Well, here goes. I'm feeling validated by reading Steve Ondersma's approach with teaching parenting. I come from experience teaching a ten week series that I developed from a number of references (STEP, When Anger Hurts your Kids, Your Child's Self Esteem, PET, and others) I taught this in English, then translated it into Spanish for use in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Belize, as well as here, in Colorado. The first whole session is an evaluation of "How we were parented" with a great deal of personal sharing of experience. So many people have experienced pain through their parents. When they re-connect with the anger, the fury of unfairness and the distance they felt from their own parents at moments of "heavy discipline", there is almost nothing more that the facilitator needs to say. As a facilitator, you can emphasize the exact points in people's stories that were part of your own outline about child development. As a cultural outsider, you can find one of their points that is exactly what your own would have been, and then the themes are "theirs". Sort of an anthropologist technique. I would be happy to share with anyone the simple, one-page 'inventory' that I use in that session. In non-literate groups, I select about four of the questions from the list to discuss orally. Discussion always ends with "how did your parents communicate love to you". You would be surprised to note the variety of ways that kids felt loved, without hugs or even eye contact. My harshest critic was a man in Belize who came around through a role play. We were discussing escalation-talk and de-escalation talk with rebellious young people. I asked for a volunteer who would persist with insistent de-escalation talk regardless of what he (playing as the rebellious teen) would say. The role play was tense, with the one player saying "when your room looks like that it makes me so much more tired than I already am" and the rebellious teen saying "who do you think you are, telling me what to do?" De-escalation, calm and insistent talk won by persistence...in front of the group of 35 participants. Point: don't hesitate to role play, talk about feelings, play out two scenarios. It takes time, but are we into behavior change here? or 'covering the material'? Sharry Erzinger, Dr.P.H. sharon.erzinger@xxxxxxxxx (please note new e-mail address) phone/fx 303-988-3270 -----Original Message----- From: owner-CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Steve J. Ondersma Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 1999 3:48 PM To: Child Maltreatment Researchers Subject: RE: Child Discipline & Cultural Controversies Sharon, I thank you for your question, partly because I've had to deal with the same issue both in trainings and clinically, and because it has yielded such helpful responses from the group. Special thanks to Dr. Strauss for the reply. Both in trainings and clinically, I have found the Motivational Interviewing (MI) and Stage of Change/Transtheoretical Model (TTM) approaches of great help. Just as persons with addictive behavior disorders cycle through various stages of readiness to consider change in their substance use, I believe that we all cycle through stages of readiness to consider change in other behaviors. If this is true, it follows that we should work differently with persons who aren't about to consider their use of CP as a problem than with persons who think it is or may be a problem. A great source of interventions for those at early stages of readiness is Motivational Interviewing (Miller & Rollnick, 1991). At the heart of this approach is a spirit of acceptance and respect, communicated primarily through high-level reflective listening. A number of strategic components are also used in this approach, many of which can be applied very well to trainings. Some MI-related techniques that I have used include: 1. Communicating genuine respect for your audience. Most important by far, you must consistently show respect for their opinions and avoid argumentation. The best way to achieve both goals, while also not endorsing any beliefs that you disagree with, is empathic listening. Confronting, challenging, disagreeing, etc. open you up to mutiny and often help them to reinforce their beliefs by arguing for them. If you don't do this, there will be nothing to attack. The trick is to elicit what you want from them.... 2. Engaging in a detailed consideration of the pros and cons of the behavior (in this case, CP). Dividing a box into four sections on an overhead, first elicit from the audience all of the pros of CP, and place their answers in one section. Then ask them to help you complete the rest of the box--cons of CP, cons of reducing CP, and pros of reducing CP. Be completely reflective and open during this exercise--you'll simply engender argumentation if you're not. An agenda can be smelled a mile away. 3. Using a harm reduction model. The all-or-nothing approach is a difficult place to start from. Most of us certainly hope for the "nothing" option, should continue to work towards it in policy activities, and can be open about our beliefs on the subject. However, when working with individuals or groups, our goal of achieving safety for children is often best met via: (a) focusing more on what good discipline/parenting is rather than on what it isn't; (b) attempting to frame CP as less effective, less comfortable, and less ideal, rather than in extreme pejorative terms; and (c) discussing advantages of less CP, rather than complete disavowal of what may be an important part of an audience's culture. 4. Using Russell Barkley's (Defiant Children, 1997) "Worst and Best Supervisor" exercise. Have audience members think about the worst supervisor they ever had, and volunteer that person's characteristics. Write all responses down where all can see, and attempt especially to get them to note how that supervisor's behavior affected their motivation to work for them. Next, have them think of the best supervisor they ever had, do the same, especially discussing their motivation to work for this supervisor. Relate this to parenting. 5. Using Lizette Peterson's hammer exercise. Start with two nails, two hammers, and a block of soft/friable wood. Have an audience member pound one nail in with the smaller hammer, and another do so vigorously with the big hammer. This can become a metaphor for CP versus other forms of discipline, in that the big hammer does it faster, but does damage along the way. Parents accept this especially well because it doesn't imply that CP is completely without merits--it's faster and takes less concentration. There is much more that can be done; I can't recommend the Motivational Interviewing text highly enough, as well as the Barkley text. I'm sure that many have tried similar techniques, and that they aren't always effective. However, they've been very helpful for me, and I'm encouraged by the very solid empirical evidence this approach has when applied to addictive behaviors (see Miller & Heather, Treating Addictive Behaviors: Second Edition, 1998, for reviews). What the substance abuse field has learned, and that I have realized the hard way, is that effectiveness is improved when labels, extreme positions, and confrontation are avoided. I hope that some of this is helpful. Steve Ondersma Steven J. Ondersma, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Research Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (CHO 3B-3406) Department of Pediatrics University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center 940 NE 13th Street Oklahoma City, OK 73104 (405) 271-8858 (Office) (405) 271-2931 (Fax) > -----Original Message----- > From: Sharon Carnahan <Carnahan@xxxxxxxxxxx> > To: Child Maltreatment Researchers > <CHILD-MALTREATMENT-RESEARCH-L@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Tuesday, January 12, 1999 12:29 PM > Subject: Child Discipline & Cultural Controversies > > > >I am giving a workshop this Friday on child discipline, something I have > >taught about many times. This time, though, the audience is a group of > >family support workers. They are mostly African American, as are their > >clients; in addition, many are conservative Christians raised on the > >"spare the rod" lore. Many believe that spanking is an acceptable form > >of discipline, although that is against the policy of NCPCA. I've just > >learned that this argument (about spanking) has torpedoed previous > >trainings with this group on this subject, as workers demand to know if > >the speaker has ever spanked a child, why they can't teach parents about > >spanking, and that the speaker does not understand the rigors of > >raising a compliant child in a terrible environment. I want to bring > >these issues out in the open, not just wash over them, and to help the > >group reach consensus on a policy they will wholeheartedly support. > > > >How have others handled this issue? I am considering a workshop in which > >we spend 1/2 the time developing a list of unacceptable ways of > >disciplining, before we move on to alternatives. > > > >I am also looking for written position statements on discipline from > >professional groups. > > > >Thanks! > > > >Sharon Carnahan, Ph.D. > >Associate Prof of Psychology > >Rollins College Box 2760 > >1000 Holt Avenue > >Winter Park, FL 32789-4499
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