from adults that don’t need to be the boss,” he added.
The paradigm shift from a relationship based on power to one based on respect is not easy.
“As a single parent, there’s only so many hours in the day, so I don’t have time to sit down and have a family meeting every night,” said the mother of the 8-year-old.
A father in the audience questioned why he had to change when his children were the ones acting out.
Guttenberg warned that a metamorphosis would not happen overnight and encouraged the parents to continue focusing on four basic questions in interactions with their children:
* What did the child do?
* What was the parent’s response?
* What was the child’s response to being corrected?
* How did the child’s response make the parent feel?
Rather than doling out punishment in the traditional sense, parents should respond to misbehavior in children with a family meeting in which the problem is discussed, and family members cooperatively brainstorm the appropriate penalty. Each family member’s vote is supposed to count equally in order to empower the child with a sense of inclusion.
IN AN INTERVIEW after the forum, the mother, who requested anonymity, said that she had signed up for the class since it allowed her to bring her son along.
“I originally thought [the class] was about me helping him,” she said. “Now I realize it’s more about me helping me.
“I’m going to try to pull myself out of the power struggle and try a different approach,” she added. “Last week I wasn’t sure how I would make it happen, but tonight it seems doable.”
What’s it like to air family matters in front of an audience?
“I found it useful,” she said. “It was almost like a private counseling session.”
John Davidson of Germantown sat in the audience during the Open Family Forum. He has a 3-month-old daughter and wants to bone up on parenting skills for the years to come.
“I’m trying to gain insight on being a father,” he said. “Not a lot of classes are offered for fathers.
“You don’t get a pamphlet at the hospital,” he joked.
What was the most useful information?
“[It was learning] how to try to understand what the child is saying, how I’ll react and how the child will respond,” he said. “I’ll be able to stand back and take a look at things, and think of a positive way to interact so that the child will react positively.”
“A family forum is an encouraging atmosphere,” said Guttenberg. “[The parent] doesn’t leave feeling like, ‘I’m the only one with this problem.’”