ABSTRACT
To deal with adolescent conduct problems in most industrialized cultures, parents (and in some instances step-parents, foster parents and grandparents) must share a strong alliance and conjointly agree on household rules, roles and routines that specify what is and is not acceptable conduct for the teenager. Consequences for violating rules or disregarding roles and routines must be absolutely clear. Once agreed, rewards and sanctions associated with rules, roles and routines must be implemented consistently by parents (and stepparents, foster parents or grandparents if they are involved in the teenager’s day-to-day life). Unilateral parent training with minimal involvement of the child in therapy can be effective with some pre-adolescents, but with the increased power and autonomy that comes with adolescence, involvement of parents and teenagers in a least some joint sessions becomes quite important, since rules and consequences must be negotiated. Invariably, parents and teenagers with conduct problem are unskilled in the art of negotiation and so it is not surprising that effective treatment programmes include communication and problem-solving training as the core component for adolescents with conduct difficulties (Chamberlain, & Smith, 2003; Henggeler & Lee, 2003; Sexton & Alexander, 2003). The aim of such training is to help parents and teenagers communicate clearly with each other and negotiate a set of rules, roles and routines and consequences associated with adhering to or breaking rules. Rules should be clear, negotiated and just or fair as judged by the norms of the family’s culture. Routines should be predictable and regular within the constraints of the family’s culture. Roles, particularly those of parents and children, should be unambiguous and separated by clear intergenerational boundaries.
