A904 Therapy with the New American Family

Today’s post-boomer parents and their children typically are the products of the same lifestyle experiences, and the rules that once defined parent-child relationships--top-down hierarchy, unquestioned parental authority, clear boundaries--are increasingly irrelevant. Yet, children still need authoritative leadership in the form of parental guidance and love. Drawing on case examples presented by participants, we’ll discuss an approach that balances contemporary chaos with positive interdependence and stunning disrespect with mutual empathy. You’ll learn concrete tools to get high-risk, attention-deprived kids and parents to listen to and learn from each other, build genuine resilience in troubled kids without phony praise, and lower the level of aggression in fragmented homes. We’ll focus on how to identify a child’s natural listening, conversational, and learning style and use them as guidelines to create meaningful limits and communication that fosters autonomy.

Meet the Instructor

Ron Taffel, Ph.D., is chairman of the board of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York. He’s the author of Breaking Through to Teens and Getting Through to Difficult Kids and Parents, for professionals, and The Second Family, a guide to raising adolescents. His latest book is Childhood Unbound: Saving Our Kids’ Best Selves.

Learning Objectives

1. List and discuss ways to replace 20th-century approaches for kids and teens with 21st- century strategies.
2. Demonstrate and practice ways to lower parental reactivity and acting-out by kids across all ages and most diagnostic categories.
3. Review and practice ways to increase the therapist’s leverage with tough kids and difficult parents.