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Learning & Development > Handling Out of
control children
As
a parent, you may have experienced the frustration and
exhaustion if your kid is difficult. Your child may
suffer from problems such as defiance, anger, violence,
attitude and lack of motivation, which in turn may give
you nightmares.
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Your general feeling
would be that it is impossible to deal with the
kid. You believe that your kid will keep behaving
like this forever and grow up as an adult who
had never been properly controlled in childhood.
You would be happy
to know that most often this is not the case.
While the "normal" parenting style may not work
for these children, but some change in parenting
style normally suffices to deal with such children
and bring them under complete control.
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It is just that you need
to come out of the conventional box of parenting thoughts
and adopt a more effective parenting style for such
children. The fact of the matter is that not every kid
can grow with an equal amount of support - each kid
needs his/her own level of support. And this is what
a parent needs to provide.
The parent here needs
to understand that the kid needs to acquire every piece
of knowledge to live properly - if they know only some
of the pieces then they are not going to automatically
learn the others. The knowledge accumulated in a kid
has to be wholesome for a complete living.
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If the parent is
not seeing the child behave in the desired manner
then the parenting approach towards the child
needs to be changed. The parent needs to learn
ways that are more effective to solve the inappropriate
behavior issue observed in the child.
Parents would always
find an alternative approach since there are enough
approaches, and such changes completely solve
child behavior problems in most of the cases.
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The first step for most
of the parents is to get the child to listen to them.
And in case of out-of-control children this proves to
be the toughest step quite often.
The child's capacity
to listen does not depend only upon the words spoken
to the child. It strongly depends upon the age group
of the child, the location where you speak, the nature
of peers that the child has and the current mood of
the child. If the current mood of the child is too angry
or too upset then no matter what you say s/he may not
listen to you and you need to understand and accept
that if you are positive about proceeding further.
What, then, is the ideal
setting for you to talk to your child? It is one where
you can really talk to your child without any other
distraction and where your child can listen to you.
The location has to be calm and quiet. It must be somewhere
that you can easily communicate your ideas and get heard
by the child. The child will listen to you only if you
speak in the best of their interests. Your interests
are obvious to you, but don't expect the child to follow
these just because you are interested and they are supposed
to love you as a parent. You need your child to understand
the benefits and privileges of life that s/he enjoys.
This includes his/her life, independence, friends, activities
and interests. They are important in your child's mind,
and only the important things can be incentive enough
for him/her to get control back in behavior.
One single mistake that
parents often make is trying to be the best friend of
the child. Please remember that you are the parent of
the child, not his/her friend. You are the role model
of your child as a parent. You would want to make sure
that you communicate clearly to your child and make
him/her understand that about responsibility, accountability
and consequences. You must see to the fact that the
child understands that listening to you and doing the
"right" things are his/her responsibility. Anything
that the child is responsible for must be spontaneously
driven by the child. The child must be made accountable
for his/her responsibilities. And the child must be
made to understand that s/he will bear the consequences
of the act. A series of good actions will result in
good consequences and an irresponsible action may completely
negate the good actions and create an unfavorable consequence.
In each case, s/he must bear the consequences. Make
sure that the child understands right at the onset that
a positive consequence is something that s/he will enjoy
in the short and long term, and a negative consequence
might end up taking his/her privileges away directly
or indirectly. Conveying these notions to the child
in the right manner often sees great results in controlling
a badly behaved child.
In case you are thinking
right now that your case is too hard, then you need
to be extra-clear on the situation. You need to very
clearly define the expectations from your child and
set limits in your child's mind accordingly. It may
appear initially that the child is not responding. But
with the right set of regulations they would most often
start to respond. In a really hard case where the child
refuses to budge, you may want to demonstrate the consequences
and rewards. Hence, instead of just knowing from verbal
communications, they are going to experience what the
consequences can be. You may even want to think of rewarding
them positively if they get their work done and negatively
if they continue to defy you. This step will immediately
demonstrate them the reality in both positive and negative
ways, and act as their incentive to act and behave properly.
Please remember that
almost all the out-of-control children that are properly
taken through the process of acquiring responsibility,
accountability and consequences can usually be controlled.
Many of them grow up and become successful adults. As
a parent, it is your responsibility to take your child
through these if s/he is not behaving properly. You
shall have to work hard to it. And you shall face the
great consequence of your hard work if you do it responsibly
and hold yourself accountable for the success of the
process.
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who read this article also read these:
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Aggressive
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Examples
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Depression
in children
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