Designing Tasks that Require Parents to Agree Before Acting

We define the success of a family intervention by the reorganization of the parental hierarchy. When you sit with a family, you are not looking for the source of the child’s trauma or the history of the parents’ individual psychological development. We look for the sequence of interactions that allows the problem to persist. We understand that a child who exhibits behavioral symptoms is often a child who has been elevated to a position of power within the home. This elevation is rarely an accident of the child’s personality. It is a structural response to a vacuum at the top of the hierarchy. If the parents do not lead, the child will attempt to lead, even if that leadership manifests as chaos.

You will often observe a specific physical arrangement in your office that mirrors this structural defect. I once worked with a family where the eight-year-old son sat in the middle of the couch, while the parents sat on separate chairs on either side of him. Every time I asked the father a question, the father would look at the son before answering. The son would then interrupt the father to correct him, and the mother would nod in agreement with the son. We call this an incongruent hierarchy. The parents claim to be in charge, but their actions demonstrate that the child holds the veto power. To correct this, you must move the parents into a position where they are forced to act as a singular executive unit.

We use the strategic task to achieve this reorganization. You do not suggest that the parents communicate more effectively, as this is a vague instruction that usually leads to more of the same bickering. You provide a directive that makes consensus a prerequisite for action. Jay Haley argued that the practitioner must be the one to determine the rules of the relationship during the session. If you allow the parents to continue their pattern of unilateral decision making, you are reinforcing the very structure that created the symptom.

I recently treated a couple whose teenager was failing three classes because she refused to do her homework. The mother would try to help the girl by sitting with her for hours, while the father would yell from the other room that the girl was lazy and should be grounded. When the mother grew tired and stopped helping, the father would suddenly become the sympathetic parent and take the girl out for ice cream. This sequence ensured that the girl never had to face the consequences of her academic failure because she could always rely on one parent to negate the influence of the other.

You must interrupt this cycle by stripping each parent of their individual power to negotiate with the child. You tell the parents that they are forbidden from discussing the child’s homework with the child for the next seven days. Instead, they are to meet in private for twenty minutes every evening at seven o’clock. During this meeting, they must agree on a single consequence or a single reward for the daughter’s performance that day. If they cannot reach a unanimous agreement by seven twenty, no action is taken, and both parents must remain in the room in a state of neutral inactivity until the following evening.

We know that the child will attempt to break this new arrangement. The child will go to the mother and ask for a favor, or go to the father and complain about the mother’s rigidity. You must instruct the parents on the exact words to use in these moments. You tell them to say, I cannot give you an answer until I have spoken with your father, or Your mother and I will discuss this tonight and let you know our decision tomorrow. By using these phrases, the parents are signaling to the child that there is no longer a crack in the wall to be exploited.

I watched a father struggle with this during a session. He argued that he was the more logical parent and that waiting for his wife’s agreement would only slow down the household. I told him that his logic was irrelevant if it resulted in a child who did not follow his rules. We prioritize the unity of the parental block over the individual correctness of either parent. If the father is right but the mother disagrees, the father is effectively wrong because his unilateral action will be sabotaged by the mother’s resentment.

You must ensure the task is concrete and measurable. We do not ask parents to try to agree. We tell them that they must produce a written document signed by both parties before any privilege is returned to the child. If the father wants the son to have his phone back, but the mother thinks he needs another two days of restriction, the phone remains in the kitchen drawer. The son learns that his parents are a locked door. He cannot pick the lock if the two parts of the mechanism are fused together.

We also use consequences for the parents themselves when they fail to maintain the united front. If one parent acts without the other’s consent, that parent must perform a task for the other parent that they find unpleasant. I once required a husband to wash his wife’s car and clean the interior every time he gave their son permission to use the car without consulting her first. This creates a secondary hierarchy where the parents are accountable to each other, which reinforces their executive role.

You will see the child’s behavior change not because they have gained insight, but because the old sequence no longer works. When the child realizes that they can no longer play one parent against the other, the symptomatic behavior loses its functional value. The child often becomes depressed or angry in the short term as they lose their elevated status. We tell the parents to expect this. You must prepare them for the child’s attempt to reclaim power.

