If you're a parent, stop blaming yourself for your children's problems. And stop worrying about your children's self-esteem. Finland's answer to Frasier Crane, the psychiatrist Ben Furman, says he's never met a child with behavioural problems who had low self-esteem.
"I don't believe in low self-esteem," he says. "It's more low 'other-esteem'. The problem is not respecting others. We need to encourage in our children a sense of responsibility rather than self-esteem."
Problems such as stealing, lying and hurting others are as common in children with no trauma in their backgrounds as they are in children who have had a rough time, he believes. "Therapy and punishment are two approaches that don't work. Cut the crap, because it's leading nowhere."
He's not alone in his view. There's an international trend in psychology towards rejecting psychotherapy in favour of living in the present and solving today's problems today.
In Dublin, the approach is championed by the Brief Therapy Group in Ranelagh. believe every problem can be solved if the person experiencing it, whether a child or an adult, learns the required skill.
Brief therapy has been used by adult victims of sexual abuse, teenagers experiencing difficulties in relationships with their parents (and vice versa) and people involved in employee assistance programmes.
Spreading the word internationally that, with support, even children with severe difficulties can solve their own problems is the mission of the 47-year-old Finnish media star. He has developed a programme called Kids' Skills, which can be used by parents, teachers and others working with children.
The author of catchily titled best-sellers such as Pickpockets On A Nudist Camp (which he wrote with Tapani Ahola) and It's Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood, Furman was recently brought to Dublin by the Brief Therapy Group to speak to 150 psychologists, counsellors, doctors, nurses, teachers and others working in the area of mental health.
Stop blaming and start naming the skill you or your child needs to learn, Furman advises. Instead of asking whose fault a problem is, parents need to focus on the child's problem as one they can help the child to solve.
You start the process by identifying the skill the child needs to learn. A child who sleeps with the lights on, for example, needs to learn to stay in the dark. A child who hits other children has to learn self-control.
The parent helps the child learn the skill, then the parent rewards the child for learning it. After mastering the skill, the child thanks those who have helped in teaching the skill: parents, teachers, counsellors and so on.
I tried Furman's method on my son a few days after his fourth birthday. The problem was that he had been reluctant at times to use the toilet. So I stopped blaming myself for being a "bad" mother. Within a day, my son had conquered his fears and mastered the skill. I couldn't believe it.
Step one was to define the skill: using the toilet. Step two was to talk about the need to use the toilet and all the benefits the child - and those who cared about him - would experience as a result. While discussing step two, the "toilet monster" emerged as the main issue.
Step three involved giving the skill a name, in this case "big boy" - a child who was afraid of dogs could name the skill "doggie friend", one who needed to learn to move about calmly "king tiger". Step four was to assign a "power animal" to the skill. The idea is that the child uses the "power animal" for support and to gain courage: in this case, to protect him from the toilet monster.
In Furman's experience, children have chosen many things, such as guardian angels, Tarzan and tyrannosaurs. My son chose Superman, deciding also to wear his dinosaur hat to make him feel even more brave.
Step five involves the child inviting people to help him. My son chose his family. The idea is that the more supporters - friends, family, teachers
Going to the toilet is a private experience, so my son was most interested in getting verbal support from his dad, although it's interesting that he doesn't fear the toilet monster at Montessori school, where he is surrounded by supportive teachers and peers.
Step six explores with the child the reasons for believing he or she can learn the skill. In my son's case, it meant discussing the facts that he has used the toilet many times, that he has learned many other difficult things - such as using a PlayStation - that he wants to learn and that he has the support of his family.
We also had to deal with his fear that using the toilet would mean he was "grown up", and growing up means - my son pointed out - that you eventually die.
So we had reassure him that he had a very, very long life to live and that when he eventually died, at a very old age, he would be in heaven with his family.
For step seven, we planned a celebration on learning the skill. This would be a party, with a menu of mandarins, cheese strings and milk with mum and dad.
Step eight means having the child demonstrate how he would behave once he had learned the skill. Surprise, surprise. My son went straight to the toilet and demonstrated. Brilliant.
Step nine is going public: letting people know what skills he or she intends to learn. Difficult when learning to use the toilet. "Children become uneasy when their problems are talked about publicly," says Furman.
"Also, parents often dislike discussing their children's problems with outsiders. This is not surprising when, in our society, children's problems are still commonly seen as an indication of some kind of failure of parenting."
But Furman has found that parents and children benefit when the child puts up a poster with his or her name, a picture of the power animal and the name of the skill the child is learning. We didn't do this, but I can see how it would be helpful.
Step 10 was to get my son to demonstrate his skill as often as possible, which involved our sitting outside the bathroom door, at the appropriate times and waiting), then praising him when he succeeded.
Children love admiration, although my son was more interested in his dad's praise, and mum had to be low-key.
After a week of demonstrations, we held the party. My son is still afraid sometimes to use the toilet, but I remind him he has Superman to help him. He then tells me Superman isn't real, then I explain the toilet monster isn't real, either, so they're even. We talked about the fact that Superman represents the courage my son has inside, just as the toilet monster represents a fear of growing up.
The method worked for us. It won't always work as fast. But now I've got the method in my parenting arsenal, I intend to use it again and again.
There is something tremendously liberating about seeing the problem as a skill to be learned rather than as evidence of parenting failure. You have to break habits in order to accept that parents are neither perfect nor imperfect, merely people who try their best.
We're conditioned to believe problems have deep psychological roots that we must understand. Furman's approach frees us from that intellectual trap. For those of us who are parents, solution-focused psychology offers a chance to help children learn skills that will make a difference.
An Irish programme for parents and adolescents also uses this concept. It's called Parents Plus, educates through a video-based workshop and was developed by John Sharry, a senior social worker, and Prof Carol Fitzpatrick, a consultant psychiatrist, under the auspices of department of child and family psychiatry at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin.
Parents around the Republic have been using it to improve their relationships with their teenagers.
We're great, our kids are great. It's just a matter of tapping into our potential.
Further information from the Kids' Skills website (www.reteaming.com)(free website offering Kids' Skills programme for parents) or from Brief Therapy Group, 1 Chelmsford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6 (www.brieftherapy.ie or 01-4913033). Details of workshops and video from Parents Plus, c/o department of child and family psychiatry, Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Eccles Street, Dublin 7.