Going Beyond Fear: The Sometimes Tricky Parent-Teacher Relationship

What would you say to a joint parent-teacher relations workshop? Dr. Michael Thompson posed that question to The Parents Council of Washington’s Fall Meeting and Heads of Parent Associations Breakfast held at the Sheridan School on September 26. The question appears to be a particularly apt one for the private school venue. The answer was a resounding NO! To illustrate just how much anxiety and vulnerability there is on the part of both parents and teachers in dealing with each other, Thompson described two very powerful real episodes brought to a role-playing situation in one of his workshops.

 

The first was a second grade teacher in conference with two professional parents (a physician and a lawyer—the current stereotypical private school family). The teacher had entered the conference with the mission of describing a child who, despite ample intelligence, potential and skills, was unable to remain seated, stay on task or focus for adequate lengths of time. The teacher’s first remarks to the parents were prepared, elegant, accurate and delivered calmly, forcefully but gently to encourage further professional assessment. The parents’ reaction, in role-play as well as in the real situation, was to question her classroom management. The teacher’s second attempt at clarification used diminished language, softer tones and euphemisms. Further and more aggressive questioning of her teaching skills caused further degradation of her language and presentation ending in frustration and ineffectiveness for both parents and teacher.

 

The second scenario involved a parent of a sports playing son who was unable to approach a coach about the son’s lack of playing time. It seems the coach had prefaced the entire season with a warning to the kids that "he doesn’t want to see any of the ‘wimpy’ parents coming to him complaining about their playing time" (or perhaps anything else). The predominant factor at this point, for this parent, was fear of retaliation on the child by the apparently parent-hostile coach.

After extensive experience mediating parent-teacher interactions such as these, Dr. Thompson described seven fear sources on each side of the parent-teacher equation:

For Parents

1. Parents are struggling amateurs, no training for the job. Parenting is a difficult job, subject to the whims of nature.

2. Child-rearing practices are on display.

3. Trapped by their own anxieties: "A mother who is really a mother is never free" (Balzac).

4. Teacher may know more about the child than you do.

5. Parents default to their most effective persona, i.e. doctor, lawyer, business, which is often ineffective in the school arena.

6. Teacher’s power over your child’s life.

7. Parents feel trapped by their commitment to the choice of school.

For Teachers

1. Teaching is a difficult job, "an organic undertaking" subject to the whims of nature.

2. Parents see teachers through the distorting eyes of students.

3. Teachers don’t get credit for their efforts and successes.

4. Teaching is not culturally valued monetarily in the US.

5. Teachers have all been "burned" by abusive parents.

6. Teachers feel the administration won’t support them in a parent-teacher battle.

7. Teachers by definition share children’s feelings through daily empathy and identification, making them vulnerable to "adult" attack.

Dr. Thompson urged the audience to use the knowledge of these fears to get beyond them to forge a natural partnership with our children’s teachers. The benefit of the child must remain the central and commanding priority. Parent-teacher cooperation will result in a more effective school and more secure children.

Reprinted from Parents Council of Washington newsletter, Fall 1995.

Helping Children Work Through Grief

As a teacher and guidance counselor in the school system for 18 years, I have become aware of the relationship between emotional issues and students’ school performance. The phenomenon of loss often has a major negative impact on academic functioning. Moreover, we as educators are often ill-equipped or uncomfortable dealing with many of these concerns. There are many myths incorporated into our thinking about death. Most of us don’t like to think about death, and when the subject comes up–as it must in everyone’s life–we try to avoid it. We often encourage kids to "forget about it" or "get over it quickly." Adults that internalize this myth deny the child the time to live with and to work through their grief. Clichés that we use to help may have the opposite effect. Mandy, a girl with whom I worked, lost her grandfather. Her mother had told her that "he’s gone to heaven." Mandy’s mother thought that would be comforting, but Mandy wondered "If her grandfather was in heaven, why did they put him in the ground?" She asked if she could go to heaven to be with him since she was "good." We need to be honest when discussing death with a child, to use simple and direct language and concepts that they can relate to.

Alan Wolfelt explains that "Any child who is old enough to love is old enough to mourn." However, children conceptualize death differently at different developmental stages and working with the bereaved needs to incorporate this understanding. A five-year-old does not comprehend that death is not reversible. We need to tell the young child that death means someone’s body has stopped working and cannot be fixed. A ten-year-old may understand how final death is, but may be unable or unwilling to verbalize this. We need to provide opportunities to help express feelings at this age and give assurance that it is O.K. to do so. Many times bereaved children mourn through behaviors rather than words. Nick’s expression of mourning had become a problem at school. His acting out included fighting with friends, using foul language, scribbling graffiti, failing school work, and complaining of stomach aches. The school that Nick attended had no tolerance for his behavior. Nick was mourning the loss of his family unit. His mother had died several years before, his father had recently remarried, and these losses were compounded by his school’s "abandoning" him. Nick clearly exhibited several behaviors to watch for in grieving children. Had the educators in his school looked at his actions with an understanding of the bereavement process, the system might not have failed him.