I worked with a mother who was terrified of her daughter’s anger. When the mother finally stood her ground alongside her husband, the daughter smashed a lamp in the living room. The mother wanted to back down and apologize to keep the peace. I told her that if she backed down now, she was teaching her daughter that violence is the key to parental disagreement. Instead, I directed the parents to sit together on the sofa and wait for the daughter to clean up the glass. They were not to scold her or lecture her. They were simply to remain there together, as a single unit, until the task was done.

We observe that as the parents become more adept at reaching a consensus, the tension in the marriage often comes to the surface. Without the child as a distraction, the parents are forced to face their own lack of cooperation. This is the point where the strategic practitioner must remain focused on the hierarchy. You do not allow the session to become a marital counseling session in the traditional sense. You keep the focus on the task of parenting. By forcing them to agree on the child, you are teaching them how to function as a team in all other areas of their life.

Milton Erickson often used the idea of the ordeal to make a symptom more difficult to maintain than it was worth. We apply this to the parents. If they want to continue their conflict, they must do so within the confines of the tasks you have set for them. You make it more exhausting for them to disagree than it is for them to yield to one another. The goal is a household where the parents are the primary authority and the child is free to be a child again. We provide the structure that allows this freedom to exist. Success is measured by the parents’ ability to stand together without your intervention. Every task we design is a step toward making our presence in the family unnecessary. When the parents can agree without being told to do so, our work is finished.

You begin the technical execution of this strategy by manipulating the physical space of your consulting room. When you are ready to deliver the first directive, you must physically separate the parents from the child. You instruct the child to sit in the waiting area or a different corner of the room with a specific, solitary task such as drawing a map of the house. This separation is the first act of structural realignment. You then direct the parents to move their chairs so they face each other directly. Their knees should be no more than six inches apart. This positioning prevents them from looking at you for mediation or looking at the child for emotional cues. You are now addressing a single executive unit. We know that if parents cannot maintain eye contact with each other while discussing a problem, they cannot maintain a unified front in the face of a child’s provocation.

The first task you assign must be a low-stakes agreement. You do not ask them to solve the primary symptom of fire-setting or school refusal in the first twenty minutes. Instead, you instruct them to agree on a trivial detail of the household routine that they will implement together that evening. I once worked with a couple whose three children were completely out of control. The parents had not agreed on a single rule in five years. I spent forty minutes requiring them to agree on exactly what time the children would receive a single piece of fruit after dinner. The mother wanted seven o’clock and the father wanted seven-thirty. You do not intervene to suggest seven-fifteen. You wait. You observe the power play. If they turn to you, you say that they must reach an agreement that they can both support without resentment. When they finally agreed on seven-ten, I had them practice the exact words they would say to the children in unison.

We use the private conference as our primary tool for enforcing this agreement in real-time. You give the parents a specific script to use whenever the child makes a request or challenges a rule. The script is: we will discuss this and give you our answer in ten minutes. You must insist that the parents leave the room together to hold this conference. They might go into the kitchen or the bathroom and lock the door. The child is left on the other side of the door. This physical barrier symbolizes the executive boundary. If a child asks for a glass of juice, the parent does not say yes or no. The parent says that they must check with the other parent first. I have seen children become frantic when this is first implemented because the child senses the loss of the veto power. You must warn the parents that the child will escalate the behavior to break the new alliance.

You must prepare the parents for the inevitable moment when one of them feels the urge to side with the child against the other. This is the moment of structural danger. I tell parents that if they disagree with a partner’s decision in front of the child, they have just handed the child a weapon to use against their marriage. You instruct them that even if one parent makes a mistake and gives an unreasonable command, the other parent must support it in the moment. The disagreement is reserved for the private conference later that night. For example, if the father tells the daughter she cannot attend a birthday party, the mother must remain silent or say that the father is correct. They can then argue about it behind closed doors once the child is asleep. You are teaching them that the integrity of the hierarchy is more important than the specific outcome of any single decision.

