online conference transcript

Howard Glasser, M.A. is our guest and talks about coping with a child who has a behavioral disorder like Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) or Conduct Disorder (CD). Mr. Glasser is the executive director of the Tucson Center for the Difficult Child and is the author of Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach.

David is the HealthyPlace.com moderator.

The people in blue are audience members.

David: Good Evening. I'm David Roberts. I'm the moderator for tonight's conference. I want to welcome everyone to HealthyPlace.com. Our topic tonight is "Parenting the Difficult Child." Our guest is Howard Glasser, M.A., Executive Director of both the Tucson Center for the Difficult Child and the Children's Success Foundation and is the author of Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach.

Mr. Glasser maintains that most ordinary methods of parenting and teaching inadvertently backfire when applied to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) and other challenging children (like those with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and Conduct Disorder (CD), despite the best of intentions. Mr. Glasser says his approach, which he claims achieves great results almost always without the need for medications or long-term treatment, works the best.

Good evening, Mr. Glasser and welcome to HealthyPlace.com. We appreciate you being our guest tonight. So we're all on the same track, could you please define for us the phrase: "difficult child?"

Howard Glasser: I like the word, intense. A child can be intense for many reasons, such as emotional, temperament, neurological or biochemical reasons. It almost doesn't matter, they are simply overwhelmed with the intensity that they have.

David: In your book, you mention that one of the common themes of these "difficult children" is that they become stuck in patterns of negativity that they can't seem to get out of. First, what do you mean by that? And, secondly, why do they get stuck in these patterns?

Howard Glasser: The teacher and the parent really decide if the child is out of the reach of their strategies when they see the child getting worse. Some children simply form the impression based on their experiences and observations that they get more out of people, bigger reactions, more animation and emotion and excitement, when things are going wrong. Our responses to positive things are relatively low-key in terms of the "energy" we radiate. The child feels relatively invisible for the good things they do and starts to feel more successful when they involve us in relation to their negativity. They get stuck when they continue to feel, confirmed by our responses, that the above is true. They are not out to get us, they are out to get the "energy" and are drawn by the stronger force of the bigger payoff.

David: The problem is, for many parents, they try everything under the sun to change the child's behavior, but the troubling behavior continues. Then the parents become frustrated, angry, and tired. What's a parent to do under these circumstances, where nothing seems to work?

Howard Glasser: Yes, the more the frustration, the bigger the lecture, the louder the yeller. Thus, the bigger the "reward" to the negativity, which is the last thing the parent wants to do. It happens very unintentionally. The trick is to create a much stronger "experience " of success and response to success.

David: So what you are saying is very similar to that old parenting adage: "whether it's a positive or negative response, as long as the child gets a response, it's better than no response at all."

Howard Glasser: That's true. It's like a check that has a one followed by six zeros. The child hasn't checked to see that there's a negative sign in front of it.

I can give you an example. In the world of conventional parenting, that does work with easier children. When we ask a child to do a task and they do, we say "thank you" or "good job". We're "radiating" a very modest amount of energy. When they don't follow the instruction, we tend to evolve our response to more high key reactions.

David: So maybe you can give us some instructions on how to be "more positive" with our children?

Howard Glasser: Normal parenting is the culprit. We subtly give evidence that the child gets "more" through adversity. First let me say that "catching children being good" is less than optimal for the challenging child. At the end of the day, the parent or teacher of a challenging child only has a few successes to report. It's too disempowering.

The secret is in having strategies that literally "create" a powerful level of success. And here are a few ways to "cheat" in this beneficial manner. I like to confront children with their successfulness. One great method is to appreciate their success when the rules are NOT being broken. Therefore, at any given moment, there is almost always success in this manner. The problem is that we typically bring up the word "rule" when it's been broken and most adults wind up richly "rewarding" the child with a lot of energy under those circumstances. They are definitely not in a receptive mode to hear the message and we've accidentally deepened their impression that they get more mileage out of negativity.

I find that complements like "I love the self-control you are using now by not arguing and not using bad words" not only gives us much more opportunity to nurture successes, but it gives the child a chance to experience themselves as successful in relation to the rules and to feel valued.