New
method helps parents regain parental authority
By Ruby Harrold-Claesson,
Attorney-at-law
|
Attorney-at-law, Ruby Harrold-Claesson, is president of the NCHR. This article was written for the NCHR's web site. |
In 1979, in honour of the UN Year of the Child,
During the years that have followed the Anti-smacking law, hundreds, may be
thousands, of parents have been prosecuted, fined and sentenced to prison for
smacking their unruly children. The children have in most cases been removed
from their "abusive" parents and put into foster homes. This has
caused the total break-up of those families. The police and prosecutors have
gone out after parents who discipline their children instead of attending to
other crimes in the society. The most recent cases that have come to my
knowledge are from
Since the passing of the Anti-smacking law, the
surge of prosecutions against parents and the failure of the European Court of
Human Rights (ECHR) to address the issue because the Swedish government in 1982
convinced the ECHR that the law was a lex
imperfecta, a simple recommendation to parents, and that no parent would be
prosecuted according to law, which in fact is Chapter 6, section one of the
Parent and Guardianship Code, parents in Sweden have become afraid to correct
their children's behaviour. This has, needlessly to say, had a very adverse
effect on Swedish children's behaviour at home, at school and everywhere.
However, a new method is on the
way - a method that will help parents regain their parental authority - at the
expense of the taxpayers. For those of you who read Swedish, there is a link to
the article Ny metod hjälper
föräldrar att ta tillbaka makten. Artikel i sr.se/Ekot from the
Scandinavian section of the Nordic Committee's web site.
As everyone is aware, the major part of all
crimes is committed by a very small group people. Different methods are being
tried in order to try to prevent young people from ending up in a life of
crime. One of the methods is MST. It is designed for young people who commit
crimes and who have taken over the power that parents formerly had.
The method
that is called MST, it stands for multi systemic therapy, and it comes from
The idea is to give back the authority to parents, explains Agneta Dahlberg,
the head of the newly started company Vårljus. The company started in March
2003 after a team from the
– The method is designed for so-called asocial youngsters who use drugs, are
truant, petty criminals and extremely provocative, she says. Generally speaking
one can say that there are youngsters who have taken over their parents’
authority and who simply make the rules at home. This method is aimed to change
that situation and see to that the parents claim back their parenthood.
Have
taken over their homes
The youngsters that can qualify for this program are between 10 and 18 years of
age, commit crimes, use drugs, have problems with finding suitable friends and
most important of all - they have full control over their parents.
In MST it is the parents who decide whether or not the family will participate
in the program. They then receive help from a therapist who is available for
them around the clock with the sole purpose of giving back the parents their
authority.
– The parents are given concrete situations to practice on, says Agneta
Dahlberg. For example: the nearest two weeks you will see to it that your son
gets up out of bed at seven thirty so that he can be at school at eight
o'clock. And if you can not manage it yourself, who should you turn you to when
you do not have the resources yourself? You could maybe call grandmother or see
to it that his friend comes over, for it is the friend who will see to that
your gets up. The focus for MST is that it is short and intensive, one works
with the family a maximum of five months.
The adults shall decide
Something that is often focused on is to find buddies, get rid of those who use
drugs and commit crimes. Maybe by finding something that our youngster likes to
do, play indoor bandy maybe, and also find people nearby that can help. A
teacher, your son's greatest friend's daddy maybe would want to volunteer to
look for him when he does not come home on time. The lesson is that it is the
adults who decide.
The company Vårljus (Spring light) where Agneta Dahlberg works is a
municipality owned corporation. It started only this spring hence the name
"Spring light". It specializes in selling the new child-rearing method.
A training period costs 300 000 Sw. crowns. She says that results from
No one knows the results
But how effective is it to try to prevent youngsters from committing crimes
through that work preventively? According to an article on the Swedish Radio's
web site, Tommy Andersson who is a University lecturer in Umeå and teaches
future policemen and women and social workers, says that no one knows.
– There are no evaluations of the different projects. But as far as we know it
can decrease criminality, but it does not eliminate it in any way.
Our knowledge is little, according to Tommy Andersson. He thinks that the
knowledge that exists not taken advantage of by the authorities today. There
are ideas and maybe a desire to want seem on top of things, but less interest
to run scientific tests to see if it indeed has any effect, he says.
Worth investing in the young people
Tommy Andersson said however that he still thinks that one ought to invest more
than today in finding the young people who risk landing up in the small click
of the population, maybe five percent, that commit a big part of the crimes,
maybe half the number of crimes.
He thinks that that group of youngsters often have serious social problems
maybe far down in their early childhood and there are possibilities to try to
prevent their criminal development already there. It is difficult and it is
tough and one does not always succeed. He also thinks that we should succeed to
a lot better than we do today, if the method is employed.
On
the question why children are misbehaving so badly, and whether or not the
permissive parenting that has been forced on Swedish parents since 1979 when
the anti-smacking law was passed is to blame for the present problems with
unruly youngsters, Agneta Dahlberg says that
it is a philosophical matter. She reiterated that violence should never be used
when bringing up children and that the parents must have positive solutions
when dealing with their children. The home should never be a dangerous,
unfriendly place for the child, she said.
Destroying
the Family: Swedish style
by Eric Brodin
School
and upbringing
by Marianne Haslev Skånland
TABOOS
- Smacking parents
by James Heartfield
Is
parental authority important? Dr. Laura weighs on "sparing the rod"
Article in WorldNetDaily.com
Parental
rules can help curb teen vices - Strict parents help kids avoid drugs,
researchers say
Associated Press article in Deseret News
A
misguided crusade that will break up families
by Lynette Burrows
How
to control adults by means of 'children's rights'
by Lynette Burrows
The state
replacing parents in Sweden and North Carolina
by Eric Brodin
Common
sense or double standards
by Ruby Harrold-Claesson
Smacking
and the Law - a European Perspective
By Ruby Harrold-Claesson
Crime
and Punishment
by Lennart Hane