Understand your child's world to address their needs and wants.
Teach your child to differentiate between needs and wants.
Use empathy to calm down your child and avoid power struggles.
Consider seeking counseling for complex situations involving older kids.
When you're trying to discipline your child and they decide that they're not going to listen to you, it can be very, very frustrating. It may even make you extremely nervous and afraid of what people are thinking and what even you're going to do next. What you want to do, actually, is figure out, what's going on in my child's world? Do they see something as a need? And maybe it's really, truly a want, and we need to help them reshape what they're thinking about, what they're really putting their emotion into. And maybe it's a toy, maybe it's a phone, maybe it's food, maybe it's staying at a friend's house, maybe it's staying at a store and they want something so badly. That's when you have to reach to the ninja level of parenting and decide, I'm gonna teach my child about the wants in life. There are certain things that we can want and that means we can take a no if a parent tells us no. but with needs, like if it's air, food, water, shelter, it's hard to take a no on that. So if your child is seeing a phone or some object is, I need this, then it's great to respond with, I can see you really want that. And when they feel understood, for many kids, actually they calm down. But if you have a strong-willed child, it can actually continue to be a power struggle. And the way that you handle that power struggle is saying, Hey son or daughter, you could decide to continue to not listen to me. And here's what's going to happen. And it's not a threat. It actually this is actually what going to happen And if they choose not to listen to you then you have to follow through on that You can just threaten them and go oh well I really can do that You want to do something that you can follow through on Now with older kids, when they won't listen to you and they're disrespectful, there's probably a lot to that. There's a relational aspect that we have to pay attention to with the older kids. Maybe it's about a social thing that they have. Maybe it's about other factors. And it may need some counseling, to be honest with you. You may have to see a counselor to really figure out your individual situation. Here, focus on the family. We do have counselors on the line. It's 1-800-A-FAMILY. It's very, very complex. But many times I've seen with teens as well that you can enter their world and help them see things that they may see as needs, help them see them in a new way as wants potentially. And then also help them play out the coulds. You could decide to do this, and this is what could end up happening, or you could decide this and this is what ends up happening. And make sure you kind of thought that through and have a check on your own emotions because emotions can quickly become contagious in these types of moments. And if you need someone off the bench like your husband or your wife, call for a sub in a moment that you may be losing your brain as well and having your emotions pop out. So in this case, make sure that you're looking from your child's angle first to figure out what is happening here because in very few occasions, it's a personal thing. And those things that are more relational, look for a counselor.
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