The Blogspot of Beth Grosshans: Understanding and Combatting Imbalance of Family Power

Monday, March 23, 2015

Understanding and Combatting Imbalance of Family Power

Dr. Beth Grosshans is a child psychologist who has retired from private practice and focuses on speaking engagements with educators and parents. The author of Beyond Time Out: From Chaos to Calm, Dr. Beth Grosshans is currently working to revise and update the well-received 2008 book. One of the key concepts of the book and her presentations is imbalance of family power.

Imbalance of family power (IFP) describes a situation in which children control the home dynamic through incessant whining, tantrums, sleeping issues, and mealtime misbehavior. These behaviors are common to some extent in every family but can reach extremes when children act out constantly in public settings, such as school, and boldly defy their parents’ wishes at home. Displays of disrespect can take the form of refusing to be taught or trained and even threatening to run away.

Dr. Grosshans notes that, while such behaviors are diverse and vary in severity, they have a common root in IFP. The state of IFP is characterized by family life being disrupted and non-peaceful more than 30 percent of the time. In her book, Dr. Grosshans provides practical techniques for regaining control of the home environment and creating a healthier, more constructive family dynamic.

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About Beth Grosshans

After establishing her Flemington, New Jersey-based private practice in 1994, licensed clinical psychologist Beth Grosshans, PhD, assisted children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families with psychological assessments and interventions for over 15 years. Concurrently she worked as a private consultant, providing clinical training and seminars on child development issues for faculty members at local schools. Also serving as an instructor for the Princeton Center for Teacher Education during this period, Dr. Beth Grosshans taught the course Child Development: Infant, Toddler, and through the Elementary Years at the Princeton Montessori School.

Since retiring from clinical practice, Dr. Beth Grosshans has concentrated on writing for and speaking to parents and educators about child development issues and discipline. She co-wrote the book Beyond Time-Out: From Chaos to Calm, in which she introduced the concept of imbalanced family power, contradicting prevailing child-centric notions of effective parenting and emphasizing the importance of exerting parental leadership and authority to prevent unruliness and anxiety in children.

Dr. Beth Grosshans received a BA in psychology from the University of Cincinnati and earned both an MA in psychology and a PhD in clinical child psychology from Ohio State University. Under Habib Davanloo, MD, she has also completed several intensive professional training courses in Intensive Short Term Dynamic Therapy. She is a retired member of the board of directors of the New Jersey Psychological Association Foundation and of the American Psychological Association.