The Parenting Pyramid Part 1 - Corretion

by Jonathan Harrop, Marriage & Family Therapy Student Intern

Many people think I'm crazy because I love working with teenagers. What is it about teenagers that's so fun? Perhaps it's the challenge. Perhaps it's because I still feel like one...or perhaps it's because I just really enjoy their uniqueness and what they have to bring to the table. Either way, some of the most helpful and fundamental information I have received that has helped me enjoy working with teenagers comes from the Arbinger Institute. "The Parenting Pyramid," is the model of parenting used by the Arbinger Institute, and focuses on what is most fundamental, or foundational, in parenting. We want our children to grow up and be good contributing individuals in society, now how do we get them to do that! This is what the Parenting Pyramid attempts to teach - how do we, as parents, help things to go right? How do we help our children make good choices? How do I help my child excel in school? How do I keep my child from acting out aggressively? There are a multitude of questions like these that we all have and want to know the answers to. The parenting pyramid gives a model that can best help us help our children in these ways.

"The Parenting Pyramid"
Correction
Teaching
Parent/Child Relationship
Parent's Relationship
Personal Way of Being

One of the most widely known and used methods of parenting is that which is easiest to use- Correction. Correction is usually seeking to change something that has gone wrong. When I was 5 years old, I stole some candy from the grocery store with a couple other friends who had enticed me to go with them. I thought this was a great idea until I got caught. As I stood there in tears, the store manager threatened to call the police, but he did something even worse: he called my mother. My mom picked me up from the store, apologizing profusely to the store manager, and then took me home. When we got home, my mother made sure to correct me, and after many tears from this correction, I understood that stealing was very bad. For me, this correction did the job. Correction, however, is not the only form of discipline.

While correction is a very important part of disciplining children, there is another aspect of discipline that is just as important, if not more - Praise. More important than correcting our children when they do something wrong, is catching them when they do something right and praising them for it. Think about yourself. Do you feel better about yourself when you are constantly being corrected for the things you do wrong, or for when you are praised for doing something right? Usually when we are constantly corrected, we are not encouraged to do better; rather, we begin to feel discouraged, and it becomes harder to correct what needs to be corrected. Kids feel this same way!

Correction should be the least used form of discipline. While it is indeed needed, we need praise much more. When you correct your child on something, like cleaning their room, then begin looking for the times that they clean their room - and praise them like crazy for it. This will usually make them want to clean their room even more, which is the key. However, if all you did was correct them for all the times they didn't clean their room, then they will not want to clean their room, and they likely won't, and it will be a constant battle between you and them. Correct a little, and praise a lot!Here are a couple general rules for good correction:

1-Do not punish while you feel like reacting in anger. Children tend to learn more from our examples than from what we say. If we react in negative anger towards our children when they do something wrong, then guess what they are learning: that you are supposed to act out in negative anger when someone does something you don't like.

2-Have logical consequences that are connected to what they did wrong. Let's say my 16-year-old teenager goes 600 minutes over on his cell phone, and increases our bill by $300 for that month. There may be the temptation to want to ground him from his friends for the next year, to take away his license unless he is running errands for me, to ground him from dating for 6 months, and whatever else our imagination can conjure up. While he may need to be punished for breaking such a rule, this kind of consequence will probably do no more than make him hate me. Why would this be the case? Because the consequence that I impose on him is nothing more than me taking out my anger on him in harsh and extreme ways. In order for this punishment to get into their head in a way that they will learn their lesson and not hate us is to follow the example of nature, and create logical consequences. A natural consequence for not staying within the calling limits is that he will have to find a way to pay for the extra charges and he will not get his phone back until it is paid. If I can be calm and collected in giving this punishment, then he will not hate me, for it will not be about my anger over what he did, but will stay focused on his actions and the consequences that follow. Another word of advice with this... if you will involve your children in deciding the consequences, then they will more likely own the consequence.

3-Make sure that you can follow through with the consequence. Going along with the 16-year-old teenager example, if I were to use the first, extreme method of punishing, then I would probably have just as hard of a time with it as my teenager would - for now I will have a teenager full of attitude at home that I am stuck with because I said that he could not go anywhere with anyone for the next 6 months. We need to remember that when we give a consequence, there is often a burden we take ourselves that we must follow through with it. If we don't follow through with it, then our children will learn that they will be punished for a small moment and then everything will be fine, no matter how extreme it is. That is not a good lesson to teach our children.

