ABSTRACT
Parents often experience problems with their children and adolescents as being out of their control. This exercise attempts to provide a way for the therapist to join with parents to offer a way for them to begin to take some control. Suggesting that a parent willingly do something that has been experienced as out of control puts him or her in a position of either doing the pattern willfully or doing something different. In either case, something has changed. This can be espe cially helpful with parents who have the perspective that things are “out of control” or that they have “no control” regarding their children or adolescents.
