The Defiant Child: Parenting Strategies

Parenting Patterns to Avoid with Defiant Children
Parents can inadvertently contribute to a child's defiance and negativity by being too intrusive and by constantly imposing their own agenda. With a baby, for example, parents may overstimulate him by talking too loudly, tickling too many times, and bouncing him around too much. In attempting to cope with all that stimulation, the baby protests with fussing or crying.

With a toddler, a parent who doesn't read the child's cues and who constantly insists that the child do things the parent's way can contribute to a defiant child's rigidity. For example, an eighteen-month-old is playing with a jack-in-the-box and is focused on figuring out how to open the latch to get Jack to pop out of the box, when he is suddenly interrupted by his father. Dad, thinking the child can't do it, tries to move his son's hand forward on the latch. The child defiantly shoves dad's hands away. Hurt, the father inadvertently intrudes on his son by putting an alphabet book on top of the jack-in-the-box, muttering, "Let's do something else." The toddler, trapped with both hands under the jack-in-the-box and the book, tumbles everything over and begins a tantrum, banging his head on the floor. His world has been invaded by his father. A power struggle develops, as the toddler digs in his heels even further the more his father takes over.

With a school-age child, parents may unknowingly intrude and overload him by the way they boss him around - even when doing something potentially enjoyable together. An eager father may try to coach his daughter in soccer. Rather than letting her experiment with different ways to kick the soccer ball and perhaps setting up ingenious games, the father insists on instructing, ordering, and demanding too much. He gets impatient and angry when the child doesn't want to do it daddy's way. The whole enterprise disintegrates into a struggle between an irritable dad and an ever more defiant child.

Parents sometimes contribute to a defiant child's rebellion by getting the child involved in too many activities. Actually, the number of activities is less important than the way in which parents get involved. If the activities are fun and spontaneous, and the child is learning through discovery, parents find that their child has lots of energy. On the other hand, if the child is feeling bossed around and controlled, it can dampen even the most energetic child's enthusiasm. (If you have had a controlling, intrusive boss at work, then you know how such an attitude can rob you of your motivation and desire to participate and excel.)

In general, parents who are very rules-oriented or rigid are more apt to set up monumental power struggles with the defiant child. When they also often take the child's behavior personally, seeing his negativity as aimed directly at them instead of as an attempt to organize his world, the situation is compounded. "He's just doing that to make me angry," such parents tell me. There is nothing wrong with having rules and standards of conduct for your child, of course, but too many arbitrary rules and regulations can drive a defiant child into doing precisely the opposite of what you are demanding of him.

These struggles, I have found, are often played out around certain recurrent issues. The parent insists that homework be done at a certain time or in certain ways. "You have to do your homework before dinner, in your room, at your desk with the radio off and the door closed!" Such rigid rules almost inevitably set up a nightly struggle that exhausts everyone. Another incendiary issue is clothes. The child may want to wear an old cotton shirt and comfortable, worn jeans to school, while the parent insists on a newer, stiffer shirt and pants. "You're not going to leave my house looking like that," parents will say. The child's response, of course, is "I won't wear that junky stuff you want me to wear!" And another battle is under way.

Even more important for the child's response than parents wanting their way is the style by which they try to get their way. When it comes to homework, cleaning up toys, or respecting other people, parents can persuade, negotiate, and set limits in a calm, empathetic, and supportive way. In contrast, an "in your face," domineering attitude is sure to set up or intensify the child's defiance.

When these struggles become entrenched and parents come to me for help, I see several different types of responses. I see parents (often, but not always, a mother) who feel defeated, frustrated, angry, and depressed by the running battles. They feel guilty and are embarrassed by their child's behavior - what they see as his horrible manners, his rudeness, his sloppiness. Feeling helpless and angry, they rage at the child, throwing temper tantrums themselves. Another reaction I see from parents (often fathers) is a punitive, "You-won't-get-away-with-this" stance. This father is a law-and-order kind of guy who expects to be obeyed. He may punish the child frequently, often physically, hoping to force or scare him into better behavior.

"If you don't sit straight at this table, you're going to your room for an hour," he may roar at the dinner table each night at his slumping child, who merely stares back in defiant silence. "All right, that's it! Go to your room, and I don't want to see your face until seven o'clock!" As this scene is repeated over and over again about major and minor issues, a fierce duel between parent and child develops. The parent tries to intimidate or scare the child into backing down. While this approach may frighten some children into obedience (although the parent will have sacrificed the child's goodwill and respect in the process), the defiant child only digs in deeper. Open negativism turns into stony passive resistance. His grades suffer. He may get headaches and stomachaches. He may use more primitive mechanisms to battle back. At the extreme, he might even begin wetting or defecating in bed. But often he will still refuse to give in. As the battles between parent and child rage on, the whole family begins to suffer. By the time such a parent reaches my office, he is often so enraged that he is willing to sacrifice anything not to lose face. Mortified at the prospect of appearing weak and impotent, he forgets that his adversary is just a child. "I don't care what happens," I hear from such parents frequently, "he will not be a spoiled brat!"

There is yet another worrisome parental pattern that I sometimes see among parents of defiant children. They become so drained of energy in the power struggles, and so angry at their child that, without meaning to, they inadvertently become less nurturing and empathetic. There is less love and understanding in the family as a whole, and sometimes between the parents as well. Parents tell me, "I love Joey deeply. Because I love him so much, I get frustrated and withdraw like that." Unfortunately, children pick up on this response. One eight-year-old child told me, "I know my parents love me, but they hate everything I do." As the special nurturing care in the family erodes, not infrequently children will tell me, "I wish I were never born" or "Sometimes I think it's better not to be alive." Or the child may simply wall himself off more and more in a defiant corner, refusing to be a part of the family. A parent's lack of nurturing, added to overintrusiveness, is a double whammy that very few children, especially those with a defiant nature, can deal with. Most often this double whammy intensifies the child's difficulties.