Parents' biggest battles with their children are often over the smallest things: refusing to share a favourite toy with a sibling, leaving a supermarket without buying that special snack, saying goodbye at the end of a play date. For Kendra Moran and her eight-year-old daughter, Keira, the flashpoint was clothes.
'We fought endlessly over what she would wear; she wanted flip-flops and shorts when it was cold outside; I wanted her to wear a pretty dress I'd bought for church,' says Moran, a mother of three. 'She's always been eloquent beyond her years and after one of our shouting arguments, Keira said, 'Mummy, you need to let me make some of my own decisions sometimes'. I realised I needed to change my parenting strategy.'
Most of us feel the ABCs of raising children should come naturally, but parents find it's just not that simple. Like Moran, growing numbers are turning to parenting experts for help with conflict resolution, open communication and emotional support. And why not, asks the American, who used to work in ad sales. 'For many of us who have had careers, it's simply a case of looking at it like professional development or training. You have to do it with any craft you might learn, so why should parenting be any different?'
A wide number of courses are available in Hong Kong and experts are on hand to help negotiate the perilous waters of parenting. Katherine Sellery and Clarys Nan Jamieson have been teaching Dr Thomas Gordon's Parent Effectiveness Training (Pet) course in the city for the past eight years. They were Moran's first point of contact, and some of their tips have had a marked effect on her relationship with her daughter.
'When it's nine degrees outside, I'll look out the window and say 'it's freezing, do you want to take a sweater or change your clothes?' She always says she'll bring a sweater and sometimes she is cold! But instead of forcing her to do it my way and making her hate me, she's made that choice to be cold herself.'
The situations and themes are age-old, Sellery says. 'The problems, the heartaches, resentment - they are all the same. If you use a 'power over' approach to parenting, eventually you will reap the harvest of at least one of the three Rs [retaliation, rebellion, resentment]'.