Dr. Spock of the Emotions

THE FAMILY

With irrational finality, your child insists that his soup is too salty, his home work too hard. What should a parent do? Easy, answers Psychologist Haim Ginott. Just keep cool and coo some thing sympathetic, like "Oh, it's too salty for you. I wish we had something else," and "Yes, you do have a lot of homework." Chances are the child will eat the soup after all and resolutely go off to study.

As a growing band of grateful parents are willing to testify, Ginott's strategy of sympathy seems to work. The secret is that it encourages parents to show respect for a child's feelings with out compromising their own standards, and strikes a balance between strictness and permissiveness. Parents should draw the line between "acceptance and approval," Ginott says. "A physician does not reject a patient because he bleeds; a parent can tolerate unlikable behavior without sanctioning it."

None of this theorizing is terribly original, but thanks to a shrewd talent for translating well-known psychological principles into jargon-free "childrenese," the Israeli-born Ginott has gained a national reputation as a kind of Dr. Spock of the emotions. First published in 1965, his Between Parent and Child has been translated into 13 languages and has sold an estimated 1.5 million copies. Ginott is now a resident expert on the Today show, writes a monthly column for McCall's and frequently lectures around the country. A new book, Between Parent and Teenager, repeats the principles in Ginott's first volume almost word for word and applies them to adolescents. It has already become a bestseller in the three weeks since it was published.

Ginott's basic point is that mature parents can easily increase their sensitivity to their children, becoming demi-psychologists who seek out the source of a child's behavior rather than concentrate on its surface expression. With a little common sense, he insists, children of any age can be intelligently decoded. When they refuse to cooperate with a mother getting ready for the evening, she should be alert for more than ordinary balkiness and attempt to sympathize with whatever is bothering them. One kindly mother in that situation, Ginott reports, calmed her kids by saying: "I bet you all wish you could come to the theater with Daddy and me" --even though the line might seem capable of provoking some teen-agers into paroxysms of fury.

Ginott also urges parents to realize how easily their children read many levels into the most innocent remarks. Don't tell a cooperative child, "You are always so good--you are an angel," he warns; a child knows he is not always perfect, and is likely to feel anxiety under "an obligation to live up to the impossible."

In anger, specifics are most important. Parents should avoid sweeping, satiric barbs like "With that handwriting you won't even be able to cash unemployment checks." Ginott advises them to express their "anger without insult," and describe the offense candidly and explicitly: "When I see cards, soda bottles and potato chips scattered all over the floor, it makes me feel unpleasant. It actually makes me angry." When the point is made clearly enough, most children will calmly decide to repair the damage without hurt feelings. "Our anger has a purpose: it shows our concern," Ginott writes. "Failure to get angry at certain moments indicates indifference, not love.

Teenagers can benefit from anger that says 'There are limits.' "

To some parents, Ginott may seem excessively tolerant of misbehavior. About some aspects of adolescent life his new book reveals him as tartly oldfashioned. He abhors early dating, for example. "The ones who enjoy such spectacles as paired parties for twelve-year-olds, padded bras for eleven-year-olds, and going steady for an ever younger age are adults to whom the clumsiness of children looks cute." He is against marijuana, at least until harsh legal penalties are relaxed, and urges parents to suggest moderate alternatives when teenage behavior is likely to hurt others. He approvingly quotes a father who told his son: "If you feel high, ask your date to drive or call a cab. We can get your car back in the morning." Ginott does not flatly condemn premarital intercourse, but simply pleads that parents provide their children with some sense of the psychology of sexual awakening as well as the basic biological facts. Children who ask their parents for contraceptives should be turned down, he insists, since the teen-ager is showing "a lack of readiness for adulthood. An adult makes his own decisions and accepts the consequences."

Parent Development. Although he is deeply hostile to questions about his personal life and refuses to say whether he is married and has children, Ginott's "empathy first" approach stems from solid clinical experience. He has spent nearly 20 years doing therapeutic work with parents and children, and teaches part-time at Adelphi and New York universities. In front of children and parents alike he is known for pulling out a harmonica and zipping through Hebrew folk songs; he has the stand-up comic's uncanny ability to mimic revealing snips of parent-child dialogue. He is at home quoting both Tolstoy and Bob Dylan, and can rattle off 58 slang terms for drugs. Says the Today show's Barbara Walters, who plans to begin applying Ginottisms to her own eleven-month-old daughter as soon as she is old enough to talk: "There's nobody else who can put together his combination of psychology, common sense, and Harry Golden gemuetlich wit."

Other child-guidance experts find Ginott's suggestions sound enough and admire his direct, down-to-earth style. But they also point out that a parent confidently playing instant psychologist who misinterprets his child's action may end up doing more harm than good, and that childrenese presupposes well-balanced, emotionally healthy parents and is not likely to be much use in deeply troubled families. "He is a significant contributor not to the field of child development, but to parent development," says Los Angeles Psychiatrist Saul Brown. But Ginott's techniques are not limited to the home. When he began sympathizing with the difficulties auto mechanics faced in repairing his car, Ginott reports, he got superior service.

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