Dr. Thomas W. Phelan

Things change so fast these days, sometimes it seems you have to struggle just to keep up. And there's only so much time in the day! So we have decided to leave behind our blogging efforts in favor of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the continuation of our Newsletter. 

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1-2-3 Magic Newsletter Mar 2011

  •  Kids Are Just Kids--Not Little Adults
  •  Quick Tip: Noncompliance

Kids and Technology: The Triple Alliance

Kids’ daily consumption of mass communication by means of various tech devices gets larger and larger every year (so does their parents’). Recent estimates tell us that over 7.5 hours per day are spent by 8-18 year olds with TV, cell phones, music, computer, video games, print and movies. Some people claim the real figure should be 10.5 hours, because about three of the daily techcom hours are spent “multitasking,” which means doing two or more things (TV, texting, surfing) at the same time.

The power of “techcom” is here to stay. The clout of the omnipresent new screens in our lives is based on a sort of accidental alliance among three groups: our kids, techcom providers and parents. In this alliance kids and techcom providers are active seekers, while parents are often passive participants. What does each group get out of the deal?

Kids. Children get reliable, immediate, fascinating, non-stop entertainment. Kids are naturally curious. What better vehicle for satisfying curiosity than the Web? TV, music and video games also provide guaranteed fun—and there’s no waiting! The experience is not like living on a farm in the middle of nowhere in the 1850s; it’s more like bringing every aspect of the big city—the good and the bad—right into your own bedroom. To kids, tech is brain candy. Kids actively seek new and exciting material, and they have a network of consultants to help them.

Providers. The people who provide this intense experience to kids are not individuals. They are companies. Out of the three-way conspiracy, they get profits. There’s nothing wrong with making money, and these huge organizations pay their taxes, try to satisfy their shareholders, and provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. But a financial bottom line is just that: dollars. These companies are not primarily concerned with what may or may not be in the long-term interests of your kids. Like the children, techcom providers are active and busy seeking new products and clients, and they also have multiple consultants available.

Parents. Now you might wonder how parents could possibly conspire to foment the tech uprising. What do we get out of the deal? Simple: effective babysitting. Seven to ten hours per day. Add that to the end of a school day and you hardly have to do anything! We want to see our kids happy. When they are watching TV, phoning friends or furiously working their Xbox 360 consoles, they are happy. They don’t fight as much. You are free to recover from your own long work day. This is not an insignificant benefit. So parents tend to passively let children and techcom providers hook up. Parents do not use consultants because they do not have time, do not see the need, or feel intimidated by technology.

The triple alliance and media/technology consequences are not run by anybody. The President doesn’t run it, the courts don’t control it, consumer groups and churches don’t have much say. The techcom revolution is like a huge monster charging ahead full speed. Representing both good and bad, the monster is lost—but it’s making good time.

(Excerpt from 1-2-3 Magic, 4^th Edition)

For Pediatricians and Parents: How Much Help Is Needed?

Imagine you’re a pediatrician completing a physical exam on an eight-year-old boy. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and you’re already running 35 minutes late. Just before walking out the door, the boy’s mother becomes a little teary and says, “You know, I hate to bother you, Doctor, but Bobby’s behavior is just awful sometimes. He doesn’t listen to anything I say. Getting him out the door in the morning is just terrible and I swear someday he’s going to kill his little sister.”

What do you do? You have two problems. The first problem is you’re short on time. The second difficulty is making a good decision about what to do about this mother’s concern.

 Here’s what lots of pediatricians as well as mental health professionals do: They use 1-2-3 Magic to help them deal with the behavioral problem and to help them decide what level of service this mother and boy need. This intervention may be carried out in three steps.

Step 1. After listening for a few minutes to the parent’s complaints, the doctor tells mom to watch the 1-2-3 Magic DVD program. If both parents are living at home (and in many cases even if they’re not), the boy’s father should also watch the program.  The physician may loan out the video, have the parents watch it in the office or have the parents purchase it on the Internet. Then the parents begin using the 1-2-3 procedures.

Step 2. After using 1-2-3 Magic for 3-4 weeks, the parents report back to the doctor by phone, fax or email. If the behavior problems have been largely resolved—which is often the case—the pediatrician makes a note to check behavioral concerns during each of the child’s next regular visits (and Step 3 is unnecessary for the present). If the behavior is better but still too much of a problem, the doctor makes an appointment to see the parents.

