How to deal with a defiant child

Just about every day, Angela Estes, a New York mom, finds herself asking her 5-year-old son, "Why are you being so defiant?"

When she says it's time to get dressed and head to school or when she gives the sign that playground time has come to an end, he has other ideas, said a frustrated Estes.

"He just wants to do what he wants to do, and I find it very hard to establish the authority that whether he wants to do it or not, it's what we're going to do," she said.

Who can't relate to that?

I remember a few months back when one of my daughters wouldn't listen to me. I resorted to the old "Go to your room," which didn't work, either. She continued to remain defiant and disobey me until I checked out of the situation and ignored her.

Still, I wondered what the "right" way to handle her behavior actually was. Estes struggles with the same question and has even tried giving her son choices, such as saying that either they leave the playground or he is "choosing" not to have any screen time at home.

"I sort of end up running out of things to take away, and then I get frustrated and angry, and I don't know what to do when I've run out of things and he still doesn't want to do it," she said.

In the eighth installment of our CNN Digital Video series "Parent Acts," we asked parents to act out the defiance they experience in their children. We then had a parenting expert listen to their role-play and weigh in with advice.

Parenting strategist and licensed family therapist Tricia Ferrara listened to Estes and wondered whether she's walking into situations with her son armed more with "hope" than a real plan to deal with his behavior.

"A suggestion ... is kind of 'strike when the iron is cold' concept," said Ferrara, author of "Parenting 2.0: Think in the Future, Act in the Now," a guidebook for parents with step-by-step advice on how to strengthen their relationships with their children.

"I feel like you're working real hard when you're in the heat of the moment but maybe not doing so much rehearsal outside of this World Series moment at the playground, when the stakes are really high," she said to Estes.

Ferrara's advice was for Estes to come up with a plan: Promise the playground for Friday afternoon but say that "we need to see 'big boy behavior' on the way to getting there."

She said Estes could then come up with a few ways he could show that "big boy behavior," such as getting dressed by himself or putting his toys away. "If he's reluctant, remind him through that phrase. ... 'How about some "big boy behavior?" ' "

Ferrara, who has been in practice in the Philadelphia area for more than a decade, said a family mantra can also serve as a trigger for children on what they need to do. "In my house, it was 'Fussing gets you nothing,' " she said. "So if [my kids] started to fuss about something, I would say, 'What does fussing get you?' And they would say, 'Nothing,' and then they would stop because it triggered them to say, 'Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to do X.' "

The problem with labeling a child as 'defiant'

Parents may be quick to label their children as "defiant," but experts say that fails to recognize that what we do as parents can impact our child's behavior.

"The problem with 'defiance' is that it puts something in the child," said Alan Kazdin, professor of psychology and child psychiatry at Yale University and author of more than 40 books including "The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child." "It's not in the child. You can really make defiant children very compliant, actually, many of them, even most of them. It's in what you do to get that compliance."

Kazdin, who is also director of the Yale Parenting Center, said that if a parent says a child is defiant, it means the child has the problem and the parent is fine. But the other way of thinking about that is the child didn't listen to the parent when the parent asked the child to do something, he said.

"And then now, here comes the science: Is there anything that science can tell us to get [the child] to be a really better listener and controlled better by [the parent's] behavior?" said Kazdin, former president of the American Psychological Association. "And the answer is wildly 'yes.' "

Kazdin says the way we convey instructions to our children affects the probability they will comply with our request.

For instance, if you say "Put on your jacket; we're going out" while pointing at your child, you are likely to have less luck than if you put "please" in front of it: "Please put your jacket on; we're going out."

"The tone of voice is the issue, not the 'please,' " said Kazdin, who is also author of "The Everyday Parenting Toolkit." That is why a working parent coming home after a stressful day is more likely to encounter some defiance from a child, he said. After a parent comes home and the child is being defiant, the parent might say, "This is all I need after the day I've had."

"Well, what does the research show? That no fault of anybody but the stress changed the [parent's] tone of voice," said Kazdin. "It's not about blaming, but I'm saying we put defiance in the child."

Offering kids choice also increases the likelihood of compliance. "Sally, put on your green jacket or your blue sweater, please," said Kazdin, is likely to lead to better results than simply "Put on your jacket."

"The real choice is not anywhere near as important in life as the perception of choice, and so it doesn't matter that the child doesn't have a real choice," said Kazdin. "What matters is that in giving that [choice], you increase compliance."

