Changing Negative Child Behavior

I saw a parent in counseling whose 16 year old daughter was using alcohol, was excessively truant from school, and was enmeshed with a boyfriend. The boyfriend had a history of trouble with the law and was suspected of using methamphetamine on a regular basis. On several occasions, the teenage girl had left the house on a Friday evening with her boyfriend and did not return home until Sunday afternoon. The mother was terrified regarding the whereabouts of her daughter, but she decided that the best way to handle the conflict was to invite the boyfriend over regularly and to have him stay overnight at the request of her daughter. On the day I saw the mother she was planning on celebrating her birthday that night. She had plans to spend the evening with her two children, but her daughter insisted that her boyfriend be included in the dinner party. The mother objected, so the teenage daughter proceeded to destroy items in the house. In order to stop the violent temper tantrum, the mother agreed to let her daughter’s boyfriend join the birthday celebration. She left my office in a dejected mood.

The most striking aspect of this story was the mother’s demeanor. She told her story in a nonchalant manner, devoid of any emotional content. My first question was one I often ask parents, “Where is your anger? Where’s the kind of anger that makes you want to stick up for yourself?”

Parenting is an art. No one gave us a manual to assist in this most difficult task. Managing children is a challenging process which requires courage, connectedness, consequences, and consistency. Mistakes are inevitable, but good child caretakers learn from their failures and seek to establish new ways to change negative child behaviors.

Often, parents struggle in their relationships with their children because their own family role models were faulty. They may feel alone in their quest to get it right with their own children because they have had no positive patterns to follow from their own upbringing. It is not unusual for caretakers of children to internalize the bad parenting styles of their own parents and to project archaic, self-defeating strategies onto their children. Regardless, one cannot be excused from learning more adaptive ways of working with kids.

Life appears to consist in polarities. Parents tend to under-function or over-function on behalf of their children. Under-functioning parents are absent. They lack the skills to nurture, encourage, coach, and motivate their kids. Children in such families feel lost and perform to please in order to make a peace offering to gain approval. Out of a sense of abandonment, these children will act overly-compliant (and sometimes rebellious) in order to strive for a sense of approval. If validation is not forthcoming, these children will turn against themselves, internalizing self-blame and resentment.

Over-functioning parents tend to do for a child what he can do for himself. They overcompensate, thus taking a child’s power away. They think, feel and act for the child, rendering the child powerless as the master of his own fate. These are the parents who are terrified of disapproval. In their haste to bolster their self-esteem in the eyes of their children, they create the conditions for their children to lack realistic expectations, appropriate boundaries, civility and compassion. Since these kids have never been appropriately frustrated, enough is never enough.

Since parenting is an art, what parents are doing is always subject to change. As I tell my patients, “If what you are doing is not working, shift gears and try another approach.” Many parents will maintain the same pattern even though it may not be effective. There are no magic bullets or “right” ways to parent.

Changing negative child behaviors calls for a plan and a commitment to follow it to its conclusion. In order to avoid power-struggles parents must learn to “major in the majors.” If you feud about minor issues, you leave yourself open to passive-aggressive behavior on the part of your child. On major issues I recommend parents adopt a process that I call “non-evaluative exploration.”

Non-evaluative exploration means that you resist the urge to pontificate, moralize, give advice or lecture. Such tactics put the responsibility for change on your shoulders rather than the child’s. Instead, explore behaviors with your child, insisting he make value judgments about the issues under discussion. In this way, you “box the child in” requiring him to make assessments about his own behavior. For example, exploration of school issues might include, “How do you feel about your progress this semester? What has been holding you back? What do you think it would take for you to improve? Is your performance on target with your future goals? If not, what do you think you could do about this?”

Some behaviors may not warrant exploration. These behaviors might include one’s curfew, ways of treating others, courtesy to parents, and issues regarding self-medicating. Parents need to state their expectations and adopt logical consequences for such behaviors. Consequences should be reasonable, fit the infraction, and be consistent.

Another way to avoid power-struggles and passive-aggressive behavior is to establish positive consequences for appropriate behavior. As most children already receive an allowance, I encourage parents to tie positive consequences to an earned monetary value. Household tasks and other important household issues can also be reinforced through the use of a goal chart that is checked daily. Negative consequences, when necessary, which include removal of privileges should reserved for major violations.

It is important that a parent’s involvement with a child remain unconditional. This means that a parent must resist the urge to let one’s feelings affect the ability to keep the lines of communication open. Involvement is the cornerstone of parenting, even if the child has chosen a path of detachment. By maintaining a strong sense of involvement with your child, a parent keeps the door open for unexpected exploration and discussion.

Parents may need to adapt their parenting philosophy and strategies to the developmental level of their children. Age differences and variances in temperament may require parents to modify their parenting styles and techniques to meet the needs of their children. Parenting strategies that work for a 5 year old will not affect change in a teenager. Understanding the developmental changes which occur in children is important to the process of parenting. Changing negative child behavior requires parents who are committed to demonstrating courage, connectedness, establishing consequences, and maintaining consistency.

James P. Krehbiel, Ed.S., LPC is an author, freelance writer and nationally certified cognitive-behavioral therapist practicing in Scottsdale, Arizona. His personal growth book, Stepping Out of the Bubble is available at www.amazon.com. James can be reached at www.krehbielcounseling.com.