Creating a Professional and Personal Relationship with Challenging Parents, in partnership with Region 9 Head Start Association

Editor’s note: This text-based course is an edited transcript of the webinar, Creating a Professional and Personal Relationship with Challenging Parents, in partnership with Region 9 Head Start Association, presented by Ronald Mah, MA, PhD, LMFT.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify key characteristics of a professional personal relationship.
• Identify four communication processes to connect and validate.
• Identify ways professionals might self-sabotage the communication process.

Introduction

I owned and ran a preschool and daycare program for many years. There was a kid who was challenging, and he had a dad I facetiously called “Thorny Man.” He was the guy that would bring his son to the school and look at all the teachers and so forth with a frown on his face.  The teachers thought, "Oh my goodness, this a little bit scary." He was not fun. He was thorny, abrasive, and as a result of that, people didn't want to talk with him. They didn't want to interact with him. We are human. We like to interact with the people who are friendly, who bring us cookies, who smile at us, and so forth. But they avoided him, and then he would walk out. It is important to recognize that someone who is already anxious and guarded is most likely going to give you problems.

How do you prepare for that? We are in the San Francisco Bay Area and one day he came into the school wearing a San Francisco Giants jacket, even though in the East Bay, people tend to be Oakland A's fans. I looked at him and said, “Hey, what are you doing wearing a San Francisco Giants jacket?” As people studying child development, you understand that the tone I spoke to him in was through invitational play. Immediately he got into it with me and said, "Forget the A's, I'm a Giants fan from way back." We then started talking about the Giants and it was fun, and after that Thorny Man and I would interact every day.

One day, I was about to walk inside to the building, when Thorny Man pulls up in a big rig truck. I asked him what was going on and he said, “This one of the rig trucks that I usually bring back to the yard, but if it is too late I take it home." I said, “That is really cool that your kid gets a ride in a big rig. The other kids would love that.”  Then he looks at me and says, "Bring them out." The next thing you know, there are 50 kids lined up on the sidewalk, each taking a turn to climb into the truck. They are all pretending like they are driving and everything. I made sure to remind them to say thank you to Johnny's dad for letting them drive the truck. So, Johnny got to see his father be a hero for the day. At a later date, I noticed him dropping off his kid at school again. He could not see me because I was on the other side of the drop-off area, and I notice him looking around. What was he looking for? He was looking for me. Since he is a thorny, abrasive person, he probably does not have that much human connection in his life. I was most likely a rare person in his day who bothered to reach through and connect.

One day I was coming into the school and he caught me on the sidewalk and said, "I want to talk to you." Angry, he said, "My kid got bit by a two-year-old last week, and the other week some three-year-old threw sand in his face and a four-year-old punched him and this after-school kid in kindergarten knocked him over. I responded to him in a way that was compassionate and professional. After 20 minutes of conversation, he said to me, "Thank you, I really appreciate that you take this time." This came from building that relationship ahead of time in anticipation of the problems that might come up.

Child and Adult Correlation

The professional personal relationship is investing in a positive alliance with the parent. Make sure you understand that we are talking about the parents. Them and them, and then you and them. There is a little kid inside every adult, so the things that we know about working with children can be very powerful in terms of working with adults as well. Everybody is still a human being with simple needs. Doing this ahead of time to invest in a positive relationship is critical.

It's a professional relationship with boundaries, but it's also a personal relationship because, by the time he saw me in the street, I'm not just the director of the school, I'm Ronald, this person who talks smack with him about baseball and shares with him, and lets him be the hero for the day because he drives up in a truck.

The Parent’s Personal Process

Integrity

You need to invest and show your integrity and honesty. Parents and families need to trust in your words and actions that you will not try to make things sound good when they are not and that you have their best interest at heart. Do that with sincerity by interacting with them on a regular basis because the difficulty of working with people is that we may not be as honest with them as we should be.

Connection

You need to show parents and families that you are for them and you are with them. You need to show that you have a rapport with who they are, where they come from, and what their challenges are. To do that, you need to show competence and your knowledge. They need to know that you know what you are doing and that you are doing it well.

