Here's more fun facts about the Yorks and their nurturing parenting philosophy of "tough love" (yes, also the title of the book):
Its authors, 45-year-old Phyllis York and her 53-year-old husband, David, were counselors by profession. But their own children -- whom they described as "rotten" -- taught them that psychological counseling "only prolonged the problems by looking for the causes in the family's behavior." A child's rotten behavior was exclusively the child's fault, they wrote, and the most appropriate response was banishment. The Yorks' crowning achievement of "tough love," as they tell it, was refusing to post bail for their teenage daughter when she was arrested for drug possession just before Christmas. When their other daughter "threatened" to post bond, Phyllis screamed at her, "I'll kill you! You will not make her bail!" And when an intern at the rehab center came to ask them to visit their troubled daughter, Phyllis slammed the door in her face.
Some children, the Yorks explained, are simply too horrible to continue nuturing. Among the two pages of banishable offenses the Yorks list are "living in filthy bedroom and saying it is their room and they can do what they want, leaving dirty dishes around and claiming that they did not do it, fighting with their siblings and saying that their brothers and sisters started it, fighting with their parents and saying that Mom or Dad was nagging them..." as well as wrecking the family car, shoplifting, and getting stoned.
"The common denominator is rotten behavior," the Yorks wrote. "Despite a wide range of geographical, social, and economic backgrounds, our young people today behave with stereotypical predictability. Like clones stamped out in some satanic laboratory, they share an underlying selfishness and similar ways of demonstrating it."
The trick is to band together with other parents -- "your support people" -- who are doing the same thing to their bad children. And most of all, stay away from doctors and therapists. "We do not support the use of counselors who 'psychologize' the problem," the Yorks wrote, "but we encourage the patronage of counselors who will cooperate with our TOUGHLOVE strategies."
This book sounds like the programmies' bible.
Poll