|
| Home | New Article | Search |
| Career & Money | Health | Parenting | Personal Growth | Relationships | Religion |
|
Part 1 Excerpted from Before It's Too Late: Why Some Kids Get Into Trouble and What Parents Can Do About It
Is it "just a phase," or could your child be headed for serious trouble? If you sense that your child is seriously troubled, you may feel bewildered, helpless, ineffective. How can you stop your child from throwing away his or her life? How can you avoid thinking that you've failed as a parent? In this newly revised and expanded edition of the classic guide Before It's Too Late, clinical psychologist Stanton E. Samenow explains how to break the useless cycle of blame and take corrective action. Topics include:
Upon starting this book, you, the reader, may wonder if you are encountering one more psychologist who blames parents for the misbehavior of their offspring. The answer is emphatically no! My central premise is that children become antisocial by choice: lying, fighting, stealing, and other forms of destructive behavior are willful acts. But parents can take steps to prevent antisocial behavior from developing into an entrenched pattern. If a child is regularly manifesting such behavior, it may not be too late for corrective action. Before taking preventive or corrective measures, however, it is essential that parents fully understand what is involved. Although few people would dispute the importance of preventing antisocial behavior, a heated controversy rages about whether prevention can or should be undertaken if it entails identifying children at risk when they are quite young. In the first chapter, I shall discuss this issue: Is the possibility of misidentifying children sufficient reason to place a complete moratorium on early identification and prevention? Afterward I shall discuss extreme manifestations of antisocial patterns. This will provide the reader with a frame of reference for my use of the term antisocial throughout the rest of the book. Parents will find help in identifying specific forerunners of antisocial behavior in chapters 3 through 10. They will learn that a difference does exist between a phase of development or occasional, relatively innocuous misconduct, and a pattern of behavior that should serve as a red flag to those involved in rearing the child. Once early manifestations of antisocial behavior are recognized, it is possible to work toward preventing these from becoming fixed patterns. Subsequent chapters will focus on errors that parents and others make as they encounter the forerunners of antisocial behavior. Here the emphasis is upon both prevention and remediation. In these chapters, I offer guidance to parents about how to help their children modify and eliminate behavior that shows signs of becoming increasingly destructive to themselves and others early on. To parents with older children who are displaying entrenched patterns of antisocial behavior. I offer suggestions to help them cope more effectively. It may be tempting to skip immediately to the suggested remedial measures. But to do so would be as inadvisable as a surgeon's cutting into a patient before studying anatomy and physiology. In fact, it is vitally important to know exactly what requires correction, and why, before one tries to take such action. As any person who has raised a child knows, children make choices from the time they are very young. The toddler chooses whether or not to obey parental orders forbidding him to touch valuable household possessions. The child who has knocked over a lamp chooses whether or not to admit that he did it or to blame the cat. As time passes, the choices become more numerous and complex. Parents are often wrongly faulted for causing a child's irresponsible behavior, when it is the child himself who made the choice. What of the role of the environment in shaping behavior? A recognition that children make choices does not mean that parents or other environmental forces are totally without influence. While the individual makes the choice, the environment can inhibit or promote choices in a particular direction. For example, lack of parental supervision makes it easier for a child to get away with misconduct. If a parent is present, the child is more easily restrained and guided. But even the twenty-four-hour presence of a parent does not guarantee that a child will stay out of trouble because it is the child who still makes the ultimate choice. No conclusive evidence exists that can fully account for why children become antisocial. Every reader knows at least one family where both parents are loving, nurturing, sensible, and responsible - in short, outstanding role models. Their children internalize the norms and values to which they have been exposed and function responsibly - except for one wayward child. He rejects everything positive for which these role models stand. Explanations abound about why this happens, but nearly all of them are simply conjectures. Yet because we do not know what causes children to make certain choices does not mean that we must throw up our hands in despair and conclude that no useful guidance can be offered. Pages: 1 2 © 2001 by Stanton Samenow. Tags: Child Psychology, Child Discipline About the Author
|
| ||
|
© 2009 eNotAlone.com | |||
Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D., is the author of Before It's Too Late: Why Some Kids Get into Trouble and What You Can Do About It. He is a clinical psychologist who has spent thirty years as a researcher, clinician, consultant, and expert witness specializing in criminal behavior. For the last eighteen years, he has served as an indepedent evaluator in adversarial child custody disputes. He has been appointed to three presidential task forces on law enforcement, victims' rights, and a drug-free America. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, The Oprah Show, NBC's Today show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, and numerous other national venues. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. 