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- George Santayana

The best way to help children is to help parents. If parents do not like what their children do, it is not the children alone who must change. If Johnnie is a problem, he is not going to improve by being taken from expert to expert, unless something is done about the situation at home. This chapter is written to help parents help children. 'Experts' cannot do the job parents can.

It is true there are many professional child-raising experts, including child psychiatrists and child psychologists who per- form testing and do treatment. In the past the baptism of a child was referred to as 'having the child done'. In similar vein it may seem that bringing Junior to a child psychiatrist may imply having the child 'redone' or perhaps 'undone'. Unless the parents are simultaneously being redone, I believe most of these efforts are a waste of time and money. I believe most parents intuitively feel the same way, but some parents, not knowing what else to do, or not wanting to become involved themselves, go along with the idea of child treatment, if they can afford it. Many other parents shy away from the unknowns of getting help with child raising, viewing their situation as some kind of Pandora's Box that perhaps is best left unopened.

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They read the latest books, consult the newspaper columns, and play 'Ain't It Awful' over morning coffee. They practise 'patience' without answers in the hope that Junior is 'going  through a phase' and base their hopes on an uncertain principle that permissiveness is a good thing. The answers they seek are not forthcoming, and they struggle through child raising with the small comfort, 'Well, at least I'm bigger than he is.' Some parents exercise their 'bigness' violently, battering-and bullying their children into shape. Then the day of reckoning arrives, somewhere around adolescence, when 'he's bigger than I am'. There is great misery all around, for the parents and for the children. This does not have to be. It is the purpose of this chapter to brighten the picture of child raising with the application of P-A-C, not only to the relationship between the parents and children, but also to that between children and other children.

The psychiatric treatment of children is a relatively recent development. While the early psychoanalytic theorists emphasized the significance of what happened to the child in the early family setting, working directly with children was not a part of the early application of that theory to treatment. One difficulty was the problem of communicating with the little person. The other was the early recognition that little could be accomplished in working with the child without the involvement of the significant grownups in his environment, mainly his parents.

The first comprehensive clinical structure for treating children developed in the 1920s in what became known as the Child Guidance Clinic. This developed into a conjoint 'treatment experience' for parent and child, with the child being 'treated' by a method called play therapy and the parent being helped with social case-work counseling. Central to the method was the opportunity for parent and child to 'express feelings', with the aim of eliminating a potent source of pro-vocation to negative and destructive behaviour. Through the use of toys and other symbolic media of communication the child was encouraged to turn on his tormentors, the parents, with a cleansing catharsis of 'negative feelings'. Thus when Junior flushed mother doll down the toilet or broke the arms off the little sister doll, notes were made for the next session of 'conferencing', an activity of great importance to the clinic staff. The assumption was that these expressions would cleat the way for the development of more positive feelings based on the new insights the parents would derive from their work with the social worker - that after a given number of 'I hate you's' the 'I love you's' would somehow follow. Yet, inadequate understanding by the parents of the actions, or transactions, which produced feelings frequently left the situation unchanged. In fact, the situation often got worse as the child was told 'expressing feelings is a good thing', turning the family into a battlefield, with Junior the commanding general. It was like nose drops. It relieved the congestion for awhile but was not particularly helpful in preventing tomorrow's congestion. Some people go through life expressing feelings. In both instances, it would appear that the activity is at the wrong end of things. It is not that expressing feelings or using nose drops does not have certain therapeutic benefits, but there is more to it than that.

The emphasis in these early modes of treatment was on what the child could achieve and how his behaviour could change, although there was some acknowledgement that the parents had to be involved. Our emphasis in Transactional Analysis is on what the  parents can achieve so that the nature of the transactions between parent and child will change. When this happens, the change in the child will soon follow.

