How To Help Defiant Children Regulate Their Emotions

Your defiant child finds it very difficult to be challenged and deal with frustration, so trying to control too many aspects of your child’s life fuels their defiance. The benefit of being calm, assertive, and non-controlling in your parenting behaviors is that you reduce your chances of overreacting to requests, comments, or interactions with your defiant child.

This is because the best discipline you can give your child is to model and train self-discipline in how you view and manage their behavioral struggles.

3 questions to help you manage your child’s (and your own) emotions

To choose your struggles more carefully, try to look at each situation from your child’s point of view:

• Are you unreasonable in your requests?
• Are you provoking your child with a commanding tone and a rigid request?
• Are you trying to control them like you would a much younger (or older) child?

The story of Beth

Beth, the mother of eight-year-old Teresa, used the following arguments to remain calm, steadfast, and non-controlling and to face her struggles wisely. As she tried to decide whether to let something go, Beth asked herself a simple question: “Will she or I really mind when she’s thirty?” Beth said to me, “That’s really helping me, the big one to see whole. Then I put things into perspective and decide if the fight is really worth it.”

For example, when Teresa insisted on drawing pictures of her Barbie dolls before starting her homework, Beth realized that Teresa really needed that time to relax. Beth decided not to fight this fight anymore. Beth earlier urged Teresa to stop drawing these pictures, which met with strong protests from Teresa. Beth told herself to stop meddling. She also said to herself, “I’m sure by the time she’s thirty, she probably won’t want anything to do with Barbie dolls anymore.”

Beth didn’t become a weak mother. She just made a wise decision on which topics to focus on. When it came to safety issues, Beth had a stronger bottom line. For example, she gave Teresa a clear message to sit in the back of the car and buckle up. Teresa got the message very clearly that her mother would definitely fight that fight if it ever happened.

Prioritization of behavioral boundaries

To help you choose your battles more effectively, take a look at the following hierarchy of problems from my book: 10 Days for a Less Defiant Child, 2nd ed.to talk to your child:

1. Behaviors, activities, or problems that threaten your child’s physical and emotional well-being, e.g. B. Unsupervised walking in dangerous places.

2. Behaviors, activities, or problems that threaten the physical and emotional well-being of others, e.g. B. Throwing potentially harmful objects at others.

3. Conduct, activities, or issues that violate the law, e.g. B. Stealing and threatening to harm others.

4. Behaviors, activities, or problems that interfere with your child’s education, e.g. B. Refusal to do homework.

5. Behaviors, activities, or problems that interfere with the management of the household, e.g. B. the destruction of property in the house.

6. Any other negative behaviors, activities, or issues that you need to work on, e.g. B. Slamming doors, refusing to take out the trash.

Final Thoughts

Start at the top of the list above and work your way down. Consider solutions to one problem before you tackle another. The only time you should break this rule is when you’re getting nowhere after months of work. Then you should focus on another problem for a while and after solving the new problem, come back to the first problem. The bottom line here is that you shouldn’t worry about the small things, but rather focus on the important issues of safety, health, and physical action (like hitting).