Experience

They need to know that you have experience. They need to know you have done it before and can deal with all the possibilities. This can be done by telling families about what I call the war stories. These are stories about what you have done before. A classic example of this is dealing with a child who has separation anxiety and has difficulty letting their parents go. If you tell the stories of your experiences to the kids or parents, it helps them a great deal. For example, I will tell them that when they bring their child in, leaving them needs to be done in a timely fashion, but at the same time, it is a transition. What you can do when you come in is expect to spend five minutes creating a transition ritual. This could include putting their lunch away, hanging their jacket, reading a book, setting them up with a puzzle or a game, connecting them with other kids, or literally handing the kid over to another person to hold. As they go through the transition they start recognizing that they have been through this before and can expect what follows. I also tell this story about a little kid named Michael who used to come to the school, and every day he would have his father go all the way to the back of the school to say hello to the frogs that were in the aquarium. That was their transition ritual. These are the stories that show you not only understand the difficulty of separation, but that you also have confidence, knowledge, and experience.

Availability

In having those conversations, you are showing that you are available. Parents and families need to know that you are available to them when they have concerns. Being available to them is more than an open-door policy. An open-door policy means you are approachable, but also means that the door is open for you to come out. This means that after a weekend or holiday, you are checking in. A part of this is asking if there is anything new going on that might be important to their child. I highly recommend that when a parent comes to the school to pick up their kid, try to think of something that the kid said or did during the day. In that way, you are reaching out to them, and it may seem very perfunctory and minimal, but at the same time, it is about showing availability. I am here, I have been watching your kid, this not just a parking lot where your kid has been hanging out for the past several hours, but it is a place where your child has been interacted with. Important things happen here, and you want to let parents know about them. For example, I instituted newsletters at my school. Also, I had each of the teachers use a whiteboard and write the activities that the children did during group time. When parents came in to pick up their child they could see what was done that day and ask their child about it. It gave them a way to interact with the kids and create a link of availability. 

Personal Relationship

All of this comes down to creating a personal relationship. You are creating a personal relationship, and it shows that you are a real person and not just a role. For example, when I chatted with Thorny Man about baseball and so forth I was being a real person because baseball was not necessarily relevant to taking care of the kids.

Professionalism

At the same time, it is about professionalism. The thing about being professional versus just personal is that oftentimes there is a question about what to do. Should I go to a kid's birthday party? Should my staff be allowed to babysit kids? Insurance companies do not like that, but the reason that it is frowned upon is because of what is primary. The relationship is personal, but there is a primary role that involves boundaries. Treat them fairly and respectfully with integrity within those roles. Your primary role is to be a professional, child development expert, and being personable helps facilitate that. However, if you want these parents to be your best friends, that is problematic because then there are issues with boundaries and getting treated like family. That is wonderful, but also you have to remember you are not family. That means knowing boundaries and what you need to do to make them happen.

Confidence

Knowing all of this, it is about expressing confidence as well. Parents and families need to know that you believe in what you are doing and that you know you can do it. Sometimes in the child development field, people try to be humble. They do not want to be arrogant, narcissistic, or grandiose about themselves. But at the same time if you do not convey a sense of confidence, how are they going to feel confident about what you have to say, the recommendations, and the feedback you give them? You can develop that confidence by building your experiences, talking to other people, and taking classes. When you are unsure, have colleagues work with you and help you get confirmation. That confidence is important because if you go to the parents with a mealy-mouthed approach, it does not work very well.

Validating Messages

How do you follow through on all of that? Be able to integrate the learning. Avoid self-sabotage, apply more adaptive responses, and deepen your self-awareness. Deepening your self-awareness is really important. That is my illusion of being humble. This is because if I speak to you in an overly passive manner, it weakens your sense of confidence in me. You most likely have seen parents be very authoritative with children, then follow that with subjectivity, which compromises their ability to follow through. For example, a parent says, “You need to do this.  It is important.  You need to stop doing that. Okay?” The subjective “okay” kind of defeats their confidence and compromises their ability to follow through.

I like to think of a bowl to represent this. The bowl is a container, usually made up of the facts. For example, the fact of the matter with Thorny Man was that his kid did have behavior issues. However, as the father presented the facts to me, I could have reacted but that would not have worked. The facts are like a container, which is not important in of itself, but because of what it holds. You can have a nicer container, but it is important to remember that the facts hold an emotional request, which is to care. Through communication, I showed Thorny Man that I cared. Prior to that interaction, I had already shown him that I cared about him as a person to socialize within an appropriate, professional way.

