One of the biggest challenges we have when raising our children is facing a rebellious child. Daily power struggles, aggression due to sibling rivalry, or crises have led suffering parents to cry for help. I receive emails, phone calls, and requests daily from parents who are desperately seeking help raising their children.
I think all parents, at some point, need to face a disobedient child. In the same way that we, as parents, are not perfect and have made mistakes, over time our children will make mistakes too. The difference is that when we made a mistake, in our view it was not a big deal. But when our child behaves unexpectedly, it is an alarm that leads us to worry and feel desperate.
It seems we have forgotten that we were once the same age as our children, and many times we behaved the way they are behaving today. Why are we not more honest with ourselves and willing to accept that our children are as human as we are? There are still parents who demand that their children behave in a way that they, as parents, have not yet achieved themselves. I understand it is not easy to be a parent nowadays.
Raising our children
In my next blog posts, I will be sharing the strategy I have used all these years to raise my children. I do not expect you to agree with me. This is the approach that has worked for us, and maybe you have a different one that has worked for you. In the end, nobody has a perfect method because the children God gave us did not come with a manual that explained what to do when they behave in certain ways.
How nice it would be if this were the reality! Do you remember the last time you bought a car? That car came with a manual, regardless of the model or brand. The manual explained what to do when the oil needs to be changed, when the engine has problems, or in any other situation. It is all written there.
When my daughter Jasmin was born, I did not have such a manual. I had to figure out what to do. A year after Jasmin was born, Samuel came into our lives. And I said: “Well, now I have a year of experience as a father. With Samuel it is going to be a little easier because I already ‘have experience.'” How wrong I was! Samuel had a completely different personality from his sister. The manual I used for Jasmin did not work with Samuel.
My strategy for raising our children
It has been to cultivate a relationship with them based on collaboration instead of power. I know that for many parents this is not the conventional way, but remember that, without realizing it, we have had a collaborative relationship with our children throughout their early years.
For example, when Jasmin or Samuel cried, we tried to figure out what was happening to them so that we could help them stop crying. If the method we used was not working, we tried another until we found the most effective one.
Ideally, we continue to do this almost every day. It is simply trying to understand and focus on some of the most important aspects of being parents: understanding our children’s worries, perspectives, and opinions, considering what troubles them, and working together to find realistic solutions that are mutually satisfactory.
What parents need
A question many parents have asked us is: Will I still be an authority figure in raising my children in a collaborative relationship? Yes. Maybe not an “old school” authoritarian figure, but an authority figure indeed. What parents most commonly seek is to be influential, not to control. And just by being parents, they are already influential. Collaboration does not mean having no limits: children also need clear, consistent limits given with warmth and respect.
In the beginning, when my wife Zoraida and I started with this plan, it was something we did without much planning. We had not read what neuroscience showed about children’s development. We just had the Bible, and it showed us our children as the heritage of Jehovah, and that He was calling us to be a positive influence in their lives. We had that influence when they benefited from our wisdom, experiences, and values while they were walking through complex and stormy waters.
I have found that an authoritarian method of power and force when raising our children is not helpful in the long term. On the contrary, helping our children solve their problems collaboratively was much more effective for us.
Raising our children: ideas from research
Research on parenting and child development has been pointing in a similar direction, and these ideas have guided us in recent years as parents and, in my case, as a therapist helping parents who need orientation in this area. One of the authors who has contributed to this line of thought is clinical psychologist Ross Greene. He has written several books, and I will mention some concepts from his book Raising Human Beings.
Greene’s central idea is that children do well if they can. What does this mean? If Jasmin or Samuel could do it right, they would. Period. If they were not doing well, or were not meeting expectations at home or in school, my responsibility as a parent was not to criticize or censure them, but to find out why they were not meeting those expectations. If I could not solve the problem my children had on my own, then I had to:
- go to the books,
- look for reliable information,
- or ask for professional help in this area.
I had to find out why my children did not fulfill the responsibility they had in their hands. We cannot assume, as we have many times, that the problem our child has is motivational. It is rarely correct to assume that a child is not meeting an expectation because he or she lacks motivation. Very often the missing piece is a skill, such as handling frustration, being flexible, or planning, and not willingness.
What children need
In my experience, children want to succeed, and most are happiest when they do things well. When a child keeps doing something that gets him or her in trouble, it is often a sign of a skill that is still missing, not of a wish to fail.
Children need the freedom to grow as they go through the different stages of their psychosocial development. That freedom must be appropriate to their age.
Besides, children need room to make mistakes and learn from them. If you try to control the result or become too critical when they stumble, they may become too worried about not making mistakes in the future.
They need opportunities to find their own way when they see themselves in stormy waters. And they need you to observe them closely to see how they are doing. If you do not look closely, they will likely get tired of stumbling and give up. But if you throw them a life jacket at the first stumble, they might never learn how to swim. A parent’s success lies in preparing the children to navigate a rough world.
If your child’s behavior includes hurting others or hurting himself or herself, or if you feel afraid of what might happen, do not carry this alone: ask for professional help. If a child talks about wanting to die or to hurt himself or herself, take it seriously and get help right away.
What has your experience raising your children been like, and what has helped you most? Share your story with me, and we will continue with this topic in our next post.
Would you like to talk with a professional? Call (407) 559-7093 (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern) or find professional help here. For general questions that are not an emergency, write to drduany@zodugroup.com. Please do not send health information by email.
If you are in crisis or thinking about hurting yourself, do not wait. Call or text 988 (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24 hours a day, free and confidential). If there is immediate danger, call 911.
This article is for education only. It does not offer diagnosis or personal advice, does not replace evaluation or treatment by a health professional, and reading it or writing to us through this site does not create a therapeutic or pastoral counseling relationship. This site is not an emergency service and is not monitored continuously: do not send health information through comments or public forms. The author is a licensed psychotherapist and pastor, and is part of ZODU.
Sources
- Ross W. Greene, Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child.
Keep reading
AddictionHow do emotional traumas develop in families?
Families are living on a battlefield. The situations in our society have made it this way. How do emotional traumas…
FamilyHow to Fix a Toxic Relationship?
The Bible tells us that we were created to live in community, not in toxic relationships. Our creator lives in…
FamilySingle Mothers: Challenges They Face
The world of single mothers is a world full of pride and joy, but also responsibilities and challenges. Single mothers…