The power of praising good behavior

What many of us parents fail to recognize is how important noticing and praising good behavior can be in terms of eliminating the defiance in our children. We don't tend to praise our children when they are getting along with their siblings, doing their homework or negotiating with other children on the ball field. But when they do something wrong or disobey us, we are quick to point that out.

Praise the good behavior, says Kazdin, and be specific about it. Don't praise by saying "wonderful girl" or "wonderful boy." Be specific, such as "Great! I asked you to come over, and you came over right away," and then add a high five or a kiss on the cheek.

"It's the strategic praise that changes behavior when used in a way that follows [the] behavior immediately," he said.

We also need to help our kids practice and practice with them, said Kazdin. For instance, I'm already dreading starting the school year and finding a way to get my younger daughter to get out of bed on her own.

Kazdin says I could make a plan with my daughter the night before and promise to help her get up in the morning. Once she gets up, I should then praise her and tout how we did it together. After doing that for a few days, I could then say to my daughter that I bet she can't get up on time on her own the next morning, how it's something teenagers can do but perhaps she isn't big enough yet to do it.

If my daughter does get up on her own, I can have kind of an "ecstasy exchange" in which I praise her profusely for getting up by herself and give her plenty of high fives, said Kazdin.

The idea is to help my child as much as possible in the beginning, be there to hold her hand and praise her, and eventually she will start doing it on her own. But it won't happen overnight, he said.

"The issue is, you have to build the behavior gradually," said Kazdin. "That's the critical part. ... Practice, repeat it, practice."

(CNN)More than 300 reindeer have been killed by a single lightning strike at a Norwegian national park.

Pictures released by the Norwegian Environment Agency on Sunday show 323 carcasses scattered across a small, isolated area in Hardangervidda National Park. The plateau-like park in south-central Norway is home to Europe's largest herds of wild reindeer, according to its website.

One of the agency's inspectors discovered the dead animals over the weekend after a storm passed through.

Wild animals are occasionally struck by lightning, but the agency has never seen so many killed at once, spokesperson Kjartan Knutsen told CNN.

"We have never experienced such numbers before. This is very large," Knutsen said. He said the wild reindeer were huddled together because of heavy weather on Friday, when the strike occurred.

"That's why it's possible for the lightning to kill so many," he said.

Humans rarely visit the remote area. The dead reindeer were found by one of the agency's inspectors because Norway is in the midst of its annual wild reindeer hunting season.

Knutsen said five reindeer were still alive when the inspector came across the scene, but they had to be euthanized.

He said the agency has now begun taking samples from the dead animals as part of a health survey.

"We know they were killed by lightning, but this testing is for science," he said.

The dead reindeer were still on site Monday. While the agency usually does not remove animals when they die in the wild, it is currently considering other options because of the large numbers, Knutsen said.

It's not the first time a large herd of animals have been killed by lightning. In 2005, 68 cows were killed in Australia by a single bolt.

 The incredible dragonfly

Flying insects can often prove to be a nuisance — mosquito bites cause an itchy rash, a wasp’s sting inflicts acute pain, flies are singularly disgusting, but dragonflies, with their strange droning noise as they descend on to water, are harmless, with an almost fairy-like appearance and movement. Their flight is so unique that engineers have been inspired to design robots that will fly like them.

These insects have four independent, alternately moving wings and they can fly at speeds of 60 mph. They can shoot up in a perpendicular direction of 20 feet. An amazing observation was recorded by a marine biologist Charles Anderson, who lives and works in the Maldives. In a video-film, Dr Anderson carefully tracked plain-coloured dragonflies, the Globe Skimmer (Pantala flavescens), only to discover they make the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world, flying a distance of 11,000 miles, back and forth, across the Indian Ocean.

Dragonflies, with their delicately fluttering wings, intriguing flight movements and possessing individual beauty, are precious creatures that indicate the health of the environment. Zoologist David Attenborough described how these creatures came into being 300 million years ago in his book, Life on Earth, when our planet’;s vegetation was devoid of trees. Short grasses and shrubs covered the earth back then and insects like dragonflies and crickets adapted to the subterranean depths. Therefore, they moulted, shedding their skins as they grew. This form of shedding skin still occurs with the larvae of the dragonfly. 

It was only later, when forests and waterbodies developed, that dragonflies and erstwhile ground insects moved to trees or ponds and rivers. In fact, scientists have theorised that oxygen levels during prehistoric times were about 50 per cent more than it is today. That explained why dragonflies were larger in size at the time. They grew smaller over millennia due to predation caused by prehistoric birds, some of which were big. The ancient dragonfly certainly deserves more respect than we give them, with humankind destroying their habitats. 

