1. Zhenghua Primary School Established in 1989
Care Learning Innovation Collaboration
Breakfast Talks 2019:
The Parenting Pyramid

2. A story …
A father gets home from Friday night and discovers that his 2 sons, 11 and 14, have gone to the pool hall to play pool
His immediate reaction: “What?!!”
His concerns: the pool hall was a place of bad influence (“grimy den of iniquity”) with “kids smoking, … boys hanging on girls, kids placing bets with other kids, dark lighting…”

3. A story …
2 choices:
1a) get them immediately from the pool hall and 1b) make clear their behaviour was unacceptable and not to be tolerated; consider grounding them
2) do the patient thing: wait till they come home and carry out 1b)
Either way the children wouldn’t like the decision:
“I knew I could make them obey, but I knew they wouldn’t be happy. They would likely complain & argue.”

4. A story…
The father’s choice – option 2; it gave him time to think and by the time the children came home, he had a new alternative:
Option 3: played pool with his boys for the next 4 Fridays
Paid for the games, had a good time with the boys
Pool hall was just as the father had envisioned it; father and sons observed the “desperate loneliness of the many teens”
Their clothes smelt so much of smoke they had to air the clothes when they got home each time.

5. How the story ended…
On the 4th Friday, when they got home from the pool hall, the father said
“You know something, guys? I don’t think we should play pool anymore.”
The sons’ response:
Just a simple “Okay, Dad.”
 No hard feelings, harsh words, arguing or complaining

6. Two Types of Questions

7. Some parenting questions
What do we do to stop our children from fighting?
What do we do when our children don’t come home on time?
What do we do when our children fail to do their homework?
What do we do when our children don’t do their chores?
 These boil down to one question:
What do we do when things go wrong?

8. Some parenting questions
How do we teach our children to be responsible?
How do we help our children love each other?
How do we help our children excel in the things they do?
How do we help our children enjoy family activities?
 These boil down to one question:
How do I help things go right?

9. Which is the more important question?
How do I help things go right?
Which question do we typically spend more time and energy on?
What do we do when things go wrong?
The key to effective parenting is to “reverse this order in expenditure of time and energy. It is to begin focusing our energy on helping things go right rather than on handling them once they have gone wrong.”

10. 4 Basic Parenthood Questions

11. 1) Am I correcting my children without teaching them
1) Am I correcting my children without teaching them? If I have tried many things and my children just aren’t responding, the solution is not to try still more methods of correction. The solution is to do a better job of teaching.

12. 1) Am I correcting my children without teaching them?
Whichever discipline method we use, the effectiveness of our correction of our children will always depend on the effectiveness of our prior teaching of them
The better we teach our children
the fewer mistakes they will make;
the easier it is to correct them when we have to, because our correction is merely an extension of our teaching
the emotional character of our correction will be loving and helpful rather than impatient and angry
“If we try to correct our children when the other elements of the pyramid are not in place, our correction will always be wrong … no matter how sophisticated and intellectually respectable our method happens to be.”

13. Correction
Teaching
The effectiveness of our correction is dependent on the quality of our teaching.

14. 2) What is the quality of my relationship with my children?
No matter how much time I spend teaching my children, they are unlikely to learn much from me if they don’t like me.

15. Back to the story…
The father realized he had to build his relationship with his sons before he tried to teach them.
The father’s awareness: he had been busy with work and distant from his sons. Given this and the angry state he was in, his sons were not ready to learn from him.
When he had built the relationship, it was much easier for the sons to listen to his teaching and correction.

16. Parent-Child Relationship
Correction
Teaching
Parent-Child Relationship
The effectiveness of our teaching
is dependent on the quality of our relationship.

17. 3) What is the quality of my relationship with my spouse?
If parents are having difficulties in their relationship, the children tend be affected
Some may take out their marital frustration on their children and punish their children harshly
Some may indulge their children, to prove that they are loved or favored by their children
 “When there is a conflict, children almost always get used.”

18. Parent-Child Relationship
Correction
Teaching
Parent-Child Relationship
Husband-wife relationship
The marital relationship is the central relationship in the family.

19. 4) How do we see and experience the people around us (our “way of being”)?
“The roots of effective parenthood lie deeper than anything we DO; the roots of effective parenthood lie in how we ARE.”

20. Way of Being Who we are as people Is your spouse a person to you?
the way we see and experience the people in our world
our way of being with them
Is your spouse a person to you?
Do you appreciate and honour him/her as a person, with hopes, dreams, fears and wants as real and important as yours?
Or do you see him/her in terms of your hopes, dreams, fears and wants?

21. Husband-wife relationship
Correction
Teaching
Parent-Child Relationship
Husband-wife relationship
Personal Way of Being
The first 4 levels are concerned with helping things go right – they focus on our way of being, on loving relationships in our marriage and with our children and on teaching. These are the foundations of parenthood, in that order. They are also the foundations of effective correction when correction is required. If we try to correct our children when the other elements of the pyramid are not in place, our correction will always be wrong. This is true no matter how sophisticated and intellectually respectable our method happens to be.
Our personal way of being affects every other part of the pyramid.

22. Summary of the parenting pyramid
1. Although correction is a part of parenthood, it is the smallest part.
2. The key to effective correction is effective teaching.
3. The key to effective teaching is a good parent/child relationship.
4. The key to a good parent/child relationship is a good husband/wife relationship.
5. The key to a good husband/wife relationship is our personal way of being. Indeed, this quality affects every other aspect of the pyramid; that is why it is the deepest foundation.

23. Husband-wife relationship
Correction
Teaching
Parent-Child Relationship
Husband-wife relationship
Personal Way of Being
The first 4 levels are concerned with helping things go right – they focus on our way of being, on loving relationships in our marriage and with our children and on teaching. These are the foundations of parenthood, in that order. They are also the foundations of effective correction when correction is required. If we try to correct our children when the other elements of the pyramid are not in place, our correction will always be wrong. This is true no matter how sophisticated and intellectually respectable our method happens to be.
The solution to a problem in one part of the pyramid lies below that part of the pyramid. .

24. How should we respond in a crisis & correction is needed immediately?
Don’t let the corrective action use up all your energy
Ultimately the problem and the solution go deeper than discipline
Premature teaching will not be effective anyway
Begin working on the 3 deepest levels of the pyramid immediately and simultaneously.

25. For reflection: 4 basic questions about parenthood
1) Am I correcting my children without teaching them?
2) What is the quality of my relationship with my children?
3) What is the quality of my relationship with my spouse?
4) How do I see and experience people around me (my “way of being”)?

26. For Group Discussion Option 1 Option 2 Option 3
Write on a post-it a challenge you face as a parent.
Select one challenge to discuss as a group.
Discuss how we can use the parenting pyramid to address this parenting challenge.
Option 2
2a) Share how you build and sustain a good relationship with your child.
2b) (For P6 parents) Share how you will support your child and help him/her to have a positive experience in P6.
Option 3
Share how you make time to build and sustain a good relationship with your spouse.

27. Reference
The Arbinger Company (1998), The Parenting Pyramid