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Everyone recognizes the increasing complexities of the culture and social structure in which we live today, with the many pressures that tend to weaken and even destroy the family as the primary social structure for meeting the emotional needs of children. Under the impact of uncertainties, the outpourings of news and entertainment media, and a flood of demands, the modern mother feels embattled and frequently on the verge of disintegration in her struggle with frustration. Everything around her is in conflict. Her sensitivity is dulled, as it has to be, as within seconds her television set moves from the ghastly reports of war to the glories of a new life with Clairol. Her Parent is in conflict with her husband's Parent over the finer points of good child raising. Her Parent rides her Child in an internal dialogue that makes her feel a failure as a mother. Her children scream at each other and at her. She reads to get more data, but the data conflicts. One authority says 'spank', another says 'never spank', and still another says 'spank sometimes'. In the meantime, her feelings build up to the point where she wants to 'beat hell out of the little bastards'. Her house is full of appliances which help her do everything with the greatest of ease. But what she needs the most is a tool to bring order out of the chaos, determine which goals are important and which are not, to find realistic answers to the repeated question: How can I raise my children properly?

To this question Grandmother might observe sagely, 'We didn't have all this trouble back in the good old days before all these books on modern psychology.' Grandmother has a point there, since there was a great deal of good in the old days. Gesell and Ilg observed:

In the more olden times, the world of nature and of human relationships expanded in a rather orderly manner, keeping pace with the maturity of the child. The home was large, the membership of the family numerous, and usually there was yet another child to be born. Someone was always near to look after the preschool child and to take him by graduated stages into his widening world, step by step, as his demands gradually increased. There was free space around his home, a field, a meadow, an orchard. There were animals in barn, pen, coop, and pasture. Some of these fellow creatures were young like himself. He could feast his eyes on them, touch them, sometimes even embrace them. Time has played a transforming trick with this environment. The apartment child, and to some extent even the suburban child of today, has been greatly deprived of his former companions, human and infrahuman. Domestic living space has contracted to the dimensions of a few rooms, a porch, a yard; perhaps to a single room, with one or two windows. {1}

They lament the loss to the small child of today of 'ample intimate contact with growing life, with other children, with a variety of adults'.

Not only does there seem to be a lack of these early good experiences, there is also a deluge of frightening incoming data. It is true there have always been wars and atrocities, but they didn't happen in the living-room on the television set.

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Long before the child is able to cope with the elementary difficulties of getting along in the family, he is introduced to what my little girl calls 'a screwy world' of race riots, child prisoners blindfolded at bayonet point, mass murder, and world leaders debating the possibility of global annihilation. Add to this the difficulty for the small child of sorting out what is  fact and what is fiction: Is this the news or is it a movie? Is that the head of the cavalry or is that the governor? Does smoking cause cancer or is it the breath of spring?

During the Cuban crisis in 1962 my daughter Heidi, then in kindergarten, where the youngsters were being taught 'atom bomb drills', said to her mother, 'Mama, let's talk about the war and the bomb and things.' Mother replied, 'OK, Heidi, what shall we say about it?' To which Heidi replied, 'You say all the words, Mama. I don't know any of the words about this.'

This, then, is the world as we find it, not some sheltered pastoral scene with little lambs and yellow flowers and the Good Ship Lollipop, but a world of anger and clashing sounds, amplified to such levels that the temptation is to turn it off and not care about the difference between Clairol and crime, or the difference between the assassination of a President and the comic demise of a cattle rustler in a black hat.

Will Rogers once said, 'The schools ain't what they used to be and never was.' Maybe the good old days 'never was' either, but the badness did not touch children as early and as intimately as it does today. This does not change the problem, but it makes it more urgent than ever that parents have a tool to help their children develop an Adult early to get along in the world as it is.

