Workshop Digs Into Parent-Child Challenges

Andrea Evans was doing laundry in the garage when one of her 2-year-old triplets suddenly turned the doorknob and locked her out of the kitchen. Evans walked out of the garage but discovered she couldn’t get back in the house because all the outside doors were locked.

Peering through the sliding-glass door at the rear of her Newport Beach home, Evans could see “these three 2-year-olds who were jumping up and down and laughing because they thought it was funny.”

After several failures, she finally successfully pleaded, “If you let mommy in, mommy will give you cookies.”

Last Saturday Evans, now a family and child counselor, recounted this experience with her triplets, now 12, during a talk on “A Cure for ‘Mother Deafness’: How to Talk so Your Child Will Listen.”

“In the 10 years since then,” she said, “I’ve become an avid student of how parents can improve their communication skills with their children. Whether parents use bribery or another method to communicate with their children, they have to face two questions: Does it work? Does it build self-esteem?”

Evans led one of 21 workshops at a daylong conference at the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel in Costa Mesa on problems faced by young children, age 8 and under, and their parents. The Coastline Community College-sponsored conference on “Early Childhood: Concerns, Changes and Challenges” drew 400 parents, child-care providers and early-childhood educators.

Build Confidence

Evans, whose 50-minute workshop attracted a turn-away audience, said it is not enough just to get a youngster to pay attention. To be a good communicator, Evans said, a parent also has to build the child’s self-esteem.

“You want a child with good self-esteem because if he likes himself, he’s motivated to behave properly. By contrast, a child with a damaged view of himself needs constant prodding to do the right thing.”

Evans criticized parents who attempt to get their children to obey them by using such negative language as: “Your dirty fingerprints are on the door. Can’t you use the door knob? Can’t you do anything right? The trouble with you is that you never listen.”

Evans said a conversation like that causes the child to feel stupid. “Name-calling and judgment words, like ‘you’re an animal’ or ‘you’re a slob,’ are troublemakers. Children learn to accept these words as accurate descriptions of themselves. They incorporate these words into their self-image, and their ego is damaged.”

Evans also dismissed as ineffective using threats like, “Spit the gum out before I rip it out of your mouth!”

“Threats scare a child, “ Evans said, “but they also cause him to feel challenged--to get his back up. . . . Threats are an invitation to misbehavior.”

One of the favorite techniques of parents, Evans said, is using sarcasm such as, “You’re wearing polka dots and plaids; you’re sure going to get a lot of compliments.”

But sarcasm doesn’t work because it leaves a youngster confused. “A child doesn’t understand sarcasm. From your tone of voice it sounds like disapproval, but the actual words you use are complimentary.”

Good rapport with a child, Evans said, begins with the parent kneeling or sitting in a chair to get at eye level with the youngster. This allows the parent and child to look eye-to-eye while talking with each other. A parent also should be close enough to the child to touch him, she said.

Most youngsters do enough to cause disapproval that it’s easy for parents to focus just on what’s negative about their children, she said. “Turn on the tape recorder at meal times and hear what you sound like,” Evans suggested. “If more than half your comments are negative, is it any wonder, that your children tune you out?”

Evans also advised, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.

“Take bedtime. You tell your kids it’s time to go to bed. Five minutes later they’re still sitting there, watching TV. So you say, ‘OK kids, it’s time for bed, let’s get going.’ They still just sit there. By the fifth time you’re screaming at the top of your lungs for them to get in bed.

“But who’s taught them to behave this way? You have. What you should do instead is to say it nicely once and immediately follow through on your words with action. You might have to pick up the little ones from in front of the tube and carrying them to bed.”

When a parent is criticizing a child’s misbehavior, Evans said the parent can best maintain the child’s self-esteem by using what she calls “I” messages rather than “you” messages.

“When you use you, as in ‘your room’s a health hazard,’ you’re being judgmental and making the behavior sound like it’s part of the child’s character. When you use I , as in ‘I’d like to come in and kiss you good night, but I’m afraid I’ll catch something,’ you’re letting the child know what your feelings and reactions are to his behavior.”

Evans sees nothing wrong with what she calls “compassionate screaming” or “constructive yelling.” “Anger is a fact of life, and your letting it out by screaming or yelling lets the child know that you’re concerned about him--that it’s not like you don’t care what he does.

“When you’re irritated inside and kind outside, you’re not really being kind to your child. Your child can read you; you’re just showing your child you’re a hypocrite.

