Positive Parenting
Along with the joy, excitement and fun times of the holidays, there is also inevitably stress, crankiness and tears. And I’m not just talking about the children…
The holidays and the start of the new year are giving me renewed motivation to interact with my son differently. Perhaps a year ago, I was part of a book group run by local family therapist Katie Malinski. The book we read and met to discuss was The Kazdin Method for Parenting a Defiant Child by Dr. Alan E. Kazdin. Our group quickly recognized the more mundane challenges we were facing weren’t commensurate with what Kazdin encounters as the Director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. His experience, however, was valuable for me as I grapple with discipline, perhaps the toughest subject we deal with as parents.
The book lays out a relatively simple approach for dealing with “unwanted behavior” and dispels many myths we have about parenting. Kazdin lays out his method and goes into great detail about how to apply it to different ages and situations. Essentially, however, the method is simplistic enough to apply to most scenarios.
You spot a behavior that is troublesome, and you come up with a positive opposite. For example, if it drives you crazy that brushing teeth is a huge battle at bedtime, the positive opposite might be: You brush your teeth when we ask you to. Instead of dwelling on every minute your child is doing what they are NOT supposed to do, catch him or her doing something good — even if it’s just that they went on their own to pick up their toothbrush. Issue praise. Make sure your child has the opportunity to practice the positive opposite and experience the enthusiastic praise he/she receives. Rinse and repeat. Obviously, there is a lot I’m leaving out. I encourage you to read the book or even check out these ten tips Kazdin outlined on ABC News.
Kazdin is very explicit about how to set up a rewards chart as a way to modify behavior and why it succeeds and fails. If executed based on the recommendations outlined in Kazdin’s book, many parents begin to see results in just one week!
What appealed to me about the book was that his method is based on science, and because, frankly, the idea of avoiding misbehavior through praise just feels better to me than constant nagging, negativity and escalating punishments.
What I’m hoping to change is that my son has begun issuing ultimatums to my husband and I: “I’m not going to wash my hands unless you do X”. I know he has learned this from us. We have gotten into a bad habit of threatening to take something away if he doesn’t do a desired behavior, or making too much into a quid pro quo. So I’m hoping to incorporate more positive parenting as we deal with the possible post-holiday blues.
Do you have any parenting goals (even if not official “resolutions”) for the new year?
Written by: Nicole Basham
January 1st, 2010 at 12:47 pm
My parenting goal…. practice using more patience! It’s an ongoing goal that I’ve had since giving birth to my first born eleven years ago!
Here’s to the new year and the many resolutions that will be made!