 

This year FSC will be offering a program designed to better enable educators to help children with the realities of loss that interfere with the ability to learn. This program is an in-school training for staff that provides concrete tools to use with children, taking much of the discomfort out of working with these difficult issues.

The training includes practical language and ideas to use with children to create an environment for communication. It recognizes how children conceptualize loss developmentally, ways to use "teachable moments" and age-appropriate techniques. Handouts on phases of grief, tasks of grief, and common myths and clichés associated with the grief and loss process will be offered. There will be group discussions that enable educators to recognize their own barriers to communication about grief.

 

Our work, in schools this past year, has shown us the need for services that address loss issues. Therefore, FSC will also be offering a bereavement group for children to be held at our offices. Children who are mourning the death of a parent, sibling, grandparent, or friend will have an opportunity to share experiences and feelings with others of similar age. Their sadness, anger, and loneliness will be recognized and explored through a variety of activities.

What Parents Can Do About Teenage Drinking Parties

As parents walk out of their homes Friday evening for a weekend away, they may be leaving the door wide open for underage youth looking for a place to drink. More and more, teenagers are using their parents’ homes to throw unsupervised parties where alcohol is the main attraction. Such parties have tremendous potential for tragedy. One such incident took place in August 1991, when a 15-year-old boy died of alcohol poisoning after downing perhaps 26 shots of vodka. He and over 125 other teenagers were at an "all-you-can-drink" party at the home of a youth whose parents were away. Though alcohol poisoning is relatively rare, other devastating consequences of such parties include alcohol-related car crashes, unsafe sex, and various health problems.

"Unsupervised teenage parties are like a plague," said U.S. Surgeon General Antonia C. Novello in a recent Washington Post article. "They have to be dealt with, and parents must get involved. The issue here is that alcohol kills in a way that teenagers never dreamed of."

 

What can parents do?

Here are some guidelines for parents to follow:

• Set ground rules with your teenager before the party. You and your teenager should understand local and state laws about curfew and alcohol and other drug use. It is illegal to offer alcohol to guests under the legal drinking age or to allow guests to use other drugs in your home.

• Set party hours. Do not allow guests to come and go. This will discourage teens from leaving the party to drink or use other drugs elsewhere and then return.

• Limit the guest list. Small groups are easier to handle.

• Be prepared to ask guests to leave if they try to bring alcohol or other drugs or if they refuse to cooperate with your expectations. If a teenager who has been drinking or using other drugs comes to your party, call his or her parents to ensure safe transportation home.

• Teens frequently party at home when their parents are away. Prohibit unsupervised parties. If you must go away, arrange for quality supervision to ensure protection for you and your teenager.

• If your teenager is attending a party, know where your teenager will be and for how long. Contact the parents of the party-giver. Know how your child will get home from the party.

Some parents may know about the parties and know their teenagers are drinking. They may mistakenly believe that "drinking is better than doing drugs." Ongoing efforts to educate parents and youth about the addicting, harmful effects of alcohol continue to be a vital component of any comprehensive prevention program.

From Prevention Pipeline, September/October, 1991. Edited and reprinted with permission from the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention.

Excuses Used by Parents About a Child’s Use of Alcohol or Other Drugs:

• Thank goodness it’s only beer

• It’s just a stage

• My child never lies

• But he’s in sports

• I would never invade his privacy

• I did the same thing myself

 

Excuses Used by the Child Using Alcohol and Other Drugs:

• Everybody does it (uses pot and alcohol)

• Pot today is like beer yesterday

• I was holding it for a friend

• All my friends are going

• You don’t trust me; you never trust me

• You don’t believe me

• I know better than to use pot

• Pot is no worse than your cigarettes

• We only party on weekends

• It helps me to relax, to think better

Divorcing with Children: Minimizing the Distress for Your Kids

Each year more than a million children will experience their parents’ divorce. Mental health professionals, school personnel and the Family Support Center increasingly wrestle with the short-term effects of divorce on children. Children in divorcing families are at risk for: depressions, aggression, academic under achievement, loss of childhood drug abuse and promiscuity. Children’s vulnerability during and ultimate adjustment to their parent’s divorce is related to the amount of their exposure to conflict and ability to have frequent, regular contact with both parents. Thus, the challenge for divorcing parents is how to protect children from conflict while working out co-parenting arrangements that give children frequent and regular access to both parents. This is not a small challenge. Divorce is not a single linear occurrence with a tidy beginning and clean end. Ending a marriage involves an emotional, as well as, a legal divorce. The emotional divorce is a lengthy process during which the spouses pass through stages of shock, disbelief and denial, guilt, anger and blame to resolution. More challenging, spouses almost never go through the stages of emotional divorce concurrently. Add to this challenge the almost certain financial pressure, if not crisis, generated by the divorce, and it is no wonder that divorcing parents can hardly keep their heads above water, let alone focus on the needs of their children.

