Alexander Orlov read for us a book by Robert and Jean Bayard “Your restless teenager. A Practical Guide for Desperate Parents”
I fell in love with this book 16 years ago when I first read it in English. She, like a hand in a glove, then lay down in my picture of the world. By that time, I had been a Rogerian for four years, and the authors of the book, Gene and Robert Bayard, had once taken a training course with the American psychotherapist Thomas Gordon, one of Carl Rogers’ graduate students and employees.
Gordon created his own system of work with interpersonal relations, very psychotechnical, practically oriented. And the Bayards, on the basis of this system and their own psychotherapeutic practice, created a guide for the parents of such teenagers who are completely out of hand and refuse to obey.
There is a striking contrast between this and most other books that seem to have the same goal: to help parents not to get lost in this difficult period of relations with grown children.
The canonical pedagogical doctrine assumes that an adult influences a child in every possible way in order to educate him. And the Bayards offer a psychotherapeutic vision of these relationships, moreover, they show how to make them equal, based on trust, acceptance, sincerity.
The main value of this guide (and at the same time the main difficulty for those who want to use it) is that parents themselves must change in order to establish such a relationship.
In traditional pedagogy, it is generally accepted that in the process of education and upbringing, an adult controls the child, makes him play by his own rules. But this happens only for the time being. And in those cases when it is no longer possible to cope with a teenager, parents begin to experience helplessness, despair.
The work of the Bayards gives a chance to learn a new type of relationship according to the principle: change yourself – and this will cause changes in others. The only question is whether parents will want to take this chance, because the book does not guarantee the solution of all problems by the mere fact of reading it.
Bayards do not reason abstractly, but set out a sequence of intelligible exercises, techniques taken from their own psychotherapeutic experience. The benevolent intonation of the authors captivates, which creates the impression of a lively, warm conversation, devoid of edification.
This is the kind of book that never gets old because it serves all families in good stead again and again as their children become teenagers. Reading it helps parents understand their own feelings and realize that difficulties in relationships with teenage children can be overcome.
Robert and Jean Bayard. Family therapists have been in clinical practice in California (USA) for almost half a century. They raised five children, surviving most of the problems discussed in this book. Their bestseller Your Restless Teen went through five editions in Russia, the last in 2006.
The information and materials contained in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of UNESCO. The authors are responsible for the information provided.