What makes the facts so important is that when they are presented to you and they are non-accusatory, it is much easier to recognize that you care that the person is distraught. When Thorny Man caught me on the sidewalk, angry about his son, what did he want me to care about? He wanted me to care that he was worried about his son and anxious that he had failed as a parent to protect his child. So I spoke to the care. The challenge in relationships is beyond what we do in child development education. The issue is that when the facts do not make sense or challenge our integrity, you need to be able to stop being defensive and adjust so you can take care of them. When you are with babies, they cry and get upset. They cry because they are hungry, cold, there is a loud noise, and they cry like they are going to die. Do you argue with them and say, “Hey, you're not going to die”? No, because you recognize that the facts as they experience it in that infantile existential world are not true, and they are going to be okay. What do you do? You care for the child in terms of meeting needs, but you also hold and cuddle. Sometimes as people get older and become adults, we get caught up with the facts. It is reasonable to note that this can be very male-oriented. Men tend to be drawn to the facts and lose the emotional requests. As you do more professional work, you may start to become fact-oriented.

Psycho/Emotional Evaluation

It is an odd statement to make, but whatever is going on with the other person emotionally is what is important. That means implementing a psycho/emotional diagnosis/evaluation because what the adult is feeling in the situation is what matters, not the facts. An example of this is when I spoke with Thorny Man about what was happening to his kid and I validated his feelings rather than argue the facts. When you argue the facts, it seems to express that you are dismissing the emotional request, which would be harmful and negative to the relationship. By showing him that I cared, which was not admitting guilt or throwing my staff under the bus, I validated him. I was a caring and professional person. After speaking to the emotional issues, we then started dealing with the other things.

Emotional Connection and Validation

The four communication processes to connect and validate:

1. Gesture/visual expression
2. Voice tone
3. Touch
4. Validating message

The first thing is to connect the cycles of emotional connection and validation. There are four simple ways to do this. The first is through body language, nonverbal cues, facial expressions, and so forth. For example, when someone leans forward, that indicates interest. If I frown, pull back, or my body is tense that gives disconnected feelings. How do you hold your body? Is it open, is it receptive, and what is your facial expression? What is the tone of your voice? When you are taking care of babies, they do not understand what you say. What could you do? You can look at them with a kind expression and speak with a gentle tone, as well as hold them with care. That is why picking up a baby is so critical to the nurturing process. In fact, if you stand over young children as you correct them for behavior and so forth, it is very intimidating. If you have a harsh tone, that is worse. However, if you hold the child on your lap or kneel down next to them and pat them on the back, it is validating. The physical touch is validating and an emotional connection as well.

The fourth thing is the validating message. This is the least important because I could give you a message that would be otherwise validating, but it does not work if the facial expression, tone, and touch are not appropriate. This is why shaking hands is appropriate. The original message of two men shaking each other's hands was to show that they do not have any weapons. We now translate that to showing respect. We cannot solely rely on touch, but sometimes a handshake can be appropriate. Next, you get to the validating message. The message is not about right or wrong, but validating the emotional experience. “If I thought that happened to my child, I would certainly be really upset, too.” Can you say that with sincerity? Can you say that with honesty? Again, the body language and the tone can compromise that. These things come first and are most important in order to communicate. When I talked to Thorny Man on the sidewalk before getting inside the building, it took about 20 minutes. This was because I was insistent on making the emotional connection. The facts were not going to be heard. The facts of the matter were going to appear as me being defensive and denying his feelings. I took the time and had the patience, even though his kid did have some challenges. At the same time, what really mattered was that he needed to be heard as an anxious, worried parent.

The Reality Message

Once you get to that point, you can get to the facts. I cannot emphasize enough that the emotional connection is by far the most important thing. It is important to relay a phrase of regret to parents. The parent may bring up supervision, or how the other kids are being mean. Sometimes they want you to supervise in a way that does not work for your program. Your phrase of regret could get into how challenging it would be hard for teachers to change their schedule. Although you want to adjust, there are obstacles. These types of messages are important, but only after you have made the emotional connection. On the other hand, the parent may have a legitimate concern that they are correct about. You then must acknowledge and commit to it. “I'm not pleased with how we handled it, I agree. That’s something I would like us to improve as well.” Do you have the strength to own your mistakes? Does the organization have the security to own the challenges it has, so they can start improving? That is important.

