Advising Parents with Difficult Children and Adolescents: Managing Stress and Negative Behaviors

This paper suggests that helpers must often educate parents about the causes of stress and its effects on the parenting process. Parents with difficult children and adolescents often complain not only that their children misbehave or are unmotivated and depressed but that such behaviors create stress in the entire family. Many clinicians report that stress is both the by-product of dealing with difficult children and teenagers and the cause of problems in continuing to parent effectively. A cycle of arbitrary parenting and unacceptable responses gets set up. Highly motivated parents feel powerless and often angry, while many others simply give up. Major factors contributing to stress include child factors such as moodiness or emotional lability, delinquent or antisocial behavior, social isolation or withdrawal, failure to achieve or persevere; parent factors including life restrictions, social alienation, relationship issues with parenting partner, feelings of incompetence or guilt; interaction or relationship factors between parent and child; and life stress events. Interventions to reduce stress can be targeted to the location and type of stress involved. It is important to help parents understand that some of their experience is characteristic of normal families. (EMK)