Search Results for: blog 5 ways to handle a power hungry child

A Child’s Emotional Explosions

There are power struggles, temper tantrums, and then there are those incredible emotional outbursts that our young children have. I actually think of them as explosions. It has been my experience that they happen with toddler and preschoolers and then return with full force during the adolescent years. How can a parent help to temper those emotional explosions and can anything be done to help a child find other ways to express himself? These grand emotional explosions can be scary and they seem decidedly different from a power struggle or a manipulative tantrum. I always found that it seemed as … Continue reading →

Dealing with a Child Who Wants to be in Charge

Now that my children are older, we can joke when someone gets a little bossy and say “You’re not the boss of me!” which is really a throw-back to when they were younger and it seemed that someone was always trying to tell someone else what to do. In reality, most children seem to hit a place when they turn five or six where they want to be in charge—they want to be the ones directing their world and getting everyone else to behave according to their bidding. Of course, children don’t really want to run the household, pay the … Continue reading →

Tips: Staying Calm When Your Kids Are Misbehaving

One of the biggest challenges we as parents face is trying to stay calm when our children are acting out. In Common Sense Parenting, the authors offer some suggestions on how not to blow our top when confronted with a misbehaving child. The first thing they point out is that getting steamed won’t help the situation, in fact, it could make it worse. We have to know what it is that makes us angry in the first place so that we will be able to deal with our kids when a behavior problem rears its ugly head. If you find … Continue reading →

Parenting With Love and Logic

What type of parent are you? Are you a helicopter parent? Or perhaps you’re a drill sergeant? In their book, Parenting With Love and Logic, Foster Cline and Jim Fay, describe two very different parenting styles. Read on to see which type of parent you might be, according to their definitions. Helicopter Parents A helicopter parent thinks that love means rotating their lives around their children. These parents hover over their children and rescue them whenever a problem arises. You might be a helicopter parent if: you are forever taking forgotten lunches, homework and permission slips to school, are always … Continue reading →

“Leave Me ALONE!” The Child Who Seeks Emotional Isolation

Some children become so discouraged with their sense of self that they simply withdraw. Rather than compete with other kids, which they feel they can’t do because of their many inadequacies, they choose not to participate. And rather than disappoint the adults in their lives, they choose to build a wall of silence. These are the students who sit in the corner, fiddling with a pencil, refusing to raise their hand or join the group. They often feel frustrated by adult attempts to engage them in conversation or to force them to participate. As I have noted in previous blogs, … Continue reading →

When Your Child Wants REVENGE

In my early experiences of trying to discipline my stepdaughter with ADHD, things got really rough. I mentioned in a previous blog that on one occasion we found that a can of paint had been mysteriously opened and poured purposely across our bathroom cabinets. We also found holes dug in the walls after we had tried standing her in the corner on an occasion when her behavior was outrageous. She had sneakily taken her fingernails and dug deep pits into the walls. How she did it without being observed is a mystery. On another occasion, she scribbled all over the … Continue reading →

Five Ways to Deal With a Power-Hungry Child

If a child misbehaves because he craves attention, but can’t get a satisfying result, he will often move to the mistaken goal of seeking power. In my previous blog I listed the four basic mistaken goals children have which lead to misbehavior: Seeking Attention. Seeking Power. Seeking Revenge. Seeking Emotional Isolation. The Child Who Craves Power Each of the above mistaken goals are the child’s misguided way of trying to belong. All children want to belong, to be accepted, to fit in, and to be loved. The child who wants power makes the erroneous assumption that if he defies adults … Continue reading →

How to Handle a Child Who Craves Attention

All children have a strong desire to belong. They want love, acceptance, and a place where they can “fit in.” They will go to great lengths to achieve a state of belonging. Most children will learn to follow the social “laws” of etiquette and will obey home and classroom rules in order to be accepted. However, some children seek belonging in inappropriate ways. They have mistaken goals that they hope will help them to find acceptance. All childhood misbehaviors originate from one of the following four mistaken goals: Seeking Attention Seeking Power Seeking Revenge Seeking emotional isolation When Your Child … Continue reading →