Combined Approaches in the Treatment of Latency Children and their Families *

For conflicted children and their families, there are many advantages to using a combination of behaviour modification and a dynamic understanding of the meaning of behaviour to modify transactions (10). Unless fact is incompatible with fact, there are no irreconcilable differences between dynamic and behaviouristic therapy. When the behaviour is well understood, insight can be given and techniques directed to changing that key behaviour to unhappy transactions.

There is always the possibility that parents will use these techniques to terrorize and restrict their children, but experience has shown that parents gain confidence and, as they gain confidence, they become much more relaxed with their children, and their children then blossom. Children in consistent, ordered environments are less anxious and more cooperative. As the relationship improves, the child tries harder to please his parents and eventually what was once an alien technique becomes a natural way of responding to children.