Where to Start

Ideally, we would like to start at the beginning. One effective application of Transactional Analysis has been a teaching programme for expectant parents, which has been conducted in Sacramento since 1965 by Dr and Mrs Erwin Eichhorn. He is an obstetrician-gynaecologist and she is a teacher of nursing at Sacramento City College. In most obstetrical practices preparation for childbirth generally includes instructions for the parents-to-be, particularly the mothers, in what to expect during pregnancy, labour, and childbirth, with information as well about the physical care of the infant. This frequently is supplemented with various books and films, which have portrayed an idyllic life with The New Baby. There may be some discussion given to the negative aspects of the experience, such as the possibilities of 'post-baby blues', or fatigue, or colic, but there has rarely been any specific examination in depth about the relationship between husband and wife, new mother and new daddy, and this beautiful and sometimes terrifying new little person, the baby.

Most obstetricians would have liked to help the young couple in this way, but there was no system that could be quickly taught, easily understood, and readily put to use. Many an obstetrician has spent many an hour in sympathetic discussion of difficulties in the family situation, relieving anxiety by answering questions, and attempting to allay fear by kindly support.

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Others have relied on a more parental position, which in essence says, 'You follow my instructions and do as I say and everything will turn out all right.' However, if there are serious relationship problems between the couple, this kind of approach may relegate these problems somewhere down on the priority list, since, after all, the baby must come first. Yet, unresolved, they remain a source of constant irritation and alienation to both mother and father during the earliest months or years of the infant's life, during which time the most fundamental imprints are made on the child.

The Eichhorns, who are both members of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Transactional Analysis, began introducing the teaching of P-A-C to their expectant parent classes in 1965. Evening meetings for both husband and wife are scheduled weekly. Attendance is voluntary, but most couples attend regularly. In addition to the regular instructions about pregnancy, labour, and delivery, the fundamentals of Transactional Analysis are taught. These are taught in terms of the actual experience the couple is involved in - having a baby. It is a tool that is being put together for a special purpose, but one which the couples find can be used for many other problems in living after the baby arrives. Total group instruction in P-A-C for each couple is about twenty four hours, but the language thus developed provides the basis for further discussion as the mother-to-be arrives for her regular obstetrical checkups, frequently accompanied by her husband, who is made to feel a part of the show rather than an onlooker.

It was found that an understanding of P-A-C early in the pregnancy helped the couple understand the source of some new, rather complicated, not-all-positive feelings. Young people whose Parents contain many urgent, undifferentiated recordings about intercourse and pregnancy should not be surprised that these recordings replay in this emotionally charged experience. A young couple, even if they have planned for and eagerly await pregnancy, do find they are subject to periods of 'unexplainable' depression. A marriage licence and a little white cottage do not erase the old Parent tape wherein 'I'm pregnant' would be horrible news indeed. Nor does it change the Parent tape for the husband which comes on in the old way to his realization that 'I got you pregnant'.

There are many other intense feelings associated with pregnancy, which Gerald Caplan refers to as 'a period of increased susceptibility to crisis, a period when problems of an important nature appear to be present in an increased degree'. {2} In addition to the external economic and social changes there are internal changes, both metabolic and emotional. For mother there is a new role, particularly if this is her first baby; there is the aloneness of labour and the loneliness of being home with the baby, particularly if she previously had been a career woman; and there is the new responsibility of structuring time. There also is a profound realization for the woman having her first baby that she will never be a little girl again, that she has passed beyond the pale into the older generation: she now is a mother. This is the same kind of sentiment over the shortness of life and the irrevocable passing of time which makes people cry at weddings. The sacramental moments in life, while opening doors to the future, close the door on the past, and there is no turning back .These are the feelings of the young mother, too.

Sometimes these feelings become so depressive that there develops what is called a postpartum, or after-birth, psychosis. In these cases the Child becomes so overwhelmed that the boundary breaks down, allowing for complete contamination of the Adult. Mother cannot handle her own overwhelming needs and is totally incapable of caring for her baby.

