Question: I've been a big fan of yours for many years. My oldest daughter (age 22) is spending two years working at an orphanage in Honduras and is responsible for young adolescent girls. She, along with other volunteers, is at a programme called Farm of the Child run by a private foundation and Franciscan sisters. She graduated from Notre Dame last year, and this programme has unofficial Notre Dame ties.

The children at this compound are either orphans or were taken out of unsafe home environments. She emailed me about one girl who has gone on a hunger strike when she implemented some discipline and this is a learning experience for her. Is there a book that you could recommend that would help her in understanding them? I'd like to send her something that may help her work through the issues. Any advice?

Answer: You must feel very proud of your daughter for taking some time out of her own life to make a positive difference for others in need. She will learn much from her experience and will also appreciate the loving environment she was fortunate enough to experience during her childhood.

Girls who experienced unsafe earlier environments or who have been orphaned and lived without parents are unlikely to trust new caretakers. Your daughter and the other volunteers will have to establish a bond of trust before they can inspire the teens to be motivated. The orphanage must already have rules that the teens are accustomed to living by. Your daughter and the volunteers will all be expected to enforce those rules, but managing to do that in a firm, positive way, without overreacting or being threatening, can make the difference in adolescents learning to trust. If the volunteers are too easy on the teens, the teens will push limits and try to get away with breaking rules, but if they are too hard, they could rebel and become difficult.

As with families, if those in charge are united and respect and support each other, the teens are more likely to respect them all. If some volunteers give into the girls, or side with them against the rules, it will cause the same problematic manipulations that take place in families where parents work at cross-purposes. I expect the Franciscan sisters have done some training with the volunteers, but you can bet that 18 volunteers, just beyond their own teen years, may not yet be a team and that may take some time. However, if teamwork doesn't take place, it not only would destroy trust, but it might overly empower a teen to be disrespectful to a volunteer who's trying to enforce the rules. Enough said, because I don't truly know what would cause that particular girl to threaten going on a hunger strike.

The book I suggest is "How to Parent So Children Will Learn" (Great Potential Press, 2008), because although it wasn't specifically written with this special population in mind, I emphasize the foundational principles of parenting that are reasonably effective with all children. By being positive, patient and firm, much can be accomplished — even with children who have had very difficult past experiences.

Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com.

Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, Wisconsin, USA 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com.