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Candice Mac Lean
Telegraph-Journal

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QUISPAMSIS - An Ottawa-based clinical psychologist is spreading the message of parent power in School District 6.

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Maggie Mamen

Maggie Mamen specializes in working with families - primarily parents - and said she wants to encourage her clients to reclaim their role in the household.

"My mission is to get parents back into the saddle to be the leader of the family and not being followers of what their children are wanting," she said. "They have to have some sort of sense of the whole picture and get some confidence back."

Mamen said through her work she has learned that parents are given mixed messages about what role to play in their children's lives.

"It's a lot to do with the messages they get as far as what being a parent is," she said. "Those messages come from a number of different sources. There was a whole children's rights movement that started in the 80s that has very much been a driving force of putting children up on a pedestal and as soon as we hand over our rights to make a decision to a child then it takes it away from the parent."

Mamen said movements that empower children have good intentions but can be carried too far. She said the result can be an unbalanced family dynamic.

"The children can become overly powerful," she said. "They run the family; they dictate what everybody does; they dictate not only their bedtime but the parents' bedtime and I'm hearing a lot of parents saying 'I have to do this.' It's almost as if parents have lost their sense of being able to make a decision because their children are so powerful."

Mamen said institutional abuse has made it so parents do not want their child to do whatever an adult says.

Media messages have also played a role, she said.

"Advertisers are out to keep children powerful because children have an incredible influence on parents' spending."

Besides visiting with District 6 school administrators and guidance counselors while in the area, Mamen spoke to parents Tuesday night at Hampton Middle School. Her presentation was called Parent Power: The Quiet Revolution.

Mamen said she hoped to teach parents to take control of their children.

"Parents want children to be happy and that message is coming from all kinds of different places. I think that's the biggest driving force," Mamen said. "Sometimes a bit of short-term pain allows long-term gain. What I'm hoping is they will go away feeling a lot more comfortable with what their instinct tells them to do and we go back to being child-centered and not child-driven."

Mamen said she is not encouraging parents to stop giving their children rewards, but said giving children what they want needs to have a purpose.

"Essentially I think it is fine to pamper a child as a privilege and we all want to do that and I'm not in any sense advocating we stop doing that," she said. "When the privilege is demanded then it's a right in that child's eyes and not a privilege."

Mamen said the reason she wants to spread her message is to limit the number of children who are being medicated for behavioural issues that she says may not exist.

"I'm very aware that medications may be good when a child has a chemical imbalance in their system," she said. "When a child has never been expected to do something that's hard and work it through and they're allowed to do whatever they want then they are going to present with the symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. I think that's the biggest danger."

Mamen, also an author of four books, said it's never too late to change a parenting style so it better suits the family.

"It's re-empowering as a parent to be as a person not pushed around," she said. "Why would you make six different things for supper? Have some dignity. Have some integrity."