Does Tough Love Work?
Parents often join a Tough Love group or enlist one to help them after they have exhausted other sources of support. A committed disciple of this approach, psychiatrist Ron Zodkevitch, refers to Tough Love as the most successful parenting program to date when used in conjunction with the support of the community. Dr. Zodkevitch describes membership in a Tough Love support group as possessing a road map that leads to the ideal home life. He believes that if people followed the principles of Tough Love not only during times of crisis but beginning in early childhood, problems may be averted later on.
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Significance
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Tough Love members discuss setting limits, establishing rules and taking stands with their children, in addition to helping each other consistently enforce rules and expectations. As they continue to strengthen their resolve, they regain control and confidence. Tough Love more often than not helps the parents of troubled teens immensely, saving them from the futility of codependency and helping them to learn healthy ways of coping with their children.
Limitations
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Before evaluating whether Tough Love's program offers an effective solution for a young person with behavioral problems, you should know that the Tough Love program does not profess to reform troubled youth, nor does it offer counseling services or treatment. Tough Love does not exist for the purpose of disciplining a person or to administer miracle cures. Tough Love does not focus on preserving the young person's self esteem at the expense of destructive behavior and its attendant chaos.
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Benefits
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According to Charles S. Rubin, author of "Don't Let Your Kids Kill You," when a parent reaches the point where he must ask his child to leave the family home due to violations of the family rules, Tough Love members arrive to support the parents as they prepare to evict their child. The child usually leaves the premises without incident. While this scenario might reflect favorably on Tough Love's approach, critics see it as further confirmation of the numbing power adults wield over their charges.
Considerations
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Martha Heineman Pieper and William J. Heineman state in an April, 1991 article from the Chicago Journal of Medicine that Tough Love does not work. They contend that Tough Love's use of demeaning tactics might compare to an oppressive government's control over its citizens. They believe Tough Love's detached objectivity may cause grievous problems for teens and their parents in the long run by depriving a child of parents with whom he makes a loving, nurturing and generally positive association.
Tough Love from Other Authority Figures
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Many parents delegate the job of enforcing tough love, hence, they may ship their children off to military-style boot camps in which instructors employ the rigorous, sometimes harsh style of training endured by military recruits. Scores of incidents involving physical abuses and even deaths of children enrolled at these camps and schools lend credence to the theory that Tough Love methods, when used in the wrong hands, often harm more than they help. While many youngsters enjoy positive experiences at these facililties, others return with broken spirits, a sense of defeat and anger.
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References
Resources
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