No talk, no emotion and firm action is the essence of the 1-2-3 Magic method of discipline, according to its founder
SOMETIMES YOU just cannot stop yourself: instead of delivering a firm request or reprimand to a child and leaving it at that, you go on and on . . . explaining, justifying, nagging.
There are times for discussion with children – but when you are trying to correct misbehaviour is not one of them.
When it comes to discipline, the two biggest mistakes are too much talking and too much emotion, according to the founder of the popular 1-2-3 Magic parenting programme, US psychologist Dr Thomas Phelan.
“They usually go hand in hand – the more you talk, the more excited you get and the more excited you get the more you talk.”
When that happens, the parent is no longer a credible source for authority, he says. “It aggravates the kid – and now you have got an aggravated kid who you are asking to co-operate and it does not make any sense.” In discipline situations, “talking is not benign, talking is destructive”.
He cites the example of when a child is resisting going to bed in the evening. “If nine o’clock is bedtime, nine o’clock is bedtime. I don’t explain to you the five reasons why it has always been the case that nine o’clock is bedtime. It’s not as if the child will look at you and say, ‘Jeez I never looked at it that way before, thank you for taking the time to explain that to me’.”
No talk, no emotion and firm action is the essence of the 1-2-3 Magic method of discipline, which is presented as a way to manage children “without resorting to arguing, shouting or spanking”. It is recommended for typically developing children, as well as those with special needs.
Phelan, who will be in Dublin at the end of this month to give public seminars, explains in a phone interview from his home in Chicago how both professional and personal experience motivated him to devise this parenting programme.
Firstly, as a clinical psychologist, paediatricians were referring children to him who were “not necessarily horribly messed up” but whose misbehaviour was causing problems, and he had to help those families. Secondly, the eldest of his two children has attention deficit disorder and he and his wife needed to come up with a way to manage that at home.
Phelan knew it had to be straightforward. “If you don’t keep it simple, nobody will do it, and I learned that the hard way when I started out in private practice. I was giving all these people wonderful suggestions and nobody was doing them because they were too complex.”
When emotions are running high, we tend to regress to more primitive forms of behaviour. “If you don’t have something simple to do, you can get verbally abusive or physically abusive, that’s not what we want.”
The programme’s simplicity makes it easy to learn – within two to four hours – and then parents can start using it straight away.
At its core is the slow counting of “1-2-3” after asking a child to stop a certain form of misbehaviour, followed by “time out” – on a chair or in a room alone – if it continues. The programme is advocated for children aged two to 12, but Phelan has also developed a version for “surviving your adolescents” (see panel).
Parents have three jobs: to control obnoxious behaviour; to encourage good behaviour; and to strengthen their relationship with their child, he explains. “The counting, for which the programme is most famous, is for the first job – controlling obnoxious behaviour,” such as arguing, yelling, whining, fighting.
When starting with older children, there is a “kick off” conversation, which takes about five to 10 minutes.
“You tell them that things are going to be different and this is what we’re going to do. The kids won’t believe you and they’ll giggle and laugh,” he says. “They won’t giggle and laugh when they get their first time out.”
The all-purpose consequence is time out, which means they go to their room for a set time or sit on a chair. If they are in their room, they can’t talk on the phone or have electronic entertainment.
Alternative consequences, when you don’t have time for time out or don’t want to use it, can include no electronic entertainment for the evening or a deduction from pocket money.
The time when a child is entering the “terrible twos” is often when parents start to wonder where it has all gone wrong – their cute little baby has morphed into a terror – and start to look for help.
Two year olds will respond to these techniques, he says. Although toddlers have few words and don’t yet speak in sentences, “people think they can’t understand, but oh yes they can. They are sharp little devils and will get the 1-2-3 really quickly.”
Having tantrums is natural two-year-old behaviour because they cannot control their emotions, but you still need to deal with them. If the child is in a safe place, you can walk away; otherwise, count over the tantrum, add three, and then escort the child to the place of time out.
“But you can’t talk,” he stresses. “We have a rule – you never talk to a tantruming child. It is one of the most aggravating experiences for me when I’m in public; you see a parent talking and pleading and begging to a child screaming his head off and the result is the child screams more.”
Phelan always wants to say to the parent, “Will you please be quiet – the child will calm down after a while, but not when you’re talking to him.”
Parents, who are at a loss at what to do with an out-of-control child, sometimes think the worst and start looking for a diagnosis that will explain the behaviour.
