With cameras rolling behind a two-way mirror, Paul Strand, psychology professor at WSU Tri-Cities, and his research assistants watch as a mother and her four year old daughter build a block tower. The observers are looking for little nuances of cooperation and harmony between the mother and daughter. Does the mother wait and let her daughter try first? Does she make positive suggestions to help her child solve the problem?

Strand believes that when parents are in tune with their children and allow them to learn from trial and error, their children are more likely to develop patience and persistence. Out of a group of 10 mother-and-daughter teams Strand and his student assistants are studying, five of the mothers have been taught parenting skills. Strand is interested in learning if these parenting skills lead to children developing consistent patterns of cooperation with their parents.

“What we see is that measures of whether a child complies with parent instruction is a great predictor of overall patterns of adjustment in the home, in school, and with peers,” says Strand, who specializes in child conduct disorder and communication in families.

Strand contends that parents build cooperation by tapping into things their children like. If a parent makes interactions more enjoyable, the child will become more cooperative. “Kids are more likely to pick up toys in their room if it’s in the context of a game or if it’s in the context of doing something that they like,” he says, adding that some Public Broadcasting Service children’s shows have adopted this idea. Barney offers a cleanup song, and characters on The Big Comfy Couch have their 10-second tidy. Strand emphasizes that it’s important for the number of positive interactions with a child to far outweigh the number of negative instructional interactions. “If you increase the amount of positive time kids spend with you, they’re going to be more likely to comply,” he says. The inverse is also true. “Parents who focus mainly on disciplining their kids increase the amount of opposition,” he adds.

— Stacy Hall