Both dragonflies and another species related to them, damselflies, require clean water to survive. The aquatic habitats where their larvae hatch and develop will reflect on the  condition of the water, depending on whether these insects survive. If waterbodies are contaminated by pesticides or sewage, the larvae will perish soon enough. The fact that dragonflies consume mosquitoes proves how beneficial the insects are to human health. From their ancient giant forms to the present day dainty creatures, dragonflies, by their presence, give us hope of a pollutant-free ecology. To sight these insects in large numbers will indicate that water sources are clean and free from impurities.

It may be prudent to check the status of dragonflies in India, to the extent possible. Let us focus on two states: areas in Assam/Meghalaya and a zone in Bengal. A pilot study was conducted to examine the diversity and distribution of dragonflies from selected sites in Asansol and the Durgapur industrial area of Burdwan district, from January 2012 to December 2015. A total of 57 different species was recorded, writes Amar Kumar Nayak. Despite Asansol and Durgapur being an industrial belt, the study revealed an encouraging number of dragonflies, in terms of diversity. The region has wetlands, grasslands and ponds, making it a conducive zone for dragonflies to flourish. In India, a total of about 500 species of dragonflies has been recorded.

In Meghalaya  33 species were recorded. Bidyut Kumar Das and Sarma Uddipta, students of zoology, had conducted a study of dragonflies in Assam’s wetlands in Barpeta district, recording 23 species. Although studies on dragonflies in India have been documented from the time of Linnaeus, in the 1850s, not much research was done on the diversity of these insects in Assam. Empirical studies require concerted efforts to check the status of dragonflies throughout Assam’s vast expanses. According to Fraser (1933), “Life in the tropics would soon become unbearable were it not for the vast numbers of dragonflies acting as scavengers of the atmosphere.”

Incredibly, scientists have discovered more than 5,000 species of dragonflies all over the world, with 450 species in North America alone. Dragonflies belong to the insect order Odonata, from the Greek word meaning “the toothed one”. This refers to the serrated teeth that are the insect’s mandibles. Their movable heads have large hemispherical eyes that enable them to locate prey with remarkable vision. They defend their territories by a pattern of patrolling, at various heights. Their larvae are aquatic while the adults are predominantly terrestrial.

From 300 million years ago to the present incorporates the incredible odyssey of the dragonfly, which once upon a time lived in a world with no forests; and then the gradual shift to a combination of terrestrial existence and an aquatic life, flying around the earth and across its oceans.

Why bullying so often works

• By Melissa Hogenboom

23 August 2016

It is not just people that bully the vulnerable. Many animals do it too, and in evolutionary terms it may even work

Frodo ruled with an iron fist. He incited fear among his fellow group members.

His "demonic streak", as it was later called, started early. From three years old he was throwing rocks at those around him.

Frodo, a large-bodied chimpanzee with a recognisable grey streak, would later become the alpha male of his group in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. The primatologist Jane Goodall called him a "real bully". She had even predicted his rise back in 1979, writing: "In about twenty years one of these two brothers probably will become the alpha."

All the other chimps feared Frodo, which helped his rise to the top. He even pushed himself on his own mother, and fathered a sickly infant with her, who would not survive for long.

"He was aggressive towards all of the other chimps," says anthropologist Michael Wilson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who first met Frodo in 2001. "A lot of the other males had a bare patch of fur on their lower back side from where Frodo would bite them."

Many other primates show similar behaviour to Frodo's. His actions hint at something rather dark about our shared ancestry with chimpanzees. They suggest that bullying your way to the top has a long history, and may even be innate.

Frodo ruled his group for five years (Credit: Anup Shah/Naturepl.com)

Bullying is not easy to define, namely because there is no one way to bully. It comes in many forms, from physical playground scuffles to verbal attacks and, nowadays, online harassment.

Any hierarchical society is likely to have bullies in its midst

It is pervasive in human society, having been reported across many different cultures. Psychologists frequently devote whole papers to its causes and consequences.

There is no legal definition of bullying. The UK governmentdefines it as repeated behaviour with the "intent to hurt someone either physically or emotionally". Similarly, in a 2014 report, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the USdefined bullying as: "any unwanted aggressive behaviour(s)…that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times."

By those definitions there are many ape and monkey bullies. In fact, any hierarchical society is likely to have bullies in its midst.

This is strikingly obvious to anyone who has worked withrhesus macaques, a species of monkey with a rigid hierarchy. They engage in a behaviour that the primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, calls "scapegoating".

