Learning From a Difficult Child

by Jeanne Potts Faulconer

Other Thoughts About Dealing With Difficult Children

Perhaps the most important thing that helped me get through these years was support, which I found in both books and people. The two most valuable books I read were by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka: Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic and Kids, Parents and Power Struggles: Winning for a Lifetime. These books helped to reframe a child's negative qualities as positive ones (a "stubborn" child may be thought of as "determined," an "inflexible" child has "focus"), and they offered specific strategies for dealing with intense children. Other books that were helpful to me, without my agreeing with every word, were The Difficult Child, by Stanley Turecki with Leslie Tonner, The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, "Chronically In¬flexible" Children, by Ross W. Greene, and Taming the Dragon in Your Child: Solutions for Breaking the Cycle of Family Anger, by Meg Eastman with Sydney Craft Rozen.

While the written word can provide a lot of information, there is no substitute for an understanding ear, especially if you are fortunate, as I was, to find someone who has specific insight into dealing with a "hard" child. The right person is emotionally supportive and understanding of the rocky road you are facing, but she may also provide encouragement and ideas for getting through the day. A caveat: beware too much "exposure" to people whose mindset leaves you uncomfortable or doubting your intuition. Well-meaning acquaintances or relatives, and even some professionals, can have a toxic effect when they are dismissive of our concerns or offer simplistic solutions: "I'd just spank him until he knows who's boss" or "My children wouldn't dare do that!" While dealing with a demanding child seems to leave no energy for anything else, it has been absolutely worth the effort to seek a supportive mentor or group to help. The connections paid me back in increased sanity and a few more tricks in my bag—and an expanded framework for parenting that helped Tom and me make progress together.

Another key I learned in dealing with my child was acceptance. My child was and is more difficult than average; in fact, he was so far at one end of the spectrum that his father and I at times considered the possibility that he was beyond "normal," and that we may need professional help. In any case, we believed that informed, careful and determined parenting was his best hope for helping him learn to get along in the world. (If you don't have a way to develop resources to deal with this kind of child, or if your child appears "over the edge" to you, getting professional help may be called for.) Accepting the situation helped me develop strategies that resulted in Tom's improvement and in the ability to get our family through the day.

If you are dealing with a difficult child and you haven't seriously considered how diet, sleep and television are affecting your child, I encourage you to examine how adjusting diet, helping to insure the most rest possible, and limiting or foregoing "screen time" might improve things for your family. For instance, while experiments with the Feingold diet did not bring about improvements for our son, many parents find children's behavior vastly better when they eliminate certain chemicals, additives and food dyes. We eat few of those anyway, and we continued to find that general good nutrition emphasizing whole foods and no caffeine did make a difference, as did paying particular attention to anticipating our son's inability to cope with hunger and thirst. It was easy enough to keep a jug of water, fruit and bread in the car.

Additionally, while Tom had a difficult time going to sleep, was a poor napper, and did not "sleep through the night" until he was five, we still kept up our warm bedtime routine and started plenty early so that even if it took him a long time to go to sleep, he would be well rested the next day. The only thing worse than a hungry Tom was a tired Tom.

We never allowed Tom to watch such action-packed television as The Power Rangers. We found that very little to no television was our best bet in helping him manage as a two- and three-year-old. Many parents seem to use TV as an "unwind time" for their kids, but some find that when the television goes off, their energetic child also "goes off." Like we did, you may find that the actual medium of television, not just its content, is something that is best avoided or limited with difficult kids.

Finally, my experience in talking to parents of difficult toddlers and preschoolers is that a large majority of them are boys. Mothers especially may benefit from reading and thinking about gender differences in young children. This may help with a parent's acceptance of how "different" the child seems from her childhood self. This is a great topic to get Dad's insight on as well. And finally, it may help you come up with creative ideas for channeling your son's energy. Believe it or not, Tom was using a real hammer and nails at his own wooden workbench—wearing eye protection—before he turned three. That hammering produced some of the "quietest" hours of his early childhood.

(The names of the authors' sons have been changed.)

Did you see me in Wal-Mart? I was sitting on the floor in the shampoo and soap aisle, physically restraining my small son, so he would not deck me or take out (another) row of Calgon ("take me away"). Just another day in the bewildering life of a mom dealing with a difficult child. But this wasn't supposed to be happening to me, an experienced mom with two older boys known for their pleasant personalities, politeness and cooperation. But my determined little Tom made sure it was happening to me —in Wal-Mart, the doctor's office and my own kitchen.

