Is your child driving you insane? If you don’t know where to start first to achieve behavioral changes, the “4-basket method” will help you.
“My kid is driving me crazy!” Do you know this thought? Could you hit the ceiling several times a day because your child is behaving in a problematic way? Because it is unruly, explosive, jealous, narcissistic, uncooperative or something else that causes stress and arguments in everyday family life?
If you’re overwhelmed with anger and are at a loss as to where to begin your parenting interventions, there is a useful method. It helps you prioritize issues and what you need to focus on to make real change.
Mastering Challenging Behavior
The concept is often used in parent counseling, but can also be easily carried out at home. It’s called the “4-basket method”, sometimes also the “3+1-basket method”.
It goes back to the American child psychologist Ross Greene. As a best-selling author, he has written, among other things, about dealing with challenging behaviors of “easily frustrated, chronically inflexible children”. Thats how it works:
This is how the “4 basket method” works
Write on cards all of your child’s difficult behaviors that annoy you. Each on their own. You then distribute the cards – or slips of paper – to three baskets. The three traffic light warning colors green, yellow and red are symbolically assigned to the baskets. Ideally, they are also staggered in size, such as a laundry basket, a wastepaper basket, a decorative basket:
- The green basket stands for acceptance: This is the largest basket. This is where all of the behaviors that are annoying to you, but acceptable upon reflection, go. Because maybe only your ego is hurt or your child just ticks differently than you imagined. By using the largest basket, you practice an accepting attitude. This can make you less upset about some little things. This form of letting go, by sorting the pieces of paper there, can already provide relief.
- The yellow basket stands for compromise: In the middle basket are behaviors that are not acceptable in the long term – but that you can somehow endure at the moment because you have negotiated and found compromises. This basket is not the center of your attention either.
- The red basket stands for borders: The smallest is the “no-go basket”. Only the behaviors that you no longer accept in the future end up here. It should actually only be two or at most three things. This is where your focus lies to start with change strategies. That means you’re actually putting your energies into working on those behaviors—set aside the other annoyances of your family life. relieving? Even.
The Bonus Basket: Resources
That’s just three baskets. But there is another bonus basket that is just as important. That’s why the technique is also called the “3+1 basket method”. Because the crucial baskets that help you prioritize are joined by this fourth basket:
- The white basket represents resources: Here you write down everything that is already going well, what you appreciate and love about your child. Anything that doesn’t need to change. An important basket for your positive view of your child. If you think outside the box a little, you will certainly come up with many strengths that lie behind your child’s supposed weaknesses.
By the way, you can also visualize all of this on a list if you don’t have any suitable baskets. Either way, the four baskets help you feel less overwhelmed – and focus your energy on a few key changes that you implement in a targeted manner. Incidentally, this also works wonderfully with problems that have nothing to do with upbringing.
Sources used: developtoperform.ch, fritzundfraenzi.ch, isi-hamburg.org