Understanding the Adult-Child Relationship: (Adlerian Teaching-Parenting)

By William Lyman Camp FACAPP

Is there really more of a generation gap today than there was in the past? We believe there is. There has always been a struggle between the generations, just there has always been a struggle between the sexes. In the past, however--in an autocratic society--this rebellion could not come out into the open. With the advent of the state of equality which we have reached in the United States since World War II, however, this evolution has begun to change or emerge more rapidly. We now see a low-level rebellion of all those persons who were earlier in an inferior position. Said more generally, we cannot understand this change--including a rebellion of youth--if we consider it as an isolated phenomenon.

This quiet struggle of youth is part of a general, sometimes not so quiet rebellion of the disenfranchised in our society. Many women no longer let themselves be controlled by men, children no longer allow it by adults, labor no longer allow it by management, and minorities--especially Blacks and Hispanics--no longer accept the "supremacy" of Whites/Caucasians. So we have to understand that this struggle, on all fronts, is part of the same rebellion.

The goal of this book is to outline the dynamics and processes involved. The author's intent is to highlight the evolving relationship between adults and children as part of this process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685170455

Book preview

cover.jpg

Understanding the

ADULT-CHILD

RELATIONSHIP

(Adlerian Teaching/Parenting)

William Lyman Camp PhD, FACAPP

ISBN 978-1-68517-044-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68517-045-5 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by William Lyman Camp PhD, FACAPP

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Changing Scene (A Historical Perspective)

Teaching Parents, Teachers, and Children

Preliminary Thoughts/Observations

Discouraged Children

Goals of Childhood Misbehavior

Encouragement

Logical Consequences, Family Constellation, and Educated Guessing

A Sample Case

Further Analysis and Suggestions

Adlerian Philosophy

More on Adult-Child Relationships

An Attitude Regarding Child Management Dynamics

More on the Family Constellation

More on Family Organization and Dynamics

The Smith Family Constellation, with Questions and Answers

Understanding and Diagnosing Children’s Behavior

More on Diagnosing Children’s Behavior

Educated Guessing for Diagnosis of the Child’s Behavior

Early Recollections as a Diagnostic Tool

Guidelines for Interpretation

The Individual Interprets

Epilogue: Intergenerational Conflict, Summary and Comment

Bibliography

Understanding the Adult-Child Relationship

(Adlerian Teaching/Parenting)

Adlerian child psychology concepts and ideas, with information drawn from lectures, writing, and conversation with Rudolf Dreikurs, MD, as well as other Adlerian authors, were compiled, summarized, edited, updated, and supplemented for the twenty-first century by William L. Camp, PhD, FACAPP.

No matter how much things change, they remain the same.

—Author unknown

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

—Maya Angelou

Dedicated to the memory of my teacher, Rudolf Dreikurs, MD, whose ideas appear frequently throughout this volume, along with those of Dr. Alfred Adler.

During the summer of 1970, Dr. Dreikurs and several psychologists met at Dr. Don Verger’s home in Platteville, Wisconsin. At the time, Dr. Dreikurs stated that if he had our youth, he would write another book or books, the outlines of which he briefly discussed.

This is part of my attempt to create three of those books, of which this is one—my best effort to comply with the details of his long-remembered suggestions/request.

*****

Also dedicated to my mother and father, Julia and William Camp; my wife and best friend Mildred; our children, Christine Lick and Jonathan Camp, and their spouses, Benjamin and Iwona, and our grandchildren, Katherine, Julia, Carolyn, Olivia, and Austin. All have enriched my life. I have learned a great deal from observing and interacting with each one.

Upon reading some of the manuscript for the book, Julia Camp (WLC’s mother) said, Yes, but above all, be kind.

William L. Camp PhD

Many thanks to Nancy Basile for the countless hours she spent typing and helping to edit the manuscript for this book and others.

Preface

Richard E. O’Conner, MD, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist

How did Adlerian psychology come into being, and how did it evolve? To answer that question, let me first point out that in the years after World War II, innovations and changes in the field of psychology, particularly in areas of treatment, came almost too fast and in too great a number to follow. In psychoanalysis, such workers as Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, and Frieda Fromm-Reichman brought new insights into both theory and therapy. Such people as Carl Rogers and B. F. Skinner opened new approaches to therapy and new ways of dealing with human behavior. In many ways, they have brought changes to the field of therapy which have produced a new look, which for people schooled in analytic approaches, make the field at times almost unrecognizable.