Whether or not you agree or disagree, you must offer what you are going to do, including the alternatives, and explain it. The most frustrating thing for all of us is when we run into a situation with either utilities or banks, basically, we get the response, “Too bad, you’re stuck.” We then feel stymied and blunted, and that creates frustration that ignites a sense of powerlessness and disrespect. What can you do? Possible actions might be limited, and it may not fix everything, but explain what you can do. “We'll change how we can do that and I'll make sure teachers understand what you want.” A quick example of this is a father once being worried because the school had one bathroom that both boys and girls used. He was really concerned about his daughter. We had another bathroom, so what we could do was let her use this other bathroom. It was not the perfect answer but it is what we could do, and you know what? He was fine with it, and not because it was such a perfect solution, but because we were responsive. We cared about his concerns and we adjusted. Whether those concerns were valid or not, we heard and respected him.

Renew the Communication Contract

You then need to thank them for bringing the problem up. Initially, you had made this agreement with them that they could come to you with concerns. Remember I talked about availability? You have to go out and ask. Families who are upfront with their concerns are much easier than families who hold it in and get worked up. People build up frustration and when it comes out, it happens in a forceful way that can be painful. Whenever we obsess over something, it does not necessarily come out in an appropriate manner.

Self-Sabotaging Professionalism

I am a therapist and while this workshop is not going to be about therapy, it is important to realize that there can be deeper issues. There is a difference between counseling, coaching and consulting, and some deeper needs or therapeutic issues. Counseling, consulting and problem-solving is relatively straightforward. You are smart people that have reasonable life experiences, but there may be things that make it hard for you to follow through on things. Due to this, it is important to understand how you might self-sabotage or mess up, such as not talking to a parent when you should because you are afraid or uncomfortable. There are a variety of defensive styles in response to being attacked.

1. Attack back
2. Defensiveness
3. Placating or appeasement
4. Disassociating
5. Distracting
6. Running away
7. Taking the high ground morally or intellectually

The reason I list these is that I am prompting you to have deeper knowledge about your own defensive style. It is important to understand that when the parents are upset, it feels like they are attacking. For example, it felt like Thorny Man was attacking and criticizing my supervision of the entire program. What is your instinct? The important thing here is not to justify it, but to understand that you do it.

The first thing that people do is attack back. Attacking back would have been me saying to Thorny Man, “You're the one who needs to supervise your kid better. If your kid had better role models at home, then he wouldn't be doing this at the school.” This is not going to work because that is an antagonistic, oppositional response. Instead of attacking, some people get defensive. “That's not what happened, that would never happen. We don't do that.” When you sense them being defensive, it is very off-putting to you. Other people are placating. “I'm really sorry. We will never do that. Yeah, we'll do anything we can.” When you attack, you are knocking somebody away.  That is not good because the connection is about seeking validation and care. When you are being defensive, the hand motion that you do shows you are pushing somebody away. When you are placating, you are backing away, which is also not a connection. Somebody who is placating you is ostensibly agreeing with you and appeasing you, but on the other hand, there is still a disconnect. This is relevant because some of us have experienced high stress, or certain instances have been traumatic. Some people disassociate when they are under attack. They go to a different place because the situation is too scary. Disassociation or a trauma response has to do with intensity and being afraid. Since you cannot leave physically, people mentally or emotionally leave. You hear what is going on and recognize that there is communication, but there is no connection.

The style of distracting is interesting because it is actually recommended for discipline, which I have always found problematic. For example, if a kid is frustrated about something and you distract him with something else, the problem with that is that the kid is telling you what is upsetting him and you are telling him to ignore it. To me, that feels fundamentally disrespectful. When a parent is upset and you try to distract him by saying, "But your kid does this great project, they do have these friends and they were so good before." That is fine, but they just gave you their concerns on a platter and you started talking about something else. The reason why this is relevant is that a lot of people grew up with family or teachers who would distract. Those people are now running away and leaving the room, not taking phone calls, avoiding the person, and so on.

The more skillful way to deal with it is what I call taking the high ground morally and intellectually. Men most likely have a greater tendency to do this because they grow up in a more hierarchical subculture in terms of gender. Administrators tend to do this as well. Taking the high ground would be saying, “I can understand how you might feel that way, but you are morally wrong.” Taking the high ground intellectually is the language of telling another they do not understand. This implies that the other person is intellectually inadequate. “Let me explain, you don't understand. You should understand this now.” That can be very problematic. I am a relatively smart guy and intellectual, and I am also male. I have some tendency to respond in this style if I am not careful. My other personal experiences have to do with some stressful and traumatic experiences with a teacher that I had growing up, so I have a tendency to disassociate.