Step 3. During this visit the pediatrician must decide between two alternatives. If the 1-2-3 Magic is not yet working well enough, there are usually two possible reasons. Either the parents are violating the No-Talking and No-Emotion rules, or the child is, in fact, presenting behavior that merits referral and further evaluation. If the doctor feels the first is the likely culprit, he reinforces the need for calm decisiveness and silence in discipline situations and then sends the parents back to try again. If he feels the child is more the problem, he makes a referral for a child evaluation.

Generally speaking, pediatricians and mental health professionals don’t have the time to teach their clients how to be good parents. 1-2-3 Magic can help do that for them. The 1-2-3 program can also assist with the problem of differential diagnosis: Is this child just a typical kid or does he need more intervention in addition to the 1-2-3? Our three steps will help our professional efficiently carry out that decision making process—and it will also save lots of our doctor’s valuable time.

Regular Getaways are Critical

During an interview the other day, a reporter asked me which was harder, being a parent or a grandparent. That's a no-brainer! Being a parent is so much harder it's not funny. I don't know how we did it sometimes. As a grandparent you usually (but not always) have long periods away from the grandkids. This may sound terrible, but it's critical for parents to get away from their children regularly. How do you get away? Let us know.

Here's one of one of my favorite ways.

 

When “OK?” Is Not OK

One of our 1-2-3 Magic trainers recently came up with this piece of advice. When asking a child to do something positive (like go to bed) or to stop doing something negative (like whining), some moms and dads routinely attach the word “OK?” to the end of their response. It sounds like this:

“It’s time for bed now, honey. OK?”

“I want you to stop whining and use your big girl voice, OK?”

Is this good or bad? It’s bad. Why?

First of all, there’s no need for the extra comment.  Requests should be kept simple, short and straightforward.

Second, the “OK?” is not a benign comment—it’s a troublemaker. The “OK?” communicates to the child that the parent is anxious about whether or not the youngster is going to cooperate. Kids can sense this anxiety in their parent’s voice immediately, even though the child may be only two or three years old. The “OK?” tells the child right away that the parent is vulnerable and unsure of herself or himself.

Third, the troublesome “OK?” implies that at this point the child has a choice in the matter. Now how many kids like to go to bed at night or actually want to stop whining? Not very many. So combine the kid’s natural aversion to cooperating with the parent’s uncertainty and what do you get? You get the potential for a bad scene complete with arguing, yelling and tantrums.

So next time you want a child to cooperate and you need to make a simple request, DO NOT put “OK?” on the end of it!

OK?

Oops.

1-2-3 Magic Newsletter Feb 2011

  •  Overparenting: What's the Problem?
  •  Shared Fun & Your Child's Self-Esteem

Who Is 1-2-3 Magic For?

1-2-3 Magic is for parents and teachers of kids in the approximately 2-12 age group, whether the children are typically developing or special needs. People often ask, however, what about kids under two or over 12?

The fact of the matter is that you can use the 1-2-3 with average children down to about 18 months of age, as long as their cognitive abilities are thought to be in the average range. Many parents think, “These kids can’t even talk, how are they supposed to learn the drill?” The answer is that receptive language precedes expressive language. These children can understand and think long before they can use their own words. They are plenty smart enough to master the 1-2-3, especially if you don’t prattle too much and confuse them.

What about teens? It’s pretty easy to continue counting your offspring into the teen years if that was they way they were raised. You’ll want to be counting fewer things, though, as teens usually have their “MBAs”—Minor-But-Aggravating behaviors (like musical preferences, dress, rolling eyes and messy rooms) that you may want to ignore. Some parents have told me they were still counting the “kids” at age 22 if they were still living at home! As you know, any count should be calm, quiet and respectful for it to do good.

What about dads? This is a question that mothers often ask me. At the end of a workshop, a mom will come up to me and say this: “I like the program and I think it will help us a lot. But my husband wasn’t here tonight. How do I get him on board?”

The answer: I ask mom to get a copy of the first (blue) 1-2-3 Magic DVD from the library, Netflix, Amazon or our website. Then she asks her husband to watch it. But there is one caveat: Mom cannot be in the room while dad is watching. This is because during the viewing many moms have a tendency to say, “See, this is what you need to be doing, etc., etc.” This turns dad off to the program and may also send him out of the room!

The nice thing about this strategy, when it works, is that mom and dad can “own” the program together and start the 1-2-3 as a team.

Who else is 1-2-3 Magic for? Teachers (preschool and elementary), camp counselors, grandparents, babysitters, bus drivers and anyone else who is a child caretaker for any extended period of time. And even though the teacher book doesn't say it, 1-2-3 Magic for Teachers can be used with high school students.