Then there were those who went back to earlier theorists in the area of psychoanalysis and brought the insights of some of those earlier analysts to an American scene which was changing and which required new approaches. Again, although the list is not exhaustive, one thinks of Frederick Allen applying the ideas of Otto Rank to the field of child guidance and child therapy and of Rudolph Dreikurs’ applying Adlerian therapy to the area of child therapy and also to the entire field of parenting.

What Dreikurs saw in postwar America were children growing up in a society without traditions. Not only were the old-world traditions, which often shaped identity and sometimes shaped lives completely, not a feature of American society, but in addition, the mobility which, prior to the war, had really been restricted to a small portion of American society now involved everybody. This mobility insisted that each person must somehow become his own creation and that parents, with their own childhood experiences contributing very little, would have to somehow help their children to create themselves in this way.

In addition to the lack of traditions, there was general weakening of extensive family ties so that families tended to become very much nuclear families, and identification of children was with a very small group of family people and a larger group of community people, including teachers, peers, and public heroes such as athletes and television stars. Here again, the parents, whose own childhood had perhaps prefigured some of this change, were often at a loss to have methods to deal with the demands of society on them and on their children.

Into this state of confusion, Dreikurs introduced the work Children: The Challenge in 1964. He offered principles and, in addition, suggestions for helping children to achieve their own sense of identify and the sense of respect, of being loved, and of optimism about themselves and their own futures which is so necessary to healthy growth. However, Dreikurs was well aware that principles are not prescriptions. Although he was sometimes quite specific in his suggestions, he knew that the love, the respect, and the optimism had to be within the parents before it could be sincerely expressed and transmitted to the child. Dreikurs did not offer a new way to write on the tabula rasa but rather offered ways in which firm, positive, parental identity, and parental feeling could be consistently made manifest to the child. At no point did he mean the book to be a cookbook, nor a guarantee that actions A, B, and C would always result in desirable situation D.

If Dr. Dreikurs wrote an excellent book for parents in 1964, is there reason for Dr. Camp to write this book in addition to its three companion books, Parenting Ouvr Children in a Changing World, Understanding and Managing the Difficult Child, and Adlerian Counseling Theory and Practice, which in a sense do cover some of the same ground? To answer this question, one has to consider the changes which have occurred in American society from 1964 up to the present day. The year 1964 represented, perhaps, a culmination of some sixty years of change which had not been slow but had had something in it of gradual change, with the war bringing a somewhat faster pace. The changes since 1964 have been anything but gradual, and they have been monumental. The role of the child in our society has changed. There is now an emphasis on children’s rights which often seem to put parents and their children, supported by social forces, in adversarial positions. The protest movements of the late sixties and since that time not only created suspicion in youth regarding their parents’ values but left many parents unsure of their own beliefs and values. The intrusion of the world outside the family, especially through the mediums of television and computer/information technology, has become almost total. As has been pointed out by a recent president, the great historical events of the era have left Americans feeling unsure, pessimistic about their future, and not in control of their own destinies. How then can parents be helped to help a child create himself?

Adlerian and related principles continue to have meaning, and they need to be stated in the vernacular of today and within the perspective of the American society of today. This Dr. Camp has undertaken to do, and I think in large measure with success. However, we must again return to the point that there are principles. The methods and the behaviors which are sometimes quite specifically drawn in Dr. Camp’s work are still not infallible formulae for the successful raising of children. They can help to deal with a parent’s sense of unsureness. They can bring to the parent a skill in expressing to the child what is positive and important in the relationship. However, we must all remember that much of parenting is intuitive. Much of children’s security comes from a feeling that the parents are in control and do know best. Much of their growth comes with parents who can limit, restrict, and discipline when children need that type of help in dealing with their impulses; who can support when the child is unsure and feels a need to be supported; and who can give freedom when freedom is what the child wants and really needs. Dr. Camp’s contribution is important. It will not simply help to make us good parents; it will offer a means to convey to children our hope and our love in a way which will promote their own self-respect, their own growth, and their ability to create themselves. This is what Adlerian psychology aims to do.