When you're at the bottom, you're at the bottom, you get beaten up, that's how you live in that society

An unfortunate monkey at the bottom of the hierarchy is repeatedly attacked and picked upon by those higher up in the group. They are sometimes beaten up every day, says de Waal.

"It seems to release tensions among the higher-ups," says de Waal. "That reinforces their bonds, as they have a common enemy." It seems to be an effective way to unite the more dominant macaques.

Removing the victim or "scapegoat" does not prevent the behaviour. The dominant macaques would simply turn on another low-ranking monkey. "When you're at the bottom, you're at the bottom, you get beaten up, that's how you live in that society," says de Waal.

Chimpanzees are similarly hierarchical.

Rhesus macaques often pick on the weakest members of the group (Credit: Gertrud & Helmut Denzau/Naturepl.com)

To get to the top, alpha males often bully any chimp who stands in their way. "Chimps are 'natural bullies' and I have seen it often," says Richard Wrangham of Harvard University in Cambridge, US.

Bullying starts early. "Every male reaching adolescence starts his rise in the dominance hierarchy by teasing females," says Wrangham. Once a chimp has shown his power to all the females, he can challenge and fight other adult males.

Dominants attack subordinates out of the blue, for no apparent reason

Frodo is an extreme example. In his prime he was a ferocious hunter of monkeys, but also killed several other chimpanzees. He even snatched and killed a human child.

Alpha males like Frodo, Wilson says, are defined by their ability to outcompete others in any fight. "It's not like he's necessarily making decisions for [the] benefit of [the] group, he's doing what it takes to get what he wants, which is usually females."

The thing that defines this aggressive behaviour as bullying is that it is not immediately related to survival. In fact, it is often unprovoked, says Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago, Illinois. "Dominants attack subordinates out of the blue, for no apparent reason."

This unsolicited harassment may serve a useful purpose.

Chimp attacks can be fatal (Credit: Konrad Wothe/Naturepl.com)

Maestripieri argues that bullying helps dominant animals to intimidate their subordinates, and that this has clear evolutionary benefits. It ensures that the dominant individuals have better access to food and to the opposite sex.

Chickens have a distinct "pecking order"

"The more a female is bullied by a particular male, the more that male gets to mate her. Sad but true," says Wrangham. "And we know it leads to him having more babies with her."

In line with this, a 2014 genetic study looked at the parents of all chimps born between 1995 and 2003, and revealed a direct link. Dominant and aggressive chimps fathered more offspring than their milder counterparts. It seems it makes sense for dominant members to spend so much time maintaining their status.

Even in captivity, where food is plentiful, bullying is still frequent in both rhesus macaques and chimps. "That means they [monkeys and apes] can invest more time and energy into maintaining their status," says Maestripieri. He says that is simply how they are wired.

It is not only primates who show bullying-like behaviours.

A Nazca booby (Sula granti) (Credit: Tui De Roy/naturepl.com)

Chickens have a distinct "pecking order". As the term suggests, it is maintained by vicious pecking of those that step out of line.

Male cichlids spend a lot of time beating up other males in order to ascend to a higher rank

More grotesquely, Nazca boobiessometimes bully young nestlings with unprovoked sexual attacks when their parents are away hunting for food. A 2008 studyfound that bullied boobies are more likely to become bullies when they grow older, perpetuating the cycle.

High-ranking spotted hyenas also bully their subordinates. This serves to "remind the latter of the power imbalance between them, and thus to maintain their superior social status," says Kay Holekamp of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US.

Bullying has even been observed in fish. For instance, male cichlids spend a lot of time beating up other males in order to ascend to a higher rank. One 2007 study revealed that maleAstatotilapia burtoni can infer others' social rank just by watching fights. 

De Waal suspects that bullying can be found in any species in which hierarchy is important.

Male mountain gorillas are rivals (Gorilla beringei) (Credit: Andy Rouse/naturepl.com)

In a way this is not surprising. The tendency to take frustrations out on another is a "very basic mechanism", says de Waal. In some species, like chimps and humans, this "scapegoating" mechanism is simply more pronounced.

He could beat up everyone and frequently did

Being top-dog does not come without stress. Alpha males are often at risk of being overthrown by lower-ranking males.

If the hierarchy is unstable, as is often the case for baboons and chimps, those at the top are more stressed. However, in a more stable group the subordinates are the most stressed, presumably because they are frequently harassed.

Frodo was so big and dominant he may not have worried about usurpers, says Wilson. "Different males have different experiences depending how much bigger and stronger they are than the others. He could beat up everyone and frequently did."

