Children's Acute Disciplinary Problems - Book Report/Review Example

These two kinds of escalation are (a) complementary escalation, in which parental giving-in leads to a progressive increase in the child's demands, and (b) reciprocal escalation, in which hostility begets hostility. Omer (2001) practically based his non-violent resistance technique on several propositions. First he said that the "greater the dominance orientation of the participants in a conflict, the greater the risk of escalation." This refers to the state wherein a party seems to show his dominant status over the other.

Domination encourages resistance and therefore provides a chance for a conflict to escalate. Secondly he stated that "the greater the psycho physiological arousal of the parties, the higher the risk of escalation." It simply means that when both parents and the misbehaving child are in the heightened state such as anger, stress, anxiety, and other pressures the chance for the conflict to grow is higher. Thirdly he stated, that "parental exhorting, entreating, and apologizing, increase the risk of complementary escalation [while] parental arguing, threatening, blaming, and screaming, increase the risk of reciprocal escalation.

" This point is just an elaboration of the two escalation modes the study was aimed to resolve. The fourth proposition states that "constant hostile interchanges tend to narrow the parent-child interaction to conflictual issues and conflictual patterns; this, in turn, reduces the options of conflict avoidance or of successful conflict resolution." This statement is self explanatory. Meanwhile the last proposition speaks of reconciliation measures as an aid to overcome the narrowing-down of relationship and increases the potential of conflict-resolution.

Research Method and Findings To prove this non-violent resistance approach, which Omer considered as an "attitude," a technique referred to as "sit-in" was employed. In the sit it process, the parents, single parent or both, come into the child's room and sit on a chair, preferably those that blocks the door and prevents the child from escaping. In a cool manner without any show of dominance, or any form of threatening, exhorting, blaming, preaching, or any other show of provocation the parent can say some works like, "We cannot accept that you do so and so.

We will sit here and wait for any idea you may have on how this behavior can be avoided." If the process would yield a proposal, the parents consider them without any promises and other forms of consolation and treat the proposal seriously. If there would never be any resolution, the parents go out after about a specified length of time, and then repeat the process until some resolutions are reached. The techniques presented a lot of different variations such as use of note after a non successful attempt, the use of a third party as mediator, and others.

The suggested commonality is based on the principle of "strike the iron when it is cold," which allows the sit in to take place after some cooling period after the misbehavior. This