36-5 From "Authoritarian-Regard" to "Self-Regard": Exploring Taiwanese Play Therapists' Transitions of Parenting Conceptions from Multicultural Perspectives
Authoritarian/compliance is an important ingredient of traditional Chinese parenting, so Taiwanese play therapists might own lots of experiences of ”authoritarian-regard”. However, the rationale of play therapy focused on ”self-regard” characters. So, how Taiwanese play therapists identify a set of parenting conceptions is the focus of this study. From the cultural perspective, the present research, following the constructivism paradigm, collected and analyzed data based on grounded theory. Nine Taiwanese play therapists were recruited to be interviewees for semi-structured interviews. The results showed a transition for the interviewees that although the interviewees all experienced different levels of ”authoritarian regard” parenting when they were young, they all consistently opposed to authoritarian parenting. This transition happened when interviewees gradually grew up and got the ”corrected experiences” purposely or by chance from the interactions of grandparents, couples, teachers, siblings, professional peers, or therapists. These corrected experiences were different from ”authoritarian-regard” and increased their autonomy. Interviewees all tried to incorporate this new experience in the interactions with their own parents and children. Not every interviewee successfully modified their own authoritarian interactions because different interviewees owned different internal and external resources. Basically, if interviewees can change their parent-child interactions, then this transition would likely reinforce the disagreement with authoritarian parenting. Suggestions based on the finding of this study were highlighted that it is better for Taiwanese play therapists to culturally coordinate their life experiences and therapeutic rationales concerned to practice.
Keywords
authoritarian-regard ； grounded theory ； multicultural counseling ； parenting conception ； play therapist
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