I Have a Strong-Willed Child: Practical Parenting Tips That Actually Work
7:12 a.m., my coffee pot was dripping onto the linoleum counter, my oldest, Ezra, was standing in the middle of his bedroom doorway with his fists clenched, refusing to put on the only clean long-sleeve shirt we had left for school picture day. “Tag itches,” he said, even though I’d cut the tag out with nail scissors the week before. “I want the dinosaur one.”
The dinosaur one was crumpled at the bottom of the hamper, crusted with cherry popsicle juice from our weekend trip to the park. I felt my jaw tighten. Three years ago, this is where the fight would have started. I’d reason, I’d threaten to leave him in his dinosaur footie pajamas, I’d end up raising my voice, we’d both be red-eyed and 20 minutes late, and I’d spend the whole drive to school wondering how I’d ended up with a kid who fought me over every single tiny thing. I’d scroll parenting forums at nap time, typing “why is my child so stubborn” into the search bar, and leave more stressed than when I started.
After one particularly bad meltdown over me cutting his apples into cubes instead of slices, our next door neighbor Lisa—who’s taught second grade for 18 years—brought over a plate of chocolate chip cookies that night. She’d heard us yelling through the wall, and she didn’t give me any vague “it’s just a phase” talk. She said she sees at least five strong-willed kids every year, and most parents get the whole thing backwards. We think their pushback is about us, about them trying to break our rules or make us mad. It’s not. It’s that they feel everything more intensely than other kids, and they need to have some control over what happens to their own bodies and their own days.
Then she told me three small things I could start doing the next morning that would cut down on fights. I was skeptical, but I tried them anyway, and they’ve changed our whole daily routine.
The first thing is to only offer two pre-approved choices, instead of an open-ended question. I used to ask “what do you want to wear today?” or “what do you want for breakfast?” which almost always turned into a 15-minute spiral of “I wanted pancakes not waffles no I don’t want that I wanted the blue one.” Now I decide what options I’m okay with ahead of time, then ask him to pick between the two. This morning, after he said he wanted the dinosaur shirt, I said “Right now, you can pick between the gray one or the blue one. Both are clean, both have no tags.” That’s it. No extra explaining, no bargaining. More often than not, he picks one and moves on.
The second thing is to name his want out loud before you give him a no. I used to just jump straight to “no, the dinosaur shirt is dirty, let’s go.” That just makes him yell louder, because he doesn’t feel like anyone heard how much he wanted that shirt. Now I lead with the acknowledgment. “It makes total sense that you want your dinosaur shirt,” I said this morning. “It’s your favorite, and you want to look cool for pictures with your friends today. It’s dirty right now, so we can’t wear it, but it’ll be clean and waiting for you tomorrow. Now, gray or blue?” Just that one extra sentence takes the edge off most of the time. He gets to have his big feeling seen before he has to accept the limit.
The third thing is to let him lose the small battles if it doesn’t hurt anyone. If it’s not dangerous, and it’s not going to ruin the whole day, I just let him make his choice, even if it’s not the one I would pick. Last month, he insisted on wearing his winter snow boots to the playground when it was 65 degrees out. I almost said no, I almost fought him on it, but then I stopped. I helped him tie the laces, and we went. Half an hour into recess, he was complaining his feet were too hot, he took them off and carried them home barefoot, his heels covered in playground dirt. I hosed his feet off when we got home, and we didn’t fight about it. He learned that his choice came with an uncomfortable consequence, and I didn’t waste my energy yelling about it.
It doesn’t work every time. Last week, we had a full-blown meltdown in the cereal aisle because I wouldn’t let him get the sugar cereal with the toy inside. I acknowledged how bad he wanted it, I offered two other cereal choices, he still laid on the floor screaming. I just picked him up, put him in the cart, and finished shopping. Some days, he’s still going to have big feelings, and I’m still going to get tired and raise my voice when I’m running late. I don’t think there’s any trick that stops that.
I used to worry that if I didn’t push back on every fight when he was little, he’d grow up to be rude, or unruly, or impossible to be around. Now I see that the same thing that makes him fight me over shirt tags is the same thing that makes him stay after recess to help a kid who fell down, that makes him work for two hours on a Lego spaceship until it’s exactly how he wants it, that makes him stand up for his little sister when someone takes her toy. That push isn’t a flaw. It’s just who he is.
This morning, after he picked the gray shirt, we packed his snack, got in the car, and pulled up to school two minutes early. He waved at me from the door and ran to meet his friend by the slide. I still have hard days, I still search for new tricks when we hit a new rough patch. But these three small things have made every day a little easier, for both of us.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » I Have a Strong-Willed Child: Practical Parenting Tips That Actually Work