Parents Do Matter - They are the primary therapists for children

Parents Do  Matter -  

This reminds me of what Alice Miller said about parental love for kids, love is important ,but more important is ' how they love their kids'  - conditionally , love them more , shower praise and get excited when they perform well using ' love ' as a reinforcer. Or when kids screw up use love withdrawal, timeouts and emotional expressions of disapproval and disappointment, telling kids you love them but not their actions – kids, in fact nobody can separate the two. The alternative is that you can love your kids unconditionally for who they are without strings attached, try to see their world through their eyes, collaboratively solve problems and offer neutral feedback and encouragement.

Traditional behaviorist parenting books say that Parents matter too. Challenging kids are described as attention-seeking, manipulative, coercive, unmotivated, and limit-testing. They are the products of permissive, passive, inconsistent, non-contingent discipline.

 Challenging behavior is treated with medication, skills are taught in a top-down, drill 'n skill way using rewards by (ABA) therapists and the symptoms are treated with a behavior plan. Parents need to be firm, consistent, contingent, warm and loving parents whose focus is compliance reinforcing good behavior and not rewarding bad behavior.  

These parents are spending lots of money on therapy and remedial education etc , instead of seeing themselves and the  home as the primary resources for teaching  skills in a dynamic way, in the natural environment, nurturing the parent child-relationship and the fostering the autonomy of the child. 

The focus on compliance and motivation at best may help the kid look good as long as the ' reinforcers' are in place, but the rewards and consequences – Plan A etc more often than not  just create more tension, conflict and problems.

The neuro-scientist Dan Siegel explains that kid's brains grow in a nurturing positive environment. Pathways in the brain are created when kids are happy, thinking, reflecting, communicating and solving problems in a collaborative way with their parents and care givers. 

Hearing No and other stressful words from parents in fact destroys pathways. For sure there are times we say No, but when the No is accompanied by a reason and an alternative plan, the thinking becomes exploratory and positive.  When focused on a reward, the brain switches off those areas   associated with voluntary or self-initiated activities.

Parents matter when they promote their children's autonomy, competence and relatedness needs. When the focus is on collaboration and not compliance we promote thinking.

CPS, the Collaborative problem solving approach and RDI – Relationship development approach use guided participation to solve problems and engage in informal learning that the home environment provides.

These approaches are not easy and messy, but there is learning taking place all along the way. Education is a process, CPS and RDI are working with, not doing to processes, and they are not techniques.

'Doing to' kids using reinforcements is easier than CPS or RDI and they can make a kid look good. CPS and RDI is hard work.

Dr Rachel Sheeley, a RDI expert encourages parents -

Do parents matter - RDI

'One characteristic of autism is that the young child does not bring enough to the table and this disrupts the guiding relationship. Imagine attempting an interaction without a reliable feedback loop and embed these in hourly occurrences that stretch out over days and you get a feel for the reasons parents find themselves questioning their competence as guides; why they fall back on teaching skills without functions, becoming expert entertainers.'

In the same way it is so easy for parents to fall back on Plan A= compliance and doing to with rewards and punishments.

Parents do matter – they can make things much better or worse

Reinforcers - Collaborative problem solving and SDT - self determination theory

Reinforcers -  I believe we must differentiate between reinforcers that are intrinsic – the process is rewarding or there is goal identification – the end product , rather than some extrinsic reward that parents offer.

We should be guided by the questions ? –how does my intervention impact on my kid's needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness- SDT and how my interventions will meet both kids and parents concerns and solve problems - CPS .

 If the kid feels he needs some extrinsic motivation, I would first clarify his goals – for eg practicing piano 5 times a week and  see how some extrinsic motivation will help him achieve his goal. Here he wants to meet his goal,  the reward is there just to help him get there. What happens in practice is that kids are willing to suffer  - practice or do homework for a price.

Competence -  If a kid is reluctant to engage in an activity and needs to practice to acquire a skill , extrinsic motivation on the one hand can promote competence, but impacts negatively on autonomy and relatedness. A CPS approach is likely to uncover other concerns of the kid and unsolved problems other than motivation. When the reward is self determined , it is not controlling and the reward has less impact on intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic reinforcers  may be useful with tasks that are manual and require little thinking as they tend to narrow focus.  The promise of a pay-off or a reward interferes with higher levels of thinking and creativity  which are  exploratory or ' wider in  focus'.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),a study showed that entirely different areas of the brain are activated by the same task depending on whether a person anticipates a payoff or not. When focused on a reward, the brain switches off those areas   associated with voluntary or self-initiated activities. '

Pairing an intrinsic reward -  the value expressed by the behavior with an extrinsic reward converts the behavior – a social norm into an economic norm -  so by giving a kid a reward for helping or befriending a lonely kid – a social norm has been given economic value ,  this is what I get for doing that. The internal pride and intrinsic reward of being able express one's self and values gets lost.

The problem with praise is not the quantity – over praising but praise itself- its judgmental nature  . Instead we should use  neutral informational feedback and questions that help kids self asses and reflect on how they impact on their world. Behavior or sticker charts are rather different to a kid self assessing and monitoring his behavior without external forms of control in place.

Extrinsic reinforcers may be helpful in the short –term but like medication I doubt whether any parent would like to see them as a long term solution. They also undermine intrinsic motivation and internalization of values, don't generalize and if their effect is lost when rewards are withdrawn.  They get the kid to ask – what will I get or what is in it for me , instead of asking  and reflecting   -  what type of person  do I want to be , do my actions reflect on my values ?