How to know and discipline your strong willed child
Most parents carry a picture in mind, a set of hopes and expectations about how they want their children to behave. When the child’s behavior matches the parent’s picture, the relationship develops smoothly and naturally. When parent and child have the similar temperament, parents have much easier time understanding their child’s behavior Things just seem to fit.
But when a child is behaving differently, and the parents are not able to discipline him/her they call the child –stubborn. The child is ‘strong willed’.
What happens when the child’s actual behavior does not match up with parent’s picture?
Letting go of your ideal picture may be the most difficult tasks you’ll face as a parent, but it is a necessary task. Holding on to what isn’t real keeps you stuck. We can not change the temperament of the child, but we can understand it, guide it, and shape it in positive directions.
Things You'll Need
- Lots and lots of understanding
- patience
- determination to shape the temperment of your child
Steps
Strong willed children are normal and hard to understand. They require a lot of guidance and do not respond to discipline methods that seem to work with other children. They learn differently than their peers
When we accept our child’s temperament as a fact of life, behavior is much easier to understand and manage. When you want the child to follow your rules, you have to be firm. You explain that you expect a work to be finished or else it will be -time out in the room or closet, or a favorite toy will be taken away for a week or it will go into trash. Mean it and stand by it. Let the child not feel that he/she can procrastinate or avoid the task.
The type of disciplining followed by your parents of screaming and spanking is obsolete now. Explaining and making them feel responsible for the consequence of being punished is the way out.
Some children have the habit of interfering a conversation to be heard. Explain firmly that the child has to wait for a pause or seek permission
to speak or a punishment would follow.
The child sometimes may ignoreor resist a rule set by the parents thinking of getting away, like keeping high volume while watching TV. If the parent just requests or screams to keep the volume down, it goes on deaf ears. But if the parent warns of keeping the child away from the TV for a week and implements it on failure on the part of the child, it would work.
While executing your rule if you do not implement the punishment on failure, the child will think that he/she can get away with bad behavior. With proper guidance they can develop into dynamic, cooperative and responsible individuals.
Do not start arguing with your child when you are in a bad mood or you find that the child is tense. Ask your child go to his/her room to calm down. Do the same and tackle the situation when you are calm .
Strong willed children test more than other children and so parents have to use a lot more guidance and discipline. Strong willed children need to experience your boundaries repeatedly before they accept them as mandatory, not optional
Tips
- Strong willed children are normal children with extreme behavior who are hard to raise and difficult to discipline.
- They test harder and more often, resist longer, protest louder, use more drama, and carry things further than most of us would ever imagine.
Caution
- Strong willed children have wearing off effect upon others.They bring out extreme reactions in others-people dealing with them end up angry, frustrated, confused, intimidated, guilty, inadequate, discouraged and exhausted.
- Screaming and spanking gets negative results.
- The more the child tests, the more parents respond with ineffective methods, which is an invitation to power struggles with strong willed children. The parents don’t realize that their methods lack clarity and firmness and actually encourage the testing they are trying to stop. A vicious circle develops
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