I have seen many parents struggle with their children. It's just par for the course. To stay on topic to one of my previous posts, how do you know if you have a problem with your child's behavior? Is your child strong-willed or do you have a case of defiance?
To help us analyze this better, here are the definitions of both of those terms:
DEFIANT: characterized by defiance; boldly resistant or challenging: a defiant attitude.
STRONG-WILLED: 1. having a powerful will; resolute. 2. stubborn; obstinate.
Being a bit pedantic and strong-willed myself, I HAD to look up "OBSTINATE"...1. firmly or stubbornly adhering to one's purpose, opinion, etc.; not yielding to argument, persuasion, or entreaty. 2. characterized by inflexible persistence or an unyielding attitude; inflexibly persisted in or carried out: obstinate advocacy of high tariffs. 3. not easily controlled or overcome: the obstinate growth of weeds. 4. not yielding readily to treatment, as a disease.
All of these things can be a blessing if they are balanced out in the life of the child. The balancing of the child begins with the balancing of the parents, the household, and family behaviors. It is easy for parents to get overwhelmed and just give up on rearing a strong-willed child because it is exhausting. But these kids really want to know about life and the world and what makes people tick.
It's much better that we parents are the ones to inform them of such things. Otherwise, if we check out, they are left to fill in the blanks themselves, which could lead them down an undesirable path. And a strong-willed child down an undesirable path can lead to defiance. That's really not what we want for many reasons. Once these kids get going down that path, it's twice as much work to steer them back and then keep them on the straight and narrow.
So...how do we begin to balance an off-balance child and/or household? I'll chat about that next week. With me being a single mom, I've been doing it, minus a few "meltdowns". But the occasional meltdown isn't what we're talking about here. We're talking about the bigger picture.