Phelan has seen many people coming into his practice who have a three-year-old child who is running the house. “They say ‘this kid is nuts’. Well, the kid is not nuts, it’s just they don’t know how to handle him, they don’t know how to keep quiet.”
Once parents learn this method of managing the behaviour, they are calmer and start to enjoy their children more; the vicious circle of escalating child-parent aggravation is broken.
While children can be really trying, they are also naturally cute and fun, he points out. “Somebody said once, ‘If God didn’t make kids cute, we’d kill them’. You can’t appreciate the fun if discipline problems are getting in the way all the time.”
When a child upsets you on a regular basis, “you naturally come to the conclusion that either the child is horribly screwed up or you are terribly messed up – or both,” he says. It does not have to be like that.
Research in the Canadian city of Medicine Hat, in Alberta, showed how effective the intervention of 1-2-3 Magic can be. Parents of children on a waiting list for mental health services were given training in the method and, after three months, not only did 90 per cent of them report an improvement in behaviour but more than half of them no longer felt their children required a diagnosis and treatment.
“That would indicate that maybe people are jumping too fast to professional evaluation, although in some places it is hard to jump fast because there is nobody to do the evaluation,” Phelan remarks.
A tendency to “over-parent” – a version of excess talking – is also to be avoided. “You are anxious that they are going to run the trolley in the grocery store into somebody else’s behind, so you keep nagging at them, ‘Be careful, be careful, be careful’.”
Anxious parenting equals angry kid, he explains. “If you are verbalising your worries to your child about their behaviour all the time, you are going to aggravate them and make them do the opposite of what you want.”
Although there is much talk of parenting “being revolutionised” in recent years, particularly as technology pervades family life, Phelan is not so sure. He acknowledges that the internet is “a new force” out there, which may intensify some parenting issues, but the basics remain the same.
For instance, little children have had tantrums for thousands of years and adolescents still have to grow up and leave home, “the same problem they have always had”.
However, he is concerned about the impact of technology on children’s play. “Kids naturally play because it develops their skills – social, physical and language – and that is why it is built into them.”
He points to research in the US, by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which shows that children aged between eight and 18 spend an average of seven hours, 38 minutes a day on entertainment media. “That is not normal play – you are supposed to be out there moving your muscles and yelling and talking.”
Apart from it being a big risk factor for obesity, Phelan calculates that at that rate a child has completed 40,000 hours of “tech play” by the time he has grown up.
And if you go along with writer Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become expert at something, that child could have become an expert at four different things.
"That's sad," he remarks. "Your child at age 18 is an expert in the game Grand Theft Autoand that is not going to help him compete in the international market for skilled labour."
Phelan is presenting two seminars in the Carlton Hotel at Dublin Airport on Saturday, July 30th. The first, on 1-2-3 Magic Parenting, will run 10am to noon, and the second, on attention deficit disorder, 2pm-4pm. Each seminar costs €60 per person or €75 for a couple, with a discount for those wishing to attend both. Bookings on 045-520900 or see sensationalkids.ie
Effective parenting: How to put the '1-2-3 Magic' path into action
Step 1: Control obnoxious behaviour
Learn a simple technique to get your children to stop doing what you don’t want them to do (whining, arguing, tantrums, fighting with siblings, etc).
Step 2: Encourage good behaviour
Learn how to get your children to start doing what you do want them to do (cleaning rooms, going to bed, homework, etc).
Step 3: Strengthen relationships
Learn four powerful techniques that reinforce your bond with your children.
For more information, see parentmagic.com
Focal Point: Surviving the teenage years
A big challenge for parents of teenagers is to be able to tell the difference between what behaviour is normal and what might be signs of trouble, according to Dr Thomas Phelan, whose guide to parenting teens is entitled Surviving Your Adolescents.
Many of the problems parents have with teenagers fall into the “minor but aggravating” category, such as the way they dress or the state of their bedroom. Instead of going overboard on these, parents’ main focus should be on maintaining a relationship with their teenager.
“You have to have house rules – drugs, alcohol, grades and all that – but your focus should be on how to stay in touch with this kid,” he stresses.
At this age it is more important than ever to avoid “over-parenting” because adolescents want to be independent. “If you are telling them what to do and you shouldn’t be, they are going to really resent it and won’t want to have anything to do with you.”
Disrespect can work both ways.“A lot of parents get into arguments with their teens and then want to ‘time out’ the teen when the parents’ behaviour is just as bad as the teens’!”
He also cites the situation where your teenager has a boyfriend or girlfriend who you don’t particularly like and you start going on about how that person is no good. “They are fond of the person. You shouldn’t be doing that.”
