How a family peace plan can stop the bickering

Watch Video: How a family peace plan can stop the bickering by Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW, ...
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How a family peace plan can stop the bickering

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At UCLA in our parent training program, we have an overall approach to family behavior. We take all kids behavior and we divide them into things that we like, behaviors that we dislike, and the behaviors that are unsafe, dangerous, hurtful etc. General rule. See a behavior you like. Pay attention to it. You praise. General rule. When you see a behavior that you dislike, you remove attention. Ignore it. Don't give it any fuel. And, when that crosses the line, something unsafe or dangerous, or repeated non-compliance to parents commands, well we have to set limits. So bickering - what's bickering? Bickering is the behavior that we dislike. It's annoying. It pushes your buttons. The best thing you can do, everybody's squabbling and squawking - walk away. Give yourself a little break. Take some time. It's gong to help you. And then when you come back into the room, watch to see you's not bickering, and you give your attention to that child. You are going to help turn things around.

Watch Video: How a family peace plan can stop the bickering by Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW, ...

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Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW

Director, UCLA Parenting & Children’s Friendship Program

Cynthia G. Whitham, LCSW, Director of the UCLA Parenting and Children’s Friendship Program, has been training parents for over 30 years. She is the author of two books, Win the Whining War & Other Skirmishes: A family peace plan, and The Answer is NO: Saying it & sticking to it, which have been translated into nine languages. In addition to her UCLA group classes, Ms. Whitham has a private practice on the east and west sides of Los Angeles. In 2000, she spent a month training clinicians at the National Institute of Mental Health of Japan. A lively speaker, Ms. Whitham does presentations and trainings for schools and organizations. Ms. Whitham raised two happy, healthy, and (relatively) well-behaved children (she thinks that may be the best credential of all). Daughter Miranda McLeod is a fiction author and is in a PhD program at Rutgers University. With sadness, Cynthia tells us that her son Kyle died in 2007, within months of graduating from San Francisco State University.

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