However, bullying is not the only successful route to the top.

When he appeared weak, Frodo's downfall came quickly (Credit: Michael Wilson)

Frodo's brother Freud was leader before being ousted by Frodo, and he had a much more peaceful approach to leadership. In particular, Freud would groom others to form coalitions, something Frodo never did.

In my experience the males who get there by bullying often end very badly

Perhaps because of his conciliatory approach, when Freud finally became weak he stepped down peacefully, and was accepted by the group as a lower-ranking male. In stark contrast, Frodo's downfall came quickly and violently.

In 2002, after five years of ruling, he became sick and weak. The cause was unknown. Noticing his reduced strength, the other males immediately attacked him.

Frodo spent the subsequent months alone, in exile. When he returned to his group he was demoted to a very low rank. He died in 2013, possibly from violent attack. His necropsy showed that his testicles were infected from a canine-shaped wound.

"In my experience the males who get there by bullying often end very badly," says de Waal. "In captivity they get attacked and we need to take them out. In the wild they get attacked and barely survive, or they get marginalised. The bullies are not very popular."

When it came to grooming Frodo was very selfish (Credit: Michael Wilson)

Nevertheless, from an evolutionary point of view this does not matter. Frodo fathered many offspring, and that means his genes – with whatever predispositions towards bullying they carried – have been passed on.

Wilson and colleagues only discovered one instance of a "suspected death" in bonobo communities

This seems to suggest a bleak conclusion. If so many creatures bully, perhaps bullying is innate in us, something we cannot escape. Is it, as the historian and philosopher Niccolo Machiavell famously wrote, "better to be feared than loved"?

We certainly seem to have the same scapegoating impulses as macaques and chimps, de Waal says. And powerful leaders do sometimes bully to get themselves into positions of power. Bullying is "a clear social strategy for self-advancement and power" in humans, says Maestripieri.

However, it is not quite that clear-cut.

Many animals have dominance hierarchies (Credit: Bertie Gregory/2020VISION/naturepl.com)

Chimps are not our only close living relative. To understand how our behaviours evolved, we also need to look at another, often forgotten ape: the bonobo.

As a species, we are more peaceful than chimps and less prone to impulsive violent outbursts

Bonobos are just as closely related to us as chimps. They have not been studied to the same extent,but they are known to be much less violent. They have even been dubbed "hippy apes" because of their peaceful nature.

In 92 years of study, Wilson and colleagues only discovered one instance of a "suspected death" in bonobo communities, contrasting with 152 possible murders in chimp groups.

Like bonobos, humans appear to have gone down a less violent path than chimpanzees. "It's rare to see direct physical aggression between [human] adult men in the same group compared to chimpanzees," says Wilson. "If you watch chimps for a day you are going to see aggressive reactions in the males. In humans it's more subtle."

As a species, we are more peaceful than chimps and less prone to impulsive violent outbursts. However, we also live in a society where competition with others is the norm. This pushes us towards using bullying as a social strategy.

A whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) pecking a juvenile (Credit: Wild Wonders of Europe/Unterthiner/naturepl.com)

"Human bullying is both the product of tendencies inherited from our chimp-like ancestors, and of competitive social environments like those of chimps and rhesus monkeys," says Maestripieri. "It's a double whammy." In contrast, "bonobos live in social environments in which expressing bullying tendencies is simply not advantageous."

It is therefore not surprising that bullying is commonplace. In a busy school playground, you do not need to look for long before an unfortunate child is bullied.

Frodo's demonic approach to ruling clearly came at a cost

In more subtle ways, adults also bully. There are many instances ofworkplace bullying and"psychopathic" bosses, while politicians use "scapegoating" to incite antagonism against minority groups. This approach "creates a common enemy when there are tensions in a society," says de Waal.

A 2013 genetic study revealed that the tendency to become a leader is at least partly genetic. In other words, some individuals are equipped with the personality traits to become group leaders, while others are more inclined to be followers.

At least some of these "natural leaders" will use aggression and bullying to maintain their status. Maestripieri also suspects that, if a person does not reach their social goal of becoming a "leader", it might lead them to bully more.

Still, bullying as a strategy may not lead to long-term success. Frodo's demonic approach to ruling clearly came at a cost. In line with that, a 2015 study suggested that ruthless people do not always get ahead.

Bullying may well have deep evolutionary roots. But if a leader wants to be accepted in the long term, they might do better to be loved than feared.

Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Earth's feature writer. She is @melissasuzanneh on Twitter.

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