Introduction: The Changing Scene (A Historical Perspective)

The Changing Scene (A Historical Perspective)

Is there really more of a generation gap today than there was in the past? We believe there is, although some may disagree. There has always been a struggle between the generations, just as there has always been struggle between the sexes. In the past, however—in an autocratic society—this rebellion could not come out into the open. With the advent of the state of equality which we have reached in the United States since World War II, however, this evolution has begun to change or emerge more rapidly. We now see an emerging rebellion of all those persons who were earlier in an inferior position. Said more generally, we cannot understand this change—including a rebellion of youth—if we consider it as an isolated phenomenon.

This quiet struggle of youth is part of a general, sometimes not so quiet, rebellion of the disenfranchised in our country. Many women no longer let themselves be controlled by men, children no longer allow it by adults, labor no longer allows it by management, and minorities—especially blacks and Hispanics—no longer accept the supremacy of whites/Caucasians. So we have to understand that this fight, on all these fronts, is part of the same rebellion of what used to be called the underdog. This involves any and all victims of political and social injustice.

But what is the fight about? It is a struggle for participation in and control of decision-making. We are moving into a time when virtually no one—out of a sense of equality—will voluntarily allow someone else to dictate his or her life. So the generation gap means that youth are no longer willing to give in to dictatorial authorities. This means that adults—and others—must learn to allow participation in decision-making. If they do not, they could experience a more full-scale resistance, defiance, or even rebellion.

We often ask if these same factors were behind the rebellions which occurred on college campuses during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. Our reply is yes, that our youth were, and are, fighting for participation. Historically, our universities have been autocratic. More recently, however, things have begun to change and are changing. The college or university president and/or the president of the board regents or trustees can no longer make decisions unilaterally, but they often try. When they do, youth usually rebel against it at some level. However, whenever young people/students have had a real voice in the management of a university, for example, we have seen relatively little unrest. The unrest that does occur is a type of rebellion—reflecting a feeling of young people that they are being treated unfairly and that the power structure acts as if they believe that most young people have little or nothing of real value to say or contribute.

Further, groups of young minority people have rebelled against law and order in our society because they have seen it as only the traditional form and label for influencing and controlling people through pressure from without. Those who have traditionally called for untempered law and order have, for the most part, fostered only rebellion because under these circumstances no one is really willing to give in. Furthermore, those who try to subdue such a rebellion typically get only a metaphorical bloody nose, but most people do not seem to realize this. Parents try to control their children, teachers try to control their students, authorities try to control people, and no one really succeeds in doing it—not fully. This failure highlights a need for entirely new methods of stimulation from within the individual. Traditional partially disguised autocratic methods no longer function adequately—they no longer work.

The sum of these methods many people would probably incorrectly label as highly liberal. But the theories and practices advocated are most often in opposition to the concept often espoused by so-called liberals who are most often in favor of giving in. Most people either fight or give in, but both are equally wrong. Our children as well as adults have to learn to accept order, but through stimulation from within, and not through pressure and punishment from without.

What are some of these methods of stimulation which might be effectively used? To begin to answer this question, let us focus on children. First of all, one has to understand children. We must learn to understand their goals, why they misbehave, and what hurts them. Then one has to set limits through use of what have been called logical consequences. This is a key technique which we need to use to prevent anarchy. Encouragement is one of the most important elements in application of this technique. To use it effectively, adults must interact closely with children, both in the family and in the school. This may be done using the family council in the home or group discussion as mechanisms through which change may occur. Through this process, the parent or teacher can learn to understand children, as children learn to understand their teachers and parents. In doing so, they can be helped to find new forms of cooperation—forms not based on fear or submission, but on participation. The job we all face is to help parents, teachers, and community leaders—including labor leaders, management, and politicians—to learn how to be effective democratic leaders of people.

Without leadership, there is no democracy. Most people simply do not fully realize that what we need is skilled leadership in our society, but that as a society we have not appropriately trained people for leadership. We have not trained for leadership in our communities, nor have we trained parents, nor have we trained teachers how to be leaders. Further, we have not fully trained our managers and business leaders or our politicians for leadership. Still, people continually find themselves in positions where expert leadership is required of them. This is one primary reason why we face bankruptcy and possible civil war among civilized nations and people.

If parents and teachers don’t influence children, who does? Our response to that question is that you can if you learn how to do it. Counselors and teachers, too, must learn how to influence children without fighting and without giving in, on the basis of mutual respect. When an adult fights with a child or children, he or she violates respect for the child and the child doesn’t respond. But if the adult gives in, he or she also violates respect for the child, and the child doesn’t respond. Further, when any individual continually gives in, he violates respect for himself or herself.