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One patient, whom I saw first in an acute episode of post-partum psychosis following the birth of her first child, was able to leave the hospital after three weeks after being introduced to P-A-C. She was able to assume the care of her baby, and her Adult grew stronger as she continued coming to group treatment. The real test of this strength came at the time of her second pregnancy two years later. Knowing what she had been through before, she proceeded through her pregnancy with a great deal of apprehension. But she was able to discuss this apprehension in P-A-C terms with her obstetrician. (The fact that two doctors, one an obstetrician and the other a psychiatrist, both talked the same language was in itself reassuring.) She delivered her child and remained in good spirits throughout the post-partum period. (It is not uncommon for the post-partum psychosis to recur with every pregnancy.)

These then are some of the feelings which can be understood and overcome by P-A-C. As husband and wife are able to use their newly acquired language, they both share in the excitement ahead. Eichhorn reports that if the doctor can use his Adult, it is easier for the husband to become a father. The Parent-Child relationship between some obstetricians and their patients essentially excludes the father. Mother and doctor seem to be involved in an activity in which they claim exclusive expertise, and husband is left to chain-smoke in the waiting-room. Most modern hospitals allow the husband to be with his wife and assist her during the hours of labour, and some, but not all, allow him in the delivery room. Eichhorn reports that in his practice the father-baby system gets going early. The husband becomes involved in what he can do to help during labour, how he can massage and relieve physical stress, how he can protect his wife from the loneliness of labour, and how, in fact, she can rely on his Adult even if, in her own fatigue and apprehension, her Child takes over. When a couple comes through a crisis like this together, the meeting of any other crisis in life has a precedent. 'If we did this, we can do anything!' These fathers quickly talk about 'our' baby. Both mother and father feel good about themselves, and this is transmitted to the infant.

These fathers are helped to recognize early in the pregnancy, as does Caplan, that the pregnant woman needs extra love just as much as she needs extra vitamins and protein. This is especially so in the last few months of pregnancy and during the nursing period. During pregnancy she often becomes introverted and passively dependent. The more she is able to accept this state, and the more love and solicitude she gets from the people around her, the more maternal she can be towards her child. Professional workers cannot give her the love she needs, but they can mobilize the members of her family, and especially her husband, to do so. In our culture, husbands and other relatives are often afraid of 'spoiling' the expectant mother and special efforts are needed to counteract this attitude. {3}

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Being together for the delivery itself is an ideal culmination for the couple that has been prepared; but even if the couple is apart during the delivery, their introduction to P-A-C not only has helped them through the time of pregnancy but also allows for the maximum freedom from conflict that is essential to the early nurture of the new infant. The warm, stroking mother is the mother who is free from the internal Parent-Child dialogue which evokes the not ok in herself. Her emancipated Adult can hear the facts, can dismiss the 'old wives' tales', and can react to the spontaneous maternal feelings of wanting to hold and pet and caress without checking first to see if it's all right. One of the most commonly expressed Parent ideas in the expectant parent groups is that 'you shouldn't pick up a baby all the time because you will spoil him'. If this tape comes on every time the new mother goes to stroke her child, it is clear there exists a conflict, which somehow will get through to the child. The Adult in the mother can examine this bit of dogma and proceed with her own estimate of the matter, which would come closer to: If you baby a baby when he's a baby, you won't have to baby him the rest of his life. (These terms, 'spoiling' a child or 'breaking' a child of habits, have always seemed to me so crude and cruel when applied to human beings that surely they were invented by some wicked fairy-tale stepmother who lived in a dark, dank tower somewhere on the moors!)

The mother with a strong Adult can handle the frequently loaded grandmother or motherin-law situation in a way which will minimize the devastating crossed transactions. She can appreciate that grandmother has a P-A-C, too, and both P and C are vulnerable to being hooked. Or her Adult may tell her mother-in-law that they are having a maid in to care for the house and that she, the mother, will take care of the baby. Her Adult can let the dust collect while she tends to the infant, even if her rich Aunt Agatha is arriving with a present that very night. In short, the new mother and father have a choice in how they will proceed in bringing into existence this new precious unit, their family, which has a new baby and a new father and a new mother.

