Parenting Bookshelf: Choice Parenting by Richard Primason, Ph.D.

When parents need help dealing with a troublesome child’s behavior, there is a dizzying number of parenting books that claim to have the answers. Most of these parenting techniques share one thing in common: They suggest ways to exert external control over a child’s behavior. Hastings-on-Hudson’s Dr. Richard Primason, a clinical psychologist who has worked with children and families for over 20 years, maintains that “techniques that advocate external controls don’t work well because they require constant vigilance. No one wants to be controlled, so eventually people push back.” And trying to control kids through external methods can also be damaging to parent/child relationships.

Control psychology which relies on reinforcement, punishment or time outs, does not work because we ultimately cannot control what other people do. With problem behavior, Dr. Primason explains, “A kid will out-control you because you’ll have to keep upping the ante. Either the kid will go further and harm himself to defeat you, or the kid will end up complying. But he won’t learn how to solve his own problem…only how to stop his parents from screaming at him.”

Dr. Primason’s book, Choice Parenting ($13.95, iUniverse), promotes a wholly different perspective on children’s behavior. Based on the principles of choice theory developed in 1998 by psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser, Choice Parenting asserts that everyone always chooses and is responsible for his own behavior.

The three basic tenets of Choice Parenting are:

• Internal Control. We are responsible for what we do. Many people blame their mistakes or difficulties on outside circumstances or past events. About parents dealing with behavioral difficulties, Dr. Primason writes, “to deny their (children’s) essential responsibility for their own behavior will do nothing to improve things and to accept external excuses for their children’s behavior will only enable their dependence and limited self-worth.” Even a child who’s been diagnosed as LD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, etc., can be held responsible for his behavior. “A child may have some skill weaknesses that are not his fault, but he is quite capable of finding ways to meet his academic and social responsibilities.”

• Total Behavior. All behavior is a combination of overt, cognitive, emotional and physiological behavior, so any activity that we do has consequences on all four levels. For example, instead of thinking “I’ve got a headache because my son made me furious,” we need to take responsibility for our own reactions and think about what we could do differently. When we allow our child to make us furious, we are actually giving ourselves a headache. If we change one aspect of our behavior (such as talking quietly to our child instead of yelling), we change it on all levels.

• Best Attempt. Everyone is always trying their best to get more of what they need and want, whether it’s survival and well-being, love and belonging, power and self-worth, freedom, or fun and learning. Understanding this allows us to interpret our child’s behavior with good faith. Says Dr. Primason, it allows us to “appreciate that the problem behavior makes sense; it represents your child’s current best attempt to meet basic psychological needs.”

In Choice Parenting, the priority for parents is to stay connected to their child — this is more important than any lesson they can teach. Dr. Primason advises, “avoid criticizing, correcting and coercing”. Listening, accepting and encouraging strengthen the connection between parents and children.

When a problem arises, Choice Parenting suggests that parents have a serious conversation with their child and discuss their expectations. They need to set their own limits and tell the child what they want, not what he must do. While trying to exert control over kids seems to work because parents may get compliance, the problem usually keeps happening. Dr. Primason explains, “Most people have enough good will in their relationships so that the controlling behavior is forgiven, but when kids have real problems, controlling behavior makes things worse…parents need to reach for connection rather than control.”