Recognizing Your Defensive Style

The reason that this is valuable is that this is not about pathologizing or blaming yourself, but because self-awareness tells you something. When I feel myself wanting to take the high ground or disassociate, I can take it to an intellectual level and remember the abusive teacher that I had and remind myself that that is what I do when I am attacked. With that awareness, I come back to remembering my tendency to distance myself when a parent is attacking me. Why are they doing this? They are attacking me because they are terrified that they have failed to protect their child. At a deeper level, they are terrified that they have failed to protect their child since they were not protected themselves. That does not happen all the time, but it does intensify things. One of the reasons why this intensity is challenging is that in the bigger scheme of things, it does not make sense to you. Why is this parent so angry and animated?

Reflecting upon that is what I call psychological algebra. One plus one plus one does not equal 10. How is that so? One is that this kid did have some behavior issues, another one is that what we did at the school was relatively consistent, and another one is that these different kids were getting mad at him. That does not equal 10-- that we were an abusive, neglectful program. It did not justify the father being that angry. What is that X factor that was missing? The X is usually something really important, and it might be emotional, psychological, from a past issue, and so forth. It is not logical given the information you had at hand, but if you incorporate human logic, developmental logic, logic of stress, logic of trauma, and prior life experiences, then it starts to make sense. When you understand that, you then activate the thought process of, “They're attacking me because of this anxiety or fear. What do they want?” You can then realize that the parent presented the facts in a problematic way that does not make sense to you. I am reacting to the facts and feeling attacked but what remember that the facts are the container and the emotional request, inside the container, is to care. That is when you pick up and hold the child, and give him a little hug with reassurances about how he feels. Doing this allows you to create a different container for nurturing and validation, and that is what the parents need as well. When people feel you doing that for them, the personal relationship deepens but also becomes a personal-professional relationship. It is your job to develop this personal-professional relationship. The children are not car parts or automobiles in the parking lot. They have a developmental process and you are helping them develop, but also helping the parents do what they need to do.

What does that mean? Your defensive style becomes the key to being

attacked and recognizing the entire dynamic. You have been attacked out of fear and insecurity, and then you implement the validation process. With Thorny Man, in a moment he went from being intense and angry to showing appreciation for my willingness to be supportive. We got to the next step, which is problem-solving regarding the kid's behavior and what to do to support him. The other thing that happened as a consequence of that was that he ended up becoming a major advocate for me as an individual, as well as for our program.

Another important part of this is having the awareness that the process is not working and it is getting more heated. For example, do you notice that whenever you get into a fight with a loved one, you end up arguing about the same thing for the third or fourth time? You feel like you are telling them the same thing over and over again, but they do not seem to get it. Between the two of you, you are missing the emotional requests. Somehow, both people are not getting what they want or need. What do they want or need? They need validation and connection. What does it come down to? It comes down to transcending the process and being self-aware. In this personal growth process of your own maturity, it makes you more equipped to deal with and support others.

Summary

There is a wonderful definition of Human Services that says it is about offering yourself in a human relationship with another person. What is the quality of that humanity you are offering? This is where your personal awareness, growth, and stability increase your capacity to perform the work of Human Services. As a result, you turn these challenging parents into people that you can work with, as well as create possible alliances. This is why one of the references from my website is about Building Constructive Alliances, with Angry, Insecure, Unhappy, or Suspicious People. Those are the parents that can make work very difficult, not the cookie-baking, field-trip driving parents who challenge the work world. A child’s challenges may come from the behavior of the parents, which means intervention with the parents might be important to get the child to a better place. Sometimes children have very challenging issues, and it is necessary to have a collaborative process with the parents. This way you work together, rather than be antagonistic with each other. I hope that was useful, and there is a second part to this training about having that hard conversation with the parents. It involves what we talked about here, but takes it to another level in terms of when somebody does not want to hear it and how to be professional.

References

Mah, R. (n.d.). Building Constructive Alliances with Angry, Insecure, Unhappy, or Suspicious People. http://ronaldmah.com/building-alliance-w-angry.html

Mah, R. (2007). Difficult Behavior in Early Childhood: Positive Discipline for PreK-3 Classrooms and Beyond. California: Corwin Press.