One of the most helpful understandings in the raising of small children is an awareness of the I'm not ok - you're ok position. The child remains afloat by virtue of the mother's ok. He feels not ok, but as long as she is ok there is something he can hold onto. The value of a parental stroke for the child is exactly proportionate to the value the child sees in his parent. It is readily apparent that when mother's Child gets hooked and she gets involved in a Child-Child slugfest with Junior, he senses his world is in bad shape indeed. On the one hand is a not ok Child and on the other hand is a not ok Child. If this kind of transaction predominates in the early life of the little person, the way is open for the establishment of the position, I'm Not Ok - You're Not Ok, Or, In The Extreme, I'm Ok - You're Not Ok.

The mother and father (particularly the mother, since she is the most influential parent in the early years) must be sensitive to the not ok Child in themselves. Until such time as parents, particularly mothers, develop the necessary sensitivity, perceptual powers, and interest to apply such a tool as P-A-C to child rearing, we can expect that the malignancy of the not ok position will spread and grow worse. If the Child in the mother has a strong not ok position, and it is easily hooked by such life hitches, or obstacles, or disappointments as the obstinate behaviour of a small child who also has a not ok Child, the way is open for a take-over by the Child in the parent, which triggers a regressive sequence of events with more and more archaic circuits taking over in a screaming game of 'Mine Is Better' with mother winning the final round with 'I Am Bigger'.

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It is easy to see that only through the Adult can the little person learn more effective ways of living. But children might well ask: How do you develop an Adult without having seen one? Children learn by imitation. One of the most effective ways a small child can develop his Adult with increasingly strong circuits of control is to have the opportunity to observe his parent, when the parent's Child obviously has been hooked and is struggling to take over with an angry outburst, control his Child and keep his response Adult, which is to say, reasonable and considerate.

Demonstrating what an Adult is is far more effective than defining what an Adult is! This raises the question as to whether or not parents should teach their children P-A-C. Judging from reports of P-A-C-schooled parents of young children, the child can understand the rudiments of P-A-C at a surprisingly early age, three or four. This can come about through the child's exposure to the Transactional Analysis of his parents. When parents are involved in analysing a transaction and are doing it with obvious relish, the small child gets the meaning of what is taking place. Many parents of three- or four year- olds have been startled to hear the little one come through with a remark in which he used the word Parent and Child correctly.

When a five-year-old says, 'Dad, don't use up all your parent', he conveys the understanding that Dad has 'parts' too, that he has a Parent and Child that can be hooked. When Dad says to the five-year-old, 'If you keep doing that, you're going to hook my Parent and then we'll both feel bad', the way is open to an Adult-Adult acceptance that both the little person and his father have feelings and can be pushed too far. This Adult-Adult position cannot possibly develop if father roars, 'You do that again and I'll slap you silly!' All this serves to do is to shut down the computer in the child; he cannot ponder the pros and cons of 'what he was doing', only the fact that he will be slapped silly. And so end the lesson. Father probably heard it that way from his father, ad infinitum.

A word of caution is important here! Any reference to P-A-C (particularly game calling) by parents, when their youngster's Child is activated, is heard as Parent. This means the whole idea can become Parent, impairing its usefulness as a tool in producing Adult-Adult transactions in the home. You can't teach P-A-C to an angry, adrenalin-charged child. The answer is to be- Adult when the heat is on. P-A-C can be talked about academically on other occasions, giving the youngster the data by which he may be able to come to his own 'a-ha' experience; Hey, that's what I do! In time the use of these words enables children to begin to express feelings with words rather than to act out their frustration in temper tantrums in order to dominate the situation with the only tool they have had, their emotions.

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When one considers the almost insurmountable barriers to the development of the Adult in childhood, the amount of irrationality or just plain cussedness prevalent today is not surprising. The child's curiosity, his need to know, is a manifestation of his developing Adult and should have the protection and support of sensitive, perceptive parents. However, sensitivity and perceptiveness can be hard to come by for couples who find the insistent demands of their children too much to cope with because of the prior demands of their own Parent and Child. The emancipation of the Adult from archaic data can make such positive attitudes as patience, kindness, respect, and considerateness a matter of choice. The choice is one of being consistently helpful to the small child or beating him down and back into catastrophic terror with the bellowing of the archaic Parent, a product of countless generations of parental self-righteousness.

