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Unhappy Teenagers:
A way for parents and
teachers to reach them
By William Glasser, M.D.
HarperCollins Publishers:2002
Reviewed by Loi Eberle, M.A.
This book is written by world-renowned psychiatrist, William
Glasser, M.D., whose other books include: Choice Theory,
Reality Therapy, and The Quality School. In Unhappy Teenagers,
Glasser focuses on offering his advice to parents of teenagers,
based on his decades-long career as a therapist. He encourages
parents to reject the often-used strategies of coercion to
get teenagers to change their behavior; these strategies
“have never worked” he asserts. Instead, he offers a different
approach based on Choice Theory, that he contends parents
can use with “confidence and love to keep a strong relationship
with their child.” Glasser spells out the seven deadly habits
parents practice, which occur when parents “stop doing things
with [their teenager] and start doing things to him.”
He encourages parents to change their behavior by learning
to replace their current practice of “external control psychology”
with the more effective strategies used in choice theory.
He contends that “through coercion, we can temporarily control
the actions of other people, but we can never control their
thoughts.” How far our teenagers deviate from what we want
them to do depends on the strength of our relationship with
them, he contends, “the stronger it is, the more she will
behave the way you want her to when she is on her own.” What
interferes with this relationship are the seven deadly habits
of: “criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening,
punishing, and rewarding to control.” He claims that, “almost
all relationships, except some marriages, can be resuscitated
by giving up the deadly habits.” He advocates replacing them
with what he calls the seven connecting habits: “caring,
trusting, listening, supporting, negotiating, befriending,
and encouraging.”
Throughout the book he provides many examples of how to
deal with unhappy teenagers, which in some cases can also
include temporary residential placement, but in each case
the relationship is improved through the use of connecting
habits. According to Glasser, “as long as your teenager is
under your roof, if you persist in your effort to rid yourself
of external control, your relationship will improve.” In
his conclusion he encourages readers to write to him about
their successes, and “accept that any failure you may have
is only temporary… any honest conversation you have with
your teenager that brings you closer together is a strong
step
in the right direction.” |