“It’s important that your words, body language and tone of voice are congruent, that they all fit together. A child, especially a young one, is more in tune with your tone of voice and body language because he hasn’t known words that long.”

Marti Malterre, a Huntington Beach marriage, family and child counselor, echoed Evans’ views on child rearing during her workshop on “Discipline, Communication and Respect.”

Categories of Discipline

Malterre said there are three types of discipline: authoritarian, democratic and permissive. She said the authoritarian form of discipline usually fails because parents are in a superior position and children are in an inferior position.

“Children resist, are obnoxious and just don’t do what you tell them to do,” said Malterre.

Equally ineffective, Malterre said, is permissive parenting in which the child is in a superior position and parents are in an inferior position. “This creates disrespect and lots of misbehavior. Whether permissive or authoritarian, whoever is on the bottom level is filled with anger and fury.”

Citing studies, Malterre said the democratic discipline style works best and is most liked by both parents and children. “In a democratic family both parents and children are on the same level. They treat each other with respect, honor and acknowledgement of the value of each other. This is the system I’ve used in raising my two teen-age sons,” she added.

For example, Malterre said, “we, as parents, often talk to our children in snotty, cruel ways that we would never dream of using with others. But if you think about it, that’s pretty much how a lot of parents think about themselves in their own heads. We have to learn to monitor what we think about ourselves--and think positively about our attributes. If we can’t respect ourselves, then we can’t respect our children.”

The need for parents to develop a sense of self-worth was emphasized by luncheon keynote speaker Dorothy Briggs, a Los Angeles marriage, family and child counselor and author of the best selling books, “Your Child’s Self-Esteem” and “Celebrate Your Self.”

During her talk on “Children in the Space Age: Building Self-Esteem,” Briggs frequently related anecdotes from her 40 years as a therapist to parents and children.

Painful Lives

Briggs said children with high self-esteem were more likely to succeed in school, to be well-motivated and to be creative. Children with low self-esteem “live enormously painful lives,” Briggs said. In a futile search for self-worth, Briggs said they are likely to turn to alcohol abuse, sexual excess, gambling or to experience eating disorders.

Briggs, who has two daughters, said parents can build self-esteem in their children by instilling in them two beliefs: “First, I am unconditionally lovable, and second, I am competent.”

Briggs said a child should not feel that his parents’ love is contingent upon how well he performs in school, sports or other endeavors. “It’s not whether you love your child--most parents love their children--but whether your child feels loved by you.

“For your child to feel he’s competent, he’s got to believe that ‘I can handle myself and my environment, and I have something to offer to others.’ In effect, your child is saying, ‘I’m glad I’m my particular person.’ ”

Briggs noted: “Our children are facing stresses today that we didn’t have to deal with. Their having a strong feeling of self-worth will help them cope with these stresses.”

Similiar sentiments were expressed by Bettie Youngs-Bilicki during her workshop on “Children Under Stress.” Youngs-Bilicki is a Del Mar family and child counselor and professor at UC San Diego. Last year she wrote “Stress in Children: How to Recognize, Avoid and Overcome It.”

Stress is frequently triggered in children when their parents divorce or when they have to leave behind childhood friends because of moves resulting from parental job transfers, Youngs-Bilicki said.

“Burnout is the inability to cope with stress, or the absence of any desire to even try to cope,” Youngs-Bilicki said. Surprisingly, “children are more prone than adults to burnout because they don’t have the skills or background of adults to help them realize that things work themselves out--that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

“The toll burnout inflicts on our children can be seen by the fact that 31% of California’s high school students drop out and never return to school.” (A 1985 study by the National Center for Fair and Open Testing in Massachusetts found that California ranks 44th among the 50 states--near the bottom--with a 36.8% school drop-out rate.)

Youngs-Bilicki said parents can help their children resolve the problems causing them stress by first identifying clearly what the real problem is and then having a discussion with the child on possible solutions. The final step, she said, is to have a follow-up discussion with your child about how well the mutually agreed upon solution worked out.

Problems causing children stress should be worked out with their parents’ help, agreed Carlfred Broderick, a marriage and family therapist who is a professor of sociology at USC.

During his morning keynote talk on “Children Coping With Family Stress,” Broderick said: “Children feel guilty when their parents divorce or a brother or sister dies. It’s not rational, but adults aren’t rational either about a lot of their guilt.”

“We, as parents, can help our children deal with these traumas by talking openly about their feelings of guilt or using play therapy,” said Broderick, who’s the father of eight.

“Whatever method we use, we should not underestimate our child’s self-healing ability--or our ability to be good parents.”