If you're wondering "What should I praise in my child?", praise the good things that they do. While praising their beauty can be a good thing, it is more focused on praising the genetics they received that made them look so pretty. They didn't have a lot of control over that. More meaningful praise is the praise of a choice - a decision we made. When I make a right decision, and someone catches me and praises me for it, it makes me want to do it again and again. It is our actions and choices that need the positive reinforcement.

First Session Is Free! Schedule an appointment with Jonathan Harrop, Marriage and Family Therapy Intern today! Email to set up an initial appointment or call (801) 944-4555.
(c) 2010 Wasatch Family Therapy, LLC

The Parenting Pyramid Part 2 - Teaching

By Jonathan Harrop, Marriage and Family Therapy Student Intern

Teaching:"If you want a child to be disciplined - correct them. If you want them to learn self-discipline - teach them."

THE PARENTING PYRAMID?
The Great Pyramids of Egypt are magnificent and old. If anyone ever decided to try to preserve these pyramids, it probably would not be wise to work on preserving the top portion of the pyramid while the lower portions continue deteriorating away. This would only assure the destruction of the pyramid. The same is assumed with "The Parenting Pyramid", a model created by the Arbinger Institute. Every layer is important to create this beautiful structure, however, there is an order of importance. It would be wise to work on preserving the bottom portions as we work our way up the pyramid. The parenting pyramid is rightfully called so because of the nature of how a pyramid works. The last article discussed the very top layer of the Parenting Pyramid: Correction. While correction is most certainly needed in parenting, there is another principle that is more fundamental so that the correction will be effective and beautiful: that is - Teaching.

"The Parenting Pyramid"
Correction
Teaching
Parent/Child Relationship
Parent's Relationship

Personal Way of Being In my first article on the Parenting Pyramid I related a story of when I was five-years-old. I had stolen some candy, my mother was notified, and she made sure to correct me. While it was very appropriate to correct this bad behavior, we, as parents, cannot always wait until our children do something bad in order to correct them. The job of a parent is difficult. We must be actively looking for opportunities to teach our children, to prevent the bad stuff from happening, and to help bring out the good in them.

TEACHING IS MORE THAN CORRECTION
If teaching is so good, why do we tend to fall short in this area?! There may be a number of reasons, but all-in-all it takes greater effort. Think about it... when we focus the majority of our parenting on correcting, all we have to do is wait until something bad happens, and then we can correct them. With teaching, however, we have to be active - we have to be proactive - always looking for opportunities to teach our children, to prevent the bad things from happening as much as possible. However, there may be some things that we miss in our teaching. My mother taught me a lot, but she probably didn't think that she had to teach me that stealing was wrong... I was only 5-years-old! What made my mother's correction effective, was that she also taught me that stealing is bad and why it is bad. Think about it. How can a 5-year-old child know that stealing is wrong if he/she has never been taught that? A classic example of this principle is that of a 3-year-old child about to run into the street when the parent runs and grabs them and then reprimands them for running into the street... only to have the child respond, asking "what's a street?" So often where we fall short is not in our efforts to correct, but in building that correction on a foundation of teaching. If we are not teaching our children, then our correction will be empty and ineffective.

BEYOND "BECAUSE I SAID SO"
So when you teach, what will you be teaching? Most often you will be teaching principles, values, morals, and sometimes simply facts. Probably the thing children hate most are the infamous phrases: "Because I said so!" or "Just because!" These phrases are often attempts to discipline, but are not founded upon teaching. On the other hand, when we take the active effort to teach our children, and to found our correction upon teaching the principles behind the correction, then we are helping to instill the values in our children that will encourage self-discipline in them and will help them to continue to make good choices on their own. On the other hand, when our correction lacks the foundation of teaching, then it becomes empty. As a result, our children's obedience can then become empty and based only upon the reason that "Mom or Dad said so." As the quote at the beginning of this article states... if our goal is to help our children obey us, then consistent quality correction can do that. However, if we desire our children to learn self-discipline, then we must teach them and help them instill the values and principles we desire for them to use in their lives.

BACK TO THE PYRAMID
Taking the pyramid analogy again, a pyramid isn't complete without its top portion... but the top portion of a pyramid relies completely upon the portion below it to keep it steady and firm. Correction is needed in parenting, however, correction relies completely upon teaching in order for it to be effective and for it to do what we hope it will do. Take a moment to see if your correction is founded upon teaching. Do you ever throw out the "Because I said so!" or "Just because!" comments... or something similar to that nature? It's easy for us to throw those comments out there, especially if we are tired and irritated. Focus this next little while on teaching your children and be prepared to go a level deeper with me next article.

To schedule your $50 therapy session with Jonathan email or call 801-944-4555
(c) 2010 Wasatch Family Therapy, LLC