My Impressions of Warwick Dyer

At a recent conference on ADHD (March 27, 2004 in Ottawa), I had
the opportunity to hear a lecture by Warwick Dyer, the ground-breaking
child discipline expert.

He speaks with great conviction, 
with an insistence and emphasis which conveys a sense of urgency
about the importance of doing things the right way.  He is
quick to back up his points persuasively with arguments and examples.

He clearly cares deeply about the children he is helping -- though
he normally never meets them! -- and conveys a very strong message
to parents to follow through and do what needs to be done, however
difficult it can sometimes be.

Mind you, I already agreed with much of what he said before
I heard him, and there may still be a point or two I disagree
with him on.  Still, I really benefitted from hearing his message 
of following through and doing what we really know needs to be
done, without using excuses like being tired, forgetting or
wanting to make an exception in a rule just this once to be
nice to the child.

Dyer has quite a unique approach, and I'm convinced he is
very successful at what he does.  For a rather large fee, he
will travel anywhere in the world to meet with parents for
a day.  He then maintains phone contact with the parents
every day for as long as it takes to resolve the problems
with their child.  He claims a 95% success rate, and if
I understood correctly, the cases which were not successes
were cases where the parents did not follow his advice.

He gives the same advice regardless of whether the child has 
ADHD or not.  He considers the children he is hired for to
be children with "interactional difficulties".  He finds
that if the interactional difficulties in the relationship
with the parents are solved, then the problems with the
child are solved, and there is no need to treat the child
for ADHD.

He is hired by parents who are desperate, who have the
worst out-of-control children.  He is able to bring these
children around just by meeting with the parents and advising
them how to behave.  He emphasises that it's essential to
have daily phone contact with the parents, because it's
so hard to stay on-track.  If he isn't in contact with the
parents for a few days -- over Christmas for example -- then
he finds that they slip back into their old ways of
interacting.  Once the problems are resolved and a
new pattern is established, the phone calls are no longer
needed.

Children with interactional difficulties have "massive low
self-esteem" and find it hard to lose, according to Dyer.
They tend not to have friends because they've learned to
manipulate their parents, but when they do the same things
with friends it drives the friends away.

He prefers the word "sanctions" to refer to punishments or
consequences.  He says there should be more of an emphasis
on rewards than on sanctions, but that one has to talk about
sanctions, because everyone uses sanctions and if you don't
think them through, you'll use them wrong -- for example
finding yourself yelling at your child.  He says sanctions
should never be interpersonal (bringing emotions into it)
because this creates behaviour problems.

He emphasises that there are a number of essential elements
that all have to be done right, including being positive, using
sanctions, using the sanctions in such a way that you
never run out of sanctions, and not being angry.  The more
serious and frequent the problem behaviour, the smaller the
sanction should be, according to Dyer, so that you never run
into a situation where you've used up all your sanctions;
some children will go wild with misbehaviour in that situation,
knowing that there's nothing more you can do to them.

As examples of small sanctions that can be used for
frequent misbehaviour, he mentioned taking away one penny
of pocket money or 30 seconds out of a swimming session --
and then sometimes you have to find ways to make the
sanctions even smaller.

Sanctions should be on a daily, not weekly, basis, according to
him, and there should be a definite line separating 
acceptable and unacceptable behaviour:  when the second
hand of the clock ticks past a certain point, the time is
up and that's that.  Parents should not be angry and should
not enjoy applying the sanctions, and should show that they
don't enjoy it.  A punishment can be the most warm thing
you can do, he says, because of the way you do it.

Dyer says that requiring children not to be rude is a trick
parents can use.  It's a trick because in order to stop
being rude, the child is forced to change his/her emotional
state, and good behaviour tends to follow.  He advises really 
listening for rudeness, and applying the same standards to all
children in the family.  He finds that whenever the problem child in a
family -- the one he was hired to help with -- begins to behave well,
discipline problems always arise with the other children, so
he keeps working with the family until the problems are
resolved with all the children.

Dyer claims that it's easy to eliminate sibling rivalry.
He says that the usual way parents handle conflicts between
their children is to step in and act as judge, but that
arbitration doesn't work.  It may be the right thing to do,
but it doesn't work.  He asked the audience to imagine the
feelings of each child (the one who won in a conflict and the
one who lost) and explained how both children become motivated
to have more conflicts that involve the parent's arbitration.

He suggests that if one child hits another, you sanction them 
both for fighting.  Tell the children off together -- that brings
them together.  Although arbitration may be the right thing to
do, he says that the right thing to do is not effective.

This is one point where I diverge from Dyer.  I believe his
advice is effective, but in the case of sibling rivalry I
think there may be ways to be effective and at the same time be fair.
One step in that direction is to talk privately with each child
after a conflict.  This has less of the feel of being a referee
in a game with winners and losers, and more of the feel of 
being a private advisor helping the child learn how to manage
conflict better the next time;  and if punishments (or "sanctions")
are doled out, the other child is not there to gloat at the 
crucial moment.

I look forward to reading Dyer's book, expected to come out
within a year.  I feel he has important messages for parents.


Cathy Woodgold
http://www.ncf.ca/~an588/par_home.html