Does Your Child Struggle to Behave?

If you have a difficult child or a child with severe behavioral issues, you probably feel like it’s your fault. There are parenting books and techniques all over the place on how to get your child to behave or follow rules, etc., but sometimes all those well-meaning techniques just don’t help. Sometimes it seems like your child goes out of their way to cause a problem. Most of our behavior management techniques are based on the premise that children behave when and if they want to. The various techniques work to make children want to behave well as often as possible. They reward good behavior, and they penalize bad behavior. But is that really what’s going on when children misbehave?

After a lot of struggle with my own behaviorally-challenged child, I can tell you from experience that behavior isn’t about want to. Research backs me up on this. Children behave when they have the necessary skills to do so. Children behave when they can. Think about it. Nobody wakes up in the morning intending to fail. No one wakes up thinking about all the ways they can create a problem and disrupt everyone else’s day. All of us wake up intending to succeed and to do our best. Some of us are better at succeeding than others.

When you have a child that is naturally compliant, highly resilient, and possesses key skills like problem-solving, flexibility, and frustration management, you have a child who is going to pose very few behavioral problems. Oh, sure, no child is perfect. You still have to correct these kids and discipline them, but for the most part you don’t have to do it repeatedly or often. They are labeled “good kids,” and they succeed behaviorally in almost any situation. But what happens when your child lacks some of these key skills like problem-solving, flexibility, and frustration management? Well, then you’re going to have a child with a lot more behavioral issues.

Skills like problem-solving, flexibility, and frustration management aren’t always natural. Sometimes they have to be taught. Teaching our kids how to utilize these skills and improve them is really the goal of discipline. Remember, the root word for discipline in Latin means “student.” When we discipline our children, we are teaching them the correct way to behave and the correct skills they need to succeed. You can’t always do that in the heat of the moment, especially if you have an explosive child who seems to go off the deep end and escalate everything well beyond normal.

What you can do is plan ahead and work on the problem before it happens. For the most part, melt down triggers are predictable. There are key times throughout the day where most children with behavioral issues struggle: getting ready in the morning, transition times, homework time and going to bed at night. As a parent, you know the situations that cause your child the most struggle behaviorally. Because you can predict when the bulk of issues will occur, you can plan ahead to try to avoid those triggers. The key is collaborating with your child.

It looks a bit like this: You notice that your child has a melt down every time you tell them it’s time to clean up their toys. The next afternoon when the child is calm, you sit down to talk to them.

It will probably take a while for your child to open up and be able to have a conversation like this. It will probably take trying out a few workable suggestions to get to the point where you have a solution to the problem, but it does work.

A FEW KEYS TO REMEMBER

1. Prioritize the behavior you need to address. If your child has a lot of behavioral issues, you can’t work on all of them at once. It’s too overwhelming. So pick the top one or two that are high priority issues and focus on them until they are resolved.
2. Make sure both you and your child get time to talk about the issue. The goal is to have each participant lay out their issue. Your child says what their problem is that needs a solution. You say what your problem is that needs a solution. You’re working together to find solutions that address both sides of the equation.
3. Use empathy and responsive listening to keep the conversation moving. By using this collaborative method, you are teaching your child the skills of problem solving, flexibility, and frustration management in the moment by modeling them.
4. If the conversation gets heated, table it for later. Rome wasn’t built in a day. If the conversation isn’t staying productive or seems to be causing issues of its own, set an appointment to discuss it with your child at another time. This gives you and your child time to calm down, regroup, and think things out.
5. Try all the workable solutions, no matter how strange they sound, until you find the right one. Sometimes as a parent, what you think the problem is is not the problem. Sometimes when you figure out the real problem, what you think the solution is is not the solution. Your child is a unique individual with unique needs. Allow them to tell you what the problem is from their viewpoint and what they think the solution might be. Sometimes the most off-the-wall reasons and solutions are the ones that work. Don’t entertain solutions that don’t address both sides of the equation: your problem and their problem. If there’s a reason a solution is unworkable, discuss in what way it’s unworkable during your brainstorming session. Once you hit on a solution that is workable and addresses both sides, try it out for a period of time. If it doesn’t solve the problem, repeat the brainstorming session.

For more information on working with children with serious behavioral issues, check out the book The Explosive Child by Ross Greene. It’s used by parents whose children struggle with mental illness, developmental issues, and/or trauma histories that make their behavior extremely challenging. For another great resource, check out the TED talks by Dr. Ablon on Collaborative Problem Solving.