We now have well-designed techniques which every mother and every teacher can use to influence children without fighting and without giving in. We do it by sitting down to discuss things together, by encouraging children, and by allowing logical consequences to take place. Table 1 summarizes thirty-seven different skills and understandings for parents to learn, if they really want to influence their children. And parents are learning them, in many cases through discussion and study groups.

Table 1

Skills and Understandings Necessary for Adequate Parenting

Understanding the child.

Encouragement.

The child’s mistaken goals.

The fallacy of punishment and reward.

The use of natural and logical consequences.

Being firm without dominating.

Showing respect.

Inducing respect for order.

Inducing respect for the rights of others.

Eliminating criticism and minimizing mistakes.

Maintaining routine.

Taking time for training.

Winning cooperation.

Avoiding giving undue attention.

Side-stepping the struggle for power.

Withdrawing from conflict.

Using action, not words.

Refraining from just giving orders.

Having the courage to say no.

When appropriate, doing the unexpected.

Refraining from overprotection.

Stimulating independence.

Staying out of fights.

Being unimpressed by fears.

Minding your own business.

Refraining from just feeling sorry.

Making request reasonable and sparse.

Following through—i.e., being consistent.

Putting children all in the same boat.

Learning to listen.

Watching your tone of voice.

Taking it easy.

Downgrading bad habits.

Having fun together.

Meeting the challenge of electronic media.

Using religion wisely.

Talking with children, not to or at them.

(Adapted from Dreikurs, Rudolph and Soltz, Vicki, Children: The Challenge. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964.)

In our schools and in our society, competition is a prime factor. Is it good or bad for our children? Historically, competition has been necessary for social and political development in our society where, at least theoretically, everyone can achieve to the best of his or her ability, or fall as the case may be. Today, however, it seems that we may be coming to the end of a period where competition has been or can be useful in this sense. Competition pitches person against person. Father may compete with mother, parents with children, and brothers and sisters with each other. It now seems increasingly necessary that we replace the competitive spirit in our schools and in our homes with the spirit of cooperation. But how can we suggest that parents raise children in homes and schools without competition when they will have to go out into a society which is full of competition. Our answer is very simple. The less competitive a person or child is, the better he or she can stand up under competition. The more competitive he is, the more he is vulnerable and the more unable he is to tolerate competition, except when he wins.

A related question often asked by parents is this: Do children cause trouble because of lack of or want of discipline? Yes. We believe this is absolutely correct. The only way to define and direct behavior is through discipline. But effective discipline based on pressure and fear in our society is nearly gone. Children are no longer afraid. They feel free to attack anyone and may even call the police or attack the police. At the very least, they manipulate their parents and teachers, and yet, we as humans need discipline but discipline which forms within the personality. We need self-discipline—a sense of responsibility. However, this is something which many parents seem to almost deliberately withhold from their children. Many, if not most, parents—particularly mothers, but increasingly fathers—may take on virtually all responsibility, leaving children with little or none. Further, children do what they want because many modern parents simply don’t know how to manage—how to stimulate or encourage—children properly. They play one child against the other, they try to dominate—and they are defeated. When parents stop playing one side against another—and treat all children all as a group—they can actually succeed in bringing about the Biblical truth that each child realizes. It is that he is his brother’s keeper and that they can influence each other.

There was once a time when brotherly love meant the greatest of devotion. Today one wouldn’t wish his worst enemy to be treated as some young people treat their brothers and sisters—in their competitive striving to defeat their parents. Often there is no discipline because of an apparent lack of genuine respect and concern. The message which we are now attempting to instill—as we help parents and teachers—is to remove discipline out of a sense of obligation and replace it with a sense of responsibility and of joy in participation and contribution. Lack of this sense of responsibility and joy, however, is part of a pattern of deprivation present in many families. Many family members look out for themselves—for their own fun and pleasure to a large extent—but at the expense of others. In a very real sense, relationships in many American institutions including the family are now nearly bankrupt.

