“Turning back the clock”: A positive strategy for changing unacceptable youth behavior

Abstract

This paper describes “Turning back the clock” (TBC)—an innovative strategy addressing unacceptable or coercive youth behavior based on nonviolent principles, inspired by the nonviolent resistance movement (NVR)—also called connecting authority or caring authority (CA) approaches to guidance and supervision of parents and other adults. Variants of NVR/CA have been evaluated as effective in RCT and pre–post designs. TBC has not been evaluated regarding its effectiveness but shows promising usability in case studies. The aim of this description of the TBC strategy is to encourage development and testing of its usability on large scale to improve it and pave the way for effectiveness evaluations. The core of TBC is to create possibilities for improving behavior without delay by negotiating the social timeline narrative. This allows improvement through reenactment of events immediately after having said or done something unfortunate or unacceptable instead of waiting for the next comparable situation. Adults introduce the strategy by modeling it before youths are encouraged to improve their own misbehavior immediately without waiting for a later opportunity. Finally, adults declare that a set of unacceptable behaviors will be considered disqualifying to any request or demand, but that attempting again as if it had not happened can be a possibility: Using the TBC strategy. This declaration is intended to increase youth's interest in using TBC themselves, and with successful use reduce escalation of conflicts into coercion and threats.