Kids need to feel life to learn from it

My book-of-the-month summary for September is “Try and Make Me!” (2002, Signet, 242 pages) by Ray Levy and Bill O’Hanlon.

Subtitled “Simple Strategies That Turn Off the Tantrums and Create Cooperation,” I bought it by accident thinking it was about keeping peace between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry fans.

Coalesced by the authors over a long weekend at Levy’s house in Santa Fe, the book turned out to be strategies for parenting 2-12-year-olds – so I wasn’t too far off.

Here are tips:

• Defiant children, mostly boys, are motivated by control. Their characteristics include control-craving, socially exploitative, blind to their role in problems and able to tolerate great negativity.

• Less difficult kids are motivated by achievement and/or friendships.

• Defiant kids should not always be warned in advance about specific consequences of their actions.

• Defiant children usually hear nothing but criticism. Acknowledge their good behavior in a 10-1 ratio over their bad behavior. Set aside listening time, and hang out with them so they get to know you as a person.

• Characteristics of parents who aggravate defiant children’s behavior are micro-managers who come down too hard, peacemaker parents who use bribes and those who parent out of fear of outside figures.

• Circumstances likely to produce defiant children are time-crunched parents, crises, conflicts and transitions in the home and parents responding inappropriately to defiance.

• Don’t expect kids to have mastered the same motor skills as you and be as fast at dressing themselves, tying shoelaces, combing hair, etc.

• Defiant kids need a blend of positive and negative reinforcements.

• Don’t try to instill wisdom. Children must solve their own problems and learn through their own experiences. Don’t buffer them from painful experiences — including minor injuries from ignoring you. They need to feel life to learn from it.

• To shut down arguments, respond with brain-dead phrases such as: “I understand,” "Could be," “Good try,” “Sorry you feel that way,” “Wouldn’t it be nice if it worked that way,” “Sorry you feel you have to resort to that.”

• Let children who want control choose from alternatives. If a misbehaving child refuses to choose among options, start taking away the preferable choices one by one.

• Express sadness instead of anger at misbehavior.

• Don’t take everything children say seriously. Respond to their misbehavior in new, unexpected ways, and to insults with humor.

• Let children experience natural and logical consequences of their behavior: hunger, embarrassment, unable to play with broken toys.

• Spell out specific actions, not vague generalities, you want them to take.

• Never bad-mouth a spouse or ex to your child. They consider themselves a part of both of you and see it as a reflection on them.

• Trust your judgment and stand firm.

• Children are more influenced by your actions than words.

Contact Wendel Sloan at: [email protected]