As the philosopher is conditioned to ask in every transaction, 'What follows?' so the parent may find useful the reflex to ask, 'What came before?' What was: the original transaction? Who said what? Children's responses are not far removed from what stimulates them. A practice in asking the right questions, and listening to the answers, will get to the source of difficulty quickly. If a youngster comes to mother in tears, she has two jobs. One is to comfort the upset Child and the other is to get the Adult working. She can say, 'I can see that someone made you feel badly... and it's hard to be little ... and sometimes the only thing you can do is cry ... can you tell me what happened? Did someone say something that made you feel bad?' Very quickly the transaction that produced the trouble is reported, and the mother and youngster can talk about it Adult- Adult. Sometimes we find children taking advantage of each other. For instance, big sister cheats her little sister out of some money by deliberately confusing her. We promptly chastise big sister for this highhanded deal, but we must ask ourselves, 'Where did she learn that?' It may have been just innate inventiveness, or it may have been a lesson learned from Mother and Dad: Be clever and make lots of money; it's really more important than people (even little sisters).

We often forget how quickly the value judgements we make are reflected in the actions of our children. H. Allen Smith recounts a story written by a nine-year-old girl: 'Once upon a time there was a little girl named Clarissa Nancy Imogene LaRose. She had no hair and rather large feet. But she was extremely rich and the rest was easy.'

Besides asking 'What came before?' the Adult can also ask what is the- important consideration here? The Parent is effusive and can replay all kinds of reasons why one must, should, mustn't, etc. This diatribe hits the little child as if it were coming out of a fire hose, and he hears nothing at all. The Adult can be selective and present the best point, not all points.

A transaction particularly disorganizing to a youngster is one in which the parent, in answer to a request by the youngster, tediously gives all the reasons why he shouldn't do something instead of simply stating the- main reason. If that main reason isn't robust enough to be stated in simple terms, then perhaps it should be rejected.

The six-year-old comes into the kitchen followed by four playmates. The time is 4.45 in the afternoon. Mother is preparing dinner, which she also is sampling. The six-year-old says: 'Mother, may we have something to eat?'

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Mother responds, through a mouthful, 'No, it's almost supper-time. You eat too much candy. It's bad for your teeth. You'll have to get fillings. (She has fillings.) If you eat now, you won't eat your supper. (She is eating now.) Go on out and play. You're always dirtying up the kitchen. Why don't you ever put anything away?' This is a splendid opportunity for mother's Parent to torment the youngster with a whole series of moralizing 'more-overs'. The children grump and leave, and are back in ten minutes for more 'fun and games'.

The real reason mother was annoyed was 'why must you always bring all the neighbour kids in? I'm tired of giving all the ice cream to the neighbour kids. There is never any left for us.' At this particular moment this was the real reason, and it was a valid reason. But being unable to actually say this, she loaded her daughter down with an avalanche of peripheral data. Rather than growing from this type of transaction, the child shrinks and begins to learn peripheral (or distorted) ways to beat the Establishment. If 'politeness' prevented her mother from giving the real reason, she would have been better off simply to say, 'No - we'll talk about it later.' Then, in the absence of the other children, she could have explained the realities to her own child. Or she could have devised a treat that would include the other children but wouldn't use up the 'expensive' treat, the ice cream.

As it was, she loaded the transaction with inconsistencies, producing questions in the child's mind: How come you're eating and we can't eat? What's wrong with fillings? You have fillings. You dirty up the kitchen, too. You eat candy. How much is 'too much candy'? It is just as oppressive, if not infuriating, to the child as it would be if a grownup, on asking his boss for a raise, were made to listen to the full reading of the Ten Commandments.