If the parents return to the next session and report that they failed to hold a private conference, you do not offer empathy or ask about their feelings regarding the failure. You treat the failure as a technical problem that requires a more strenuous task. We call this an ordeal. You instruct the parents that for every time they fail to consult each other before answering the child, they must both get out of bed at three o’clock in the morning and sit together in the living room for thirty minutes in complete silence. This ordeal makes the symptom of disagreement more troublesome than the effort of cooperation. I once had a father who refused to consult his wife because he felt it undermined his authority. I required him to polish his wife’s shoes every time he made a solo decision regarding their son. The behavior changed within two weeks because the cost of his independence became too high.

The pretend technique is another essential tool when parents are too intimidated by the child’s symptoms to take direct action. Jay Haley often used this to bypass the intensity of the struggle. You instruct the parents to ask the child to pretend to have the symptom. If a child has frequent temper tantrums, you tell the parents to schedule a pretend tantrum for five o’clock on Tuesday. The parents must sit together and observe the tantrum. They must agree on how long the child should pretend and when the performance is finished. This puts the parents in charge of the very behavior that previously controlled them. I used this with a family where a six-year-old girl was wetting the bed to get into the mother’s bed at night. I instructed the parents to have the girl pretend to wet the bed on a Saturday afternoon. The parents then had to work together to change the sheets while the girl watched. This required the parents to cooperate in a task that was usually a source of conflict.

You must watch for the subtle ways parents attempt to recruit you into their individual camps. A mother might roll her eyes when the father speaks, or a father might lean toward you as if sharing a secret. You must remain strategically distant. If a parent tries to tell you something in confidence that the other parent does not know, you must refuse to hear it. We do not accept secrets in strategic family therapy. You tell the parent that anything said to you must be said in front of the partner. This prevents the formation of a coalition between you and one parent, which would mirror the dysfunctional coalition between that parent and the child. I once had a mother call me between sessions to complain about the father’s harshness. I told her to bring that exact complaint to the next session and state it directly to him while I watched them reach a compromise.

As the parents begin to function as a unit, you will observe a shift in the child’s behavior. The child may initially become more depressed or withdrawn as the power they held is removed. This is a predictable part of the reorganization. You tell the parents that the child is mourning the loss of their position as the head of the household. You must encourage the parents to remain firm. When the child realizes that the parents cannot be split, the child will eventually turn toward age-appropriate activities and peer relationships. The symptom, which was a way of participating in the parental conflict, no longer has a purpose. We see this most clearly when a child who has been school-phobic suddenly decides to attend classes because staying home no longer provides an opportunity to mediate between the parents.

You continue to assign tasks of increasing complexity. You might move from agreeing on a snack to agreeing on a weekend trip or a long-term chore schedule. The goal is for the parents to develop the habit of consultation so thoroughly that they no longer need your presence to enforce it. I measure success by the length of time the parents can sit in a session and discuss a difficult topic without looking at me once. They are focused on each other, and the child is playing quietly, ignored by the executive unit. We recognize that the family is reaching a healthy state when the parents can laugh together about a past disagreement that previously would have caused a week of silence. The final stage of this phase is the parents reporting that they held a private conference and reached a decision that they both feel good about without any prompting from you. The child’s symptomatic behavior is now an irrelevant memory because the structure that supported it has been replaced by a functional hierarchy. This structural stability is the only guarantee against the return of the symptom. When parents act as one, the child is finally free to be a child. Physical proximity between the parents in the consulting room often mirrors the emotional and structural proximity they have achieved at home.

You must now monitor the durability of the parental alliance outside the controlled environment of your office. We know that the initial success of a unified front often produces a honeymoon period where the child appears compliant and parents feel a false sense of finality. You must warn them that this compliance is a strategic pause by the child rather than a permanent change in family structure. I once worked with a couple whose ten year old son stopped his aggressive outbursts for two weeks after they agreed on a consistent routine. The parents came to the third session beaming and suggested they were ready to finish therapy. I told them they were likely to see an escalation forty-eight hours because the child had not yet tested the true strength of their agreement. We expect the child to launch a final offensive to regain the lost position of power.

