Jacob Azerrad, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts, is the author of the books From Difficult to Delightful in Just 30 Days (McGraw Hill) and Anyone Can Have a Happy Child (Warner Books). (You can also visit him online at www.jacobazerrad.com.)
Dr. Azerrad was kind enough to share the following piece “Frustrated With Your Child’s Defiant Behavior?” with Mom in the City readers. To make it an easier read, I’ve broken it down into two posts. This is Part I. On Monday, I’ll post Part II.
Frustrated With Your Child’s Defiant Behavior? Throw a Party! Your Child Just Wants to Grow Up
In the supermarket checkout line, your three year old leans out of the grocery cart and grabs a candy bar. You say, “You’ve had enough candy today,” then take the bar and put it back. He lunges for the rack wailing, “I want candy NOW!” You try to get through the line before the tantrum escalates out of control. Too late. He’s banging his feet, flailing for candy and screaming at the top of his lungs.
When you ask people how they deal with defiant behavior and tantrums, parents, teachers, or your pediatrician are likely to say this defiance is a sign of a “chemical imbalance.” They point to a host of drugs that “treat” these behaviors. But are drugs the answer? Whatever happened to the Terrible Twos? Wasn’t it a normal stage every parent expected their child to go through?
The good news is, it is a stage but contrary to what all the professionals have told you, your child won’t out-grow it without your firm guidance and direction. In fact, defiance is a young child’s expression of something quite worthy: the desire to grow up. So what do you do when these behaviors start? Throw a party may seem like the last thing you want to do, but this a new stage in your child’s development and in your life as a parent. It’s time to teach your child 2 essential life skills. How to:
1. Respect the needs of others
2. Exercise self-control
These are essential life skills all children need to learn in order to be successful at their jobs, to make and keep friends, and to find a life partner and raise families of their own. A life filled with friends, family and prosperity are gifts every parent wants for their child. There is a tried and true method to help your child grow into a caring, responsible adult. A method that focuses on cultivating and nurturing not just good behaviors but relationship skill (social skill) behaviors, the fourth “R.” After ‘reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic there is relationship.
Out-of-control behavior in children has become an epidemic and so have the medical “solutions.” When you share your frustration about your child’s behavior with your pediatrician, s/he is more likely to suggest your child may have ADD or ADHD rather than say they’re showing a healthy desire for independence and now it’s time to set limits and boundaries. Or you may have read about childhood bipolar, sensory integration disorder or sensory processing disorder and fear your child has one of those disorders! A Frontline documentary, The Medicated Child, examined the scandal of medicating children as young as 4 with powerful psychotropic drugs untested on children. One frustrated parent says, “No where we ever turned was there this therapeutic solution, nobody every said we can work without this drug therapy. Everywhere we looked it was take meds, take meds, take meds.” But there is a non-drug alternative! An approach that’s so simple it’s radical:
• A time-tested method that combines the goals of a therapeutic approach with the behavioral commonsense approach of our grandparents.
• A method that understands a child’s healthy desire to grow up and their desire for attention, and nurtures qualities that will help a child grow up to be a caring, responsible adult.
Parents must redefine for their child what it truly means to be grownup. This redefinition is critically important! Children think defiance and demanding behaviors mean being grown-up. Being self-centered is not grown-up behavior, but respecting the needs of others is. Being demanding, yelling or hitting is not grown-up but learning how to wait your turn, sharing with friends and siblings, exercising self-control is grown-up.
Before the 1960’s, when a child entered their Terrible Twos, parents usually spanked the child who misbehaved. When the 60’s counter-culture generation rejected authority, especially parental authority, they also rejected traditional childrearing methods. That dovetailed with the rise in a psychological approach to problem solving, an approach that encouraged methods urging parents to “understand” their child’s motives, telling them that “the biter needs the most comfort” or “don’t get furious get curious.”
The problem with cajoling and reasoning, or hugging a tantrum is – it doesn’t work! Witness a generation of self-absorbed children and young people, still living in an extended state of toddlerhood!
(You can read Part II here.)