In proving any point the successful man presents the best evidence. He doesn't clutter up his case with irrelevancies. The same rule applies to parents. They are successful in discipline if they stick to the best reason. This gives the child's Adult something solid to process, and his computer isn't loaded down with inconsequential data. He also has the opportunity to come out of the transaction with self-respect instead of an overwhelming not ok. You refrain from reading your employee the Ten Commandments because you respect his Adult; if you want the Adult in your youngster to grow, you must also respect him.

The School-Age Child

When the five-year-old manfully strides up the walk on that celebrated first day of kindergarten, he takes along with him about 25,000 hours of dual tape recordings. One set is his Parent. The other, his Child. He also has a magnificent computer that can click off responses and produce brilliant ideas by the thousands, if it is not totally involved in working out the problems of the not ok. The bright little boy is the one who has had lots of stroking, who has learned to use and trust his Adult, and who knows his Parent is ok and will remain that way even when he feels not ok. He will have learned the Adult art of compromise (although relapses may be expected), he will have the confidence that grows from successful mastery of problems, and he will feel good about himself.

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At the other extreme is the shy, withdrawn little boy whose 25,000 hours of tape recordings play in a cacophony of shrill supervision and criticism to the low, steady rhythm of not ok, not ok, not ok. He also has a magnificent computer, but it has not had much use. Luigi Bonpensiere, in a remarkable little book about piano playing, commented on how poorly we use the superb physical apparatus of the human body: 'It is like having the most perfect apparatus of precision, planned and built for a highly efficient operator to use, and then relinquishing it to a poorly trained engineer, who, in the end, will complain of its limitations.' {4}

If the child cannot use his computer, most probably it is because either he has never seen one used, or he has had no one to help him learn how to use his. If he does poorly in school, his complaint of his limitations will be expressed, 'I'm stupid', and his parents' statement will be, 'He's not working up to his potential'. The basic problem is the severity of the I'm not ok-you're ok position. School, unless it has truly competent teachers, is the place where scholastically the 'rich get richer and the poor get poorer'. In a child who obviously has a school problem - disruptive behaviour, day dreaming, or poor achievement - one can expect to find the I'm not ok -you're ok a matter of continual preoccupation. School is a competitive situation with too many affirming threats to the Child and too few opportunities, at the start, for even token achievements to minimize the not ok. The early school years can be the beginning of a pattern of recurring testing transactions which, as he feels it, underline the reality of his not ok position with associated feelings of futility and despair. The really urgent aspect of this situation is that all of life is competitive, beginning with life in the family and extending through all of school and into the grown-up world of life in society. Throughout life the feelings of and the related techniques for coping with the not ok position, which the youngster establishes in the family setting and in school, can persist into the grown-up years and deny him the achievements and satisfactions based in a true sense of freedom to direct his own destiny.

My advice to parents of a youngster who is having difficulty in school is to learn P-A-C, to take it seriously, and to begin to handle their transactions with their youngster, Adult to Adult, with therapeutic assistance if necessary. They must always keep in mind the primary influence of the not ok. The rule is:

When in doubt, stroke. This will keep the frightened, anxious Child comforted while the Adult gets on with the realities of the situation. Very often, however, these realities are not made clear to the child. Dr Warren Prentice, Professor of Education at Sacramento State College and a member of the Board of the Institute for Transactional Analysis, suggests that a child who brings home a paper marked 'Try a little harder' interprets this as a parental, undifferentiated you're not ok. What he needs to know is 'try what harder'. The statement 'too slow' implies the question, How fast would be about right? Prentice says the child needs to be helped to identify areas in which he is or can be successful, and this is not done by a written test, since this medium itself evokes the old tape, 'I can't do it, so why try?' It is done by listening to and talking with the child. He says if a child is having trouble in school, it is pointless to assume that more of the same in summer school or on weekends is going to help him unless a specific problem is isolated and met. The Parent says, 'Do more." The Adult asks, 'Do what more?' {5}