Courts are not designed to resolve disputes between parties with a need for a continuing cooperative relationship. The adversary process polarizes the situation by emphasizing winning and losing when parents have to learn to cooperate; by focusing on loaded terminology such as "custody" and "visitation" when parents need tow work out detailed plans for sharing parenting responsibilities; and by using lawyers as go-betweens when parties need to learn to communicate directly with each other. In recognition of their own limitations, courts across the country have developed incentives to reach non-litigated settlements of contested family disputes, mandating parenting classes, settlement negotiations and mediation before a judge will impose a solution as a last resort.

More and more divorcing couples, wishing to avoid "The War of the Roses" are choosing to mediate their disputes. Family mediation is a voluntary, confidential process through which divorcing couples make their own agreements in their family’s best interests. While mediation is not appropriate in all cases (such as where there is a history of family violence or intimidation), it offers many parents the opportunity to work cooperatively to resolve their issues. Sitting down with a mediator in multiple-structured one- to two-hour sessions, parents: gather information; create and assess options; reach agreements on how they will parent and share time with their children; and divide financial responsibilities and assets. The mediator, hired by both parties, is trained to help them set and stick to an agenda; educate themselves about issues and options; clarify their interests and needs; increase communication: and diffuse conflict. Mediators typically come out of a mental health or legal background and have been trained in both the process and substance of family mediation. Each party has an attorney who acts in an advisory rather than "go-between" capacity, providing legal advice when needed and reviewing final agreements before they are signed by the parties.

Whether parents choose to mediate or negotiate directly, they can minimize the divorce’s impact on their children if they:

2. Separate your roles as parents from your roles as spouses, both to clarify the negotiations and facilitate post-divorce co-parenting. During the negotiation or mediation of issues, it is often difficult to separate your parental and spousal roles. As you disengage from the intimacy of your relationship as a spouse, you will need to formulate a business-like relationship with your children’s co-parent.

3. Unless there is a threat of violence, plan out your physical separation and tell your children in advance of any move. It is in the short- and long-term best interests of the family to carefully prepare for the physical separation. Make specific plans for how and when your children will have access to both parents; how and by whom daily expenses will be met; how and by whom bills will be paid. These interim arrangements will provide continuity for the children, and an opportunity to try out parenting plans that can be refined in a final agreement. An interim agreement will diffuse the crisis atmosphere, lowering the incidence of ongoing conflict and ultimately easing the negotiation of a final agreement.

4. Tell the children about your separation together at a time without interruptions or time constraints after you have carefully worked out your interim arrangements. Agree on and practice what you are going to say to the children before you say it. Be open and honest, giving information that they request without getting into blaming each other for the separation. Reassure them that your love for them continues.

5. Inform the children’s school(s) about the separation. Ask what resources the school has to help your children. Ask that the school keep you informed if there are behavior or academic changes in your child. Provide the school with the address and phone numbers or both parents.

6. Give yourself TIME to work out the final separation agreement. Although one of you has likely gone through many of the stages of the emotional divorce by the time of the physical separation, most likely the other of you will need time to catch up. To push an unready spouse can be counter-productive. Negotiating should be a methodical, measured process involving the collection of information, education of the parties, and the creation and testing of options that are best suited for your family.

7. Protect your children from the negotiation. Reassure your children that you as their parents are working out a plan for the family that will take into account every-one’s needs. Do not volunteer details of the negotiation, or discuss details during drop-offs or pick-ups or over the phone when you might be overhead. Be firm with older children who might want more information. Do not use them as adult sounding-boards. Model decision-making and conflict resolution for your children.

8. Create Parenting Plans to meet your family’s current and future needs. The plans you create to meet your family’s current needs will depend in large measure on the age(s) of your children, the geographic proximity of the two households, and your employment schedules. A parenting plan should anticipate that your reconstituted family will continue to have changing needs; and should contain a process or parents to mutually modify provisions in the best interests of their children.

9. Parenting Plans should contain provisions to enhance parental communication. Successful co-parenting depends on communication. Parents will need to plan time-sharing schedules; share information about their children; and resolve disputes that may come up as to the interpretation or application of provisions of the agreement. Establish regular biannual scheduling meetings; ongoing communication by note, telephone or regular face-to-face meetings; and a method for resolving disputes through arbitration or mediation before either of you goes to court.