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."