For example, the majority of families in our society begin each day with an argument or fight. They do so because they don’t know how to establish a sense of law and order. But what is law and order in the family sense? Historically, in autocratic societies, there was no freedom. There was only order. Freedom in those societies meant one could try to do as one wanted, but the societal structure very often did not permit it. You were ordered to do as you were told. Today, many people believe that democracy means freedom, but freedom without order is not democracy. It is anarchy. For this reason, it is imperative that we help children learn to accept order as a way of living. In our families, we have disorder because parents often don’t know what to do with their children. But why don’t parents know what to do?

Raising children has always been based on tradition. The historical traditions related to the raising of children in our society are now ending—in our increasingly democratic era. So we need new methods. It is these new methods which parents have to learn. Rudolph Dreikurs began to deal with this issue in his book, A Parent’s Guide to Child Discipline. Here he does not advocate discipline through force or fear but rather through an inner realization of the reality that one has to obey a certain order to successfully fulfill oneself. This, of course, may seem simple, but it is in fact a complicated issue.

How can we help a child who becomes discouraged in our society of competition? When asked, probably almost everyone is for encouragement, just as nearly everyone is against sin and cruelty—but few seem to know how to avoid the latter. What they must learn first is to encourage properly. Many adults who speak openly about encouragement don’t really seem to have the slightest idea of how to do it. That is the reason Dreikurs reported for writing his excellent book Encouraging Children to Learn: The Encouraging Process. This process too is very complex, and most adults simply do not know to do it well. Many seem only to know how to discourage themselves and others.

To remedy this situation, parents and teachers have to learn the complicated technique of helping each child to improve his opinion of himself. But in our society many parents seem to almost deliberately discourage their children. Many parents’ way of raising children often confronts them with a series of discouraging experiences. We either do for the child what he could do for himself, i.e., we overprotect him, or we scold and punish. In doing so, we deprive the child of his sense of strength, and we do this just as successfully in our schools as we do in our homes. We are a mistake-centered society, and as such, we discourage our children. The more discouraged the child becomes, the worse he feels he is treated by life. Typically, in our society, good encouraging behavior is displayed only toward those who don’t need it. So, it has become necessary to teach encouragement in our society as part of a process of acculturation/socialization.

Within this short introduction, it is not possible to give the reader details of the methods to be used. These details will be represented in later chapters. Rather, here we will only advise parents and teachers that if and when they want to influence children they will have to learn to utilize the art of encouragement. Regardless of what one does with a child—regardless of how justified he may feel in what he is doing—if that person discourages or fails to encourage a child, he or she will only succeed in doing further harm. Unfortunately, in our current society both parents and teachers have learned to behave in many ways which have become increasingly discouraging to many—if not—most children and youth.

Chapter 1

Teaching Parents, Teachers, and Children

It is our belief, and a very firm belief, that all teachers need to learn to understand both the development of the child in the family and the problems of parents. Many teachers, of course, are parents and are keenly aware that it is difficult to be a teacher and even more difficult to be a parent. As part of teacher training conducted at the university level, we believe arrangements should be made for all student teachers to participate in training for at least one semester in some sort of parent education center. They must learn to understand parents, as well as children. It is also our conviction that our best hope to be effective in the critically necessary art and science of parent training will be through the effective training of teachers, who will in turn help to train the parents.

Preliminary Thoughts/Observations

At the present time, some teachers do seem to have an increasing amount of contact with parents, but to the degree that this may be true, it often is rather superficial in nature. And there is a general principle, which seems to prevail within that context. We have certainly noticed it, and some other adults may have as well. It is this: The less that the mother or teacher knows what to do with the child, the better she believes she knows what parents or teachers should have done or should do. Our parent-teacher relationships are at a low ebb because neither seem to fully realize what they have in common.

Parents and teachers will not ever really work together with any real success unless and until they realize what they have in common—ignorance. We must simply acknowledge that most parents and teachers don’t know what to do to guide the development of children. Instead of setting themselves up as authorities and telling each other what to do, when they often really don’t know what should be done, they need to first realize that they will have to work together to understand each particular child’s behavior.

It is our contention that teachers will need to learn the skills necessary to enable them to help parents undo much of the significant harm, which faulty family environments have often caused. This, of course, is the opposite of what we see today. Most educators and psychologists at the beginning of the twenty-first century seem to consider the child to be a product of order or disorder, environmental health or ill health, or other such influences. When we consider what can be done for and with a child, however, we must go beyond this. We must train our teachers and other behavioral specialists to understand parents and what parents can and should do to foster healthy child development. It is through the effective training