By Shandra Hill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 27, 1999

Joyce Divinyi spends summers and some school months teaching teachers and administrators how to recognize violent behavior in students.

Divinyi has taken her training to several schools throughout metro Atlanta. "Teachers stayed after school in order to get the training to help them respond effectively to troubled kids," she said.

At an open community meeting at Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church in Peachtree City on Sunday, she encouraged around 75 parents to become proponents, too, particularly for violence prevention training in schools.

"The violent incidents are always triggered by emotional issues," said Divinyi, referring to school shootings in Littleton, CO; Paducah, KY; and Jonesboro, AK. All could have been prevented, she believes, if more adults knew how to recognize what she calls discipline-resistant kids. "Teachers" are trained to teach; they're not trained to deal with troubled, anguished students," she said. "It's not possible for them to automatically know.

"We're trying to introduce the notion that if you're going to have a really effective safety plan, your whole school needs to be trained to recognize [the signs]. Students almost always give off signals."

Through her private practice in individual and family therapy, Divinyi identifies some of those signals for parents.

"It is a complex process from recognizing that you have emotions to recognizing that an emotion is what is driving your behavior or your mood and recognizing what that emotion is and then being able to [express] that emotion," she said.

"It's a translation process, and people cannot automatically do it; kids definitely cannot." "In particular, the mother of two adult daughters added, children have a hard time expressing themselves to their parents.

"If there is conflict going on with their parents, which there very often is because parents are trying to be parents, then it makes it even harder," she said. "If their parents aren't paying attention -- which we see with many children -- then they wouldn't even know where to begin to tell somebody."

Some strategies Divinyi offers -- most taken from her book, "Successful Strategies for Working or Living with Difficult Kids" -- include acknowledging children's feelings. "Acknowledgment is not agreement," she said. "You can acknowledge their feelings without agreeing with them." She also encourages parents to praise their kids.

"This is the hardest thing to get parents to do," Divinyi said. "Some parents do it so naturally because it's been in their experience when they were children."

But for others, she added, it's not an easy thing.

"People are so focused on getting the child to do the right thing -- correcting them, training them, making sure they stay on the path -- that they forget that a word of praise is more powerful than a word of criticism," she said.

Karen Cook, the mother of two girls, 11 and 14, plans to apply some of Divinyi's strategies.

"One of the main ones, like with my 14-year-old, is 'Save the big punishments for the big offenses,'" Cook said. "My daughter really is very good, and we have very few problems with her."

"Sometimes the little things she does wrong, we end up having what she thinks are huge punishments, and she might be right," Cook said. "If she does something major, what's left to do?"

The key point, Divinyi offered, is for parents to recognize the role they play in their children's lives.

"You will be the number one influence in your child's life," she told the group. "What kind of influence you will be is the choice that parents have to make. That's your challenge and your choice."