The focus, therefore, is to work on parenting thoughts as well as actions. Learning to be a parent is an educational process. Consequently, the role of the child is to be the learner. Parents contribute to their own parenting problems by the way in which they interpret events and situations with their children. Re-education and reorganization of a parent's belief systems will result in a corresponding reorganization in the parents relationships with their children and with their spouse or parenting partner.
Parents have a potential for both rational, realistic thinking and irrational, unrealistic thinking.
They are fallible and must accept themselves as creatures who will continue to make mistakes yet at the same time learn to live more at peace with themselves, as parents, and with their children. Parents condition themselves to feel unbalanced and helpless. Parents have the capacity to change their cognitive, emotive, and behavioral processes. They can choose to react differently from their usual patterns, refuse to allow themselves to become upset, and train themselves so that they can eventually remain minimally disturbed for the rest of their life. Parents actively reinforce false beliefs by the processes of autosuggestion and self-repetition.