When this escalation occurs, you will look for the emergence of a secret coalition. This is the moment one parent attempts to offer a child private comfort that undermines an agreement. We see this often in the form of a parent whispering an apology to the child while other parent is away. You must instruct parents that any comfort offered during a period of discipline must be offered by both parents simultaneously. I once instructed a mother to refrain from hugging her daughter after father had delivered a reprimand unless father was present to provide the hug. This forced the child to see that there was no crack in the wall. You are looking for father to support mother’s authority even when he disagrees with her method. We prioritize the unity of the executive unit over the tactical perfection of the discipline itself.

You will encounter challenges from extended family members who function as part of the domestic system. We recognize that a grandmother or an uncle can act as a pressure valve that allows the child to bypass the parental hierarchy. I worked with a family where the grandmother lived in a guest suite and would consistently provide the teenage son with the electronics his parents had confiscated. You must bring these external actors into the session or require the parents to deliver a unified directive to them. You should tell the parents to inform the grandmother that if she gives the child a device, the parents will be forced to remove the television from her suite. This link forces the parents to act as a unit against any intrusion. We do not allow the parents to blame the grandmother for the behavior. We hold the parents responsible for managing the grandmother.

As the child’s symptoms begin to fade, you will notice the parents may feel a sense of loss or boredom. We understand that a problematic child often serves as the primary topic of conversation for a couple who has forgotten how to be partners. You must provide them with a task that requires them to spend time together without discussing the child. You might tell them to go to a movie on Friday night and fine them fifty dollars for every time they mention the child. I once had a couple who realized after ten minutes of dinner that they had nothing else to talk about. This realization is a sign that the hierarchy is stabilizing and the child is no longer needed to bridge the gap between them. You are moving them from a child centered system to an adult centered system.

The most sophisticated tool in the final phase is the prediction of a relapse. We use this to take control of the eventual slip in performance. You should tell the parents that you are concerned they have been too successful too quickly. You might suggest that they should allow the child to have one small outburst over the weekend to prove they can handle it without calling you. I once told a mother of a truant teenager that she should expect her son to miss school on Tuesday. I instructed her and the father to have a plan ready for that day. When Tuesday came and the boy went to school, he had inadvertently disobeyed you while the parents remained in a position of quiet readiness. If he had stayed home, the parents would have executed their pre planned agreement without the usual panic.

We also look for signs that the parents are able to negotiate and settle disagreements without the child becoming involved. You will test this in the room by bringing up a sensitive topic like household finances or vacation planning. You must observe whether they look at the child for a reaction or stay focused on each other. I once sat without speaking for twenty minutes while a couple argued about which car to sell. The seven year old daughter began to hum and kick her chair to get attention. I signaled the parents to ignore the child and continue their debate. When the parents reached a decision, the child stopped humming and began to play quietly with a doll. This is evidence that the child has accepted the new executive structure and no longer feels the need to intervene.

Termination of your involvement occurs when the parents demonstrate they no longer need you to mediate their agreements. You will know this is true when they arrive at a session and report a crisis they solved entirely on their own. We do not congratulate them with praise. We simply observe that they have taken over the function of the executive unit. I once had a father tell me that his wife had caught their son smoking and they had decided on a punishment together before he even got home from work. He told me this with a sense of matter of fact competence. You should respond by asking them if they still see a reason to meet next week. When the parents look at each other and shake their heads in unison, you have succeeded in making yourself obsolete. We leave the family not when the child is perfect, but when the parents are the primary authority.

You must also prepare for the school system or other social agencies to resist the change you have initiated. We find that when a child stops being the problem, schools often look for a new way to categorize behavior. You must instruct parents to maintain their unified front when meeting with teachers or any outside administrator. I once coached parents to look at each other before answering a direct request for child information. This forced the school to recognize the parents as a single entity rather than two individuals who could be persuaded to disagree. Success is measured by the parents’ ability to maintain this executive block against all external and internal challenges to their leadership. The child is released from the burden of power when the adults finally agree to carry it together. Therapeutic intervention ends when the parents take full responsibility for the structural integrity of the home.