Before we go further with transactional analysis and dealing with a child’s behaviour let’s first look into the meaning of transactional analysis. What is transactional analysis?
Transactional Analysis or TA is a system of popular psychology based on the idea that one’s behaviour and social relationships reflect an interchange between parental (critical and nurturing), adult (rational), and childlike (intuitive and dependent) aspects of personality established early in life.
While doing TA with children, the experts try using the logic of the Child ego state to make room for imagination and creativity. They also need to energise their Nurturing Parent for protection purposes.
Here are the advantages of Transactional Analysis:
- It is about positive communication and growth
- It helps understand the child’s viewpoint
- It takes into consideration whether an adult or a parent is dealing with the child
- An adult thinks rationally when a parent thinks emotionally or critically
- The better you are able to understand the child through interaction, the better your child will learn to communicate with you.
The point to very essentially note here is that transactional analysis is always led by experts ie. psychologists who need to mould behaviour so that there is better communication among people. Any person can be provided the tools to communicate better with transactional analysis irrespective of age.
Why are we focusing on transactional analysis? It is definitely a heavy concept that very few people are familiar with. The purpose is to create awareness that most of our problems stem from communication (or misunderstanding the communication). That’s why to get deeper into the communication reasons and knowing why a person is behaving the way he/ she is behaving.
There are 3 ego states – Adult / Parent and Child. Any person irrespective of any age can alternate between these 3 ego states and communicate with the other person. A parent can have a child ego state and a child can have a parent ego state in communicating or perhaps the child can have an adult ego state and a parent has an adult ego state too. It differs from interaction to another depending on the issue being talked or discussed.
Understanding what ego states are predominantly used by the parent and child in their communication helps understand the complexities in their understanding of each other and with expert help it can be rectified.
Transactional analysis is not only used for the right kind of parenting but it has its uses in organization too!
