Parenting A Defiant Child

We usually think of defiance as a negative trait. But that thinking is overly simplistic.

There are situations when parents WANT children to demonstrate defiance. Don’t you want your child to defy peer pressure that would lead her into irresponsible self-conduct?

When your child faces a situation where the odds seem stacked against him, if the goal is worth striving, you want him to defy those odds, don’t you?

If your child has a dream and a negative person advises her to give up that dream, if your child defies that advise and believes in herself anyway she just might make it.

While a child’s defiance is not a pleasant part of parenting, help for dealing effectively with defiance involves some subtlety.

Raising kids responsibly includes raising them to follow rules. And defiance means ignoring rules.
But sometimes it is better to break a rule than to obey it.

What rules have you ignored because you believed that you and others would be better off?

We must be careful when teaching our children about following rules and doing as they are told, because we really don’t want them to blindly heed authority.

What wise parents want for children is to not blindly follow rules that would guide them into inferior forms of conduct.
Blind, automatic compliance is NOT the path to true success. Doing what you believe is right is the way.

Defiance is not entirely “bad”. It gives rise to innovation, invention and improvement.

We want to be raising our kids to recognize what is truly in line with their interest and the interests of others, and to behave accordingly.
Avoid OVER-reacting to defiant behavior.

If you make defiance in and of itself intolerable and instill fear in your child’s heart in association with it, your child may:

* Become afraid to defy negative peer pressure
* Fail to exercise his own decision-making faculty resulting in his poor decisions
* Blindly do what he is told to do by authority figures lacking integrity

Base your response to defiance upon WHY the child defies the rule.

When your child seems to blatantly ignore your directions or rules remain calm in order to first determine why the child defied you. Here are some GOOD reasons:

* You may have stated your rule or direction in the midst of giving too much additional information, so he didn’t actually hear you
* You may have issued your direction or rule while he was concentrating elsewhere
* You may have told her to do something that she was about to do herself, and your intervention triggered the child’s annoyance
* You may have demanded that he do something that he already did, or that he really doesn’t need to do right now
* You may have been demanding too much of her

When raising our kids, if we make the act of defiance wrong in and of itself, we fail to prepare the child for making right and courageous decisions on his own.