Parenting Pointers: Taming Aggression in Children

I recently had the chance to interview Henri Parens, MD, FACPsa, author of "TAMING AGGRESSION IN YOUR CHILD: How to Avoid Raising Bullies, Delinquents and Trouble-Makers" (Jason Aronson, 2012). Every parent wants to avoid having their kids being the victim of bullying. And of course, no parent wants their kids to be the bully.

1) I'm curious about the claim that it is "never to early to start teaching children to be compliant, even starting in the womb." How is it possible to start teaching compliance that early?

 

Parents expecting their children to comply is a project that starts even before birth and continues with no end. This project, a process really, occurs directly and indirectly and starts as soon as it’s called for. Here’s what I mean:

             An infant is feeding at mother’s breast. Beginning to teeth, the 6 month old bites the nipple on which he’s sucking. Mother reacts: “Ouch! Don’t do that!” Even tho we doubt the infant knows the words, most infants get the message. It’s conveyed by the mother physical jerking back, her emotionally verbalized “Ouch, Don’t do that!” [the emotional music which says more than words], both of which disrupt the infant-mother experience-dialogue of breast feeding—a very important, baseline relationship-building experience.

            By reacting as she did, the mother declared an expectation of her baby and set a limit! He can suck, Mom likes that; but he’s not to bite, Mom doesn’t like that! Mom expects compliance! Limit setting is put into play. Yes, at 6 months. All pretty innocent. But the process of expecting compliance is started. Notice that there was no harshness in the mother’s reaction. Mother can even state her expectation with warmth, “Ouch, don’t do that!”; even with humor. But a line has been drawn. Now, repetition of such events, similar reaction by the mother sooner or later establishes an expectation: I love to breast feed you, but you’re not allowed to bite me.

            This, I say is where parents’ expectations begin to be factually expressed and limit setting has been set into play to achieve that expectation. Parents do this, but don’t realize that this is where this challenging process starts. Now I said that this process may already start while the baby is in her mother’s uterus. We all have expectations of our children before they are born: she’ll be a doctor; he’ll be a judge; or whatever. As parents, we set the process of having expectations of our children going—we run scenarios in our minds of what we’ll do; and before the baby’s born the process has started.

2) Can you explain the difference a little bit more between desirable and wished-for expectations?

            The words “desirable” and “wished for” expectations is only a way of saying that in the first one we put a little higher level of expectation than in the second category. Whatever behavior for a given family has a higher priority than another, gets a greater demand for compliance. “Obligatory” means: you have no choice; you must do this; if not you lose a privilege and get hefty disapproval. This category is more imperative. “Desirable” is not as strong. It’s not as vital to the child’s well-being, like going to school is, etc. But your family feels that all decent kids and adults are expected to live by this principle: “You don’t just tease your little next door neighbor!” It’s not a crime; it’s just not decent and we won’t have it. You do that and you will lose a privilege. The punishment (losing a privilege) is not as severe; the disapproval not as strong. A “wished-for” expectation is still an expectation but the child has a wider range of agreeing to comply or not. “It would really be nice if you went out and gave Dad a hand in bringing in the groceries!” Or, “Please take these dishes to the table and set it.” There is no punishment; no loss of privilege. Disapproval is conveyed, but is not as strong as with “Desirable expectations”.

My point is this: We have to grade our expectations; they can’t all be equally important. We have to make demands that are in the child’s best interest (both for him/herself and for how to behave in society) according to their importance as seen by each family. There is an advantage to letting kids not comply; they learn to make decisions, to take responsibility, and they pay for their decision. But obviously, this can’t be done across the board. Some things they have to do, like it or not! In chapter 3 I discuss in detail the meaning for the child and for society of children learning to comply with our expectations. There are some dramatic examples in our history that demonstrate what happens when our expectations for compliance go too far or don’t go far enough.  

3) As a parent, it's pretty obvious what problems arise from not being compliant. But what problems can a child who is too compliant face?

            In chapter 3 of this book I take the example best known to those of us who lived during the period from 1930 to 1945, of children having been raised for two generations to be obedient, even absolutely obedient. “Do what you are told to do; don’t ask questions! Or else!” These children became overly compliant! They didn’t ask: is what I am told to do something I should do? Let me take an extreme example that really happened: ordered to murder the children of the “undesirables” (as the Nazis spoke of the Jews and Gypsies in Europe) so that they would not grow into adulthood, some Nazis and their sympathizers would toss a young child into the air and pierce it with a bayonet as the child fell back toward the ground. Reared to be totally compliant, many Nazis and their sympathizers committed “crimes against humanity”. On a lesser level of horror but also very troubling, excessive compliance to gang rule leads to crimes against others. These are extreme cases. Simplifying matters, think of lesser acts of over-compliance such as, a child kicking another one because a bigger kid told him to do it.

4) How do you view the difference between discipline and punishment?

The difference between these two words depends on how one defines them. I found over years of research of mother-child pairs, and in working clinically with parents whose children I saw in therapy, that most parents are not clear about the differences between “discipline”, “limit-setting”, and “punishment”.  I define these terms in chapter 4 of this book. Let me take from what I say in my book:

·               Discipline has two applications and definitions:

1. From the parent’s position, it is the parent’s efforts to help the child develop the ability to behave in ways that are acceptable to them and to the social group in which they live; and,

2. For the child, it is the progressive ability to do what is expected of him and to do what the child demands of himself—which means to develop “self-discipline”.

Note then, that discipline that it is an undertaking that fosters the development in the child of a sense of competence and self-reliance. Discipline is usually brought about when the child's behavior continues to challenge the parent’s expectations of what the child's conduct should be.

·               Limit setting is the parent's restriction of some activity the parent feels is harmful—to the child, to the parent, to someone else, to something valued—or which is not socially acceptable. In this, the parent acts as an agent of the child's when the child’s functions are not sufficiently developed to do what’s expected of him or these are resisted by the child.

In other words, the parent does for the child what the child himself cannot yet do or will not do that is in his best interest, whether it is because of insufficient ability or lack of under­standing, or the unwillingness to recognize, or in defiance of, the consequences of his actions.

·               Punishment is a strategy in which—as a sign of disapproval and to enforce one's limit setting—the parent with­draws a privilege or inflicts pain upon the child.

I will point out that: competent limit setting reduces and may even eliminate the need for punishment.