My third son's intensity, energy and impulsivity were unusually high for a toddler, and much to my dismay, did not show clear signs of abating even when he was three and four. His behavior included destructiveness and well-aimed biting, kicking and hitting. My long-awaited baby was a hard-to-deal-with handful. I was overwhelmed, angry, embarrassed and hurt. How could the little one I loved so much be so uncivilized, when his older brothers had responded so well to the guidance lovingly offered by my husband and me? Now at age five, Tom remains more difficult than some children his age, but his steps toward self-control have gradually become apparent and left me with greater wisdom. I can look back over my years of learning from him and see a number of strategies that helped me cope and helped him improve.

Just say no—to situations. I learned that there were many circumstances that would precipitate tantrums, impulsivity or other bad behavior. Since these happened many times a day, I was in no danger of removing all opportunities for my child to learn to change his behavior and cope, but I did remove the obvious offenders to reduce our stress. Knowing Tom could not spend an hour in a grocery cart with strangers asking him questions, I became a "dash-in" grocery shopper when I had to shop with him. (As long as I could, I carried him in my backpack, but it was difficult with such a high-energy, and as luck would have it, sturdy little boy). I also did not leave him in the church nursery unless one of us could stay with him. None of the nursery attendants were equipped to deal with him, and I was afraid that he would hurt smaller children and become known as the bully. We turned down invitations for dinners he would have ruined anyway, and opted to host or attend outdoor picnics or events with extremely child-friendly environments. Yes, at times this was a sacrifice, but I knew that setting my child up for failure would only end up badly anyway. And, again, in our Tom-friendly circumstances, he still got experience in dealing with his difficulties, just not in such an overwhelming way.

Become hyper-vigilant. Parents of toddlers know that play dates are usually not calm coffee breaks just chatting with other parents. Most of the time, the interruptions are continuous, as one child and then another needs to be re-directed or attended to so that civilization prevails. With Tom, I found I had to double or triple that, and it lasted through most of his fourth year. I was on my feet, anticipating his next move before he could lob something or push someone. As much as I wanted to enjoy the company of my friends, hyper-vigilance had to take precedence, or we quickly would have become unwelcome.

My husband and I tag-teamed, taking turns at being hyper-vigilant at shopping malls, parties and grandmothers' houses. It was exhausting, and some people didn't understand why we weren't able to relax and socialize. If you've never had a child who got into the refrigerator with all the food while you took a 45-second bathroom break, it is probably hard to comprehend.

Footnotes to hyper-vigilance: since it is an exhausting job, primary caregivers who spend long hours on duty may need to take a break. My husband encouraged me to exercise, write or take a walk. Also keep in mind that hyper-vigilance is a hard habit to break: as my little one grew more competent at playing in groups, I had to re-train myself so I would not always expect every incident to have been caused by him. There should be balance between helping your child take responsibility for his actions and creating a negative self-fulfilling prophecy for bad behavior.

Use "holding time." Time-outs had worked beautifully for our first two boys, as did other common guidance techniques used by many loving parents. I had grown into these techniques with my other young sons as part of a parenting style that emphasized the importance of my boys' relationships with me. My aim was to avoid both overly harsh and too permissive parenting, and to implement a loving guidance philosophy as espoused by La Leche League International and many involved in attachment parenting. Books by William and Martha Sears, including The Attachment Parenting Book, provide information about this approach to discipline.

Our third child was far too wired for a basic time-out to work. Sent to his room, he would rant and become destructive, getting him into more trouble. I developed a technique we called "holding time," which I generously modified from information I read in a book called Holding Time: How to Eliminate Conflict, Temper Tantrums, and Sibling Rivalry and Raise Happy, Loving, Successful Children, by Martha G. Welch, M.D. When my child needed to be limited because he was behaving inappropriately, I placed him on my lap and restrained him, using both my arms and even both my legs (to keep him from kicking me), if necessary. I was careful not to use more force than necessary and checked to be sure I was not inflicting pain. The object was gentle but sure restraint, not revenge. If the problem was not a tantrum to begin with, holding him surely led to a tantrum, but I held on through the entire episode. First he'd go through a fighting stage, then through angry acceptance, and finally to calm resolution and a willingness to make amends. The first few days of trying this, holding time seemed to create worse and longer tantrums, but a calm was descending on me. I could be in charge, place l imits without allowing destruction, and help my child reach a resolution that ended on a sincere and positive note, even if it took a while.

I began to add a little mantra-like saying to our holding time. "Tom, you can't control yourself right now, so Mommy will help you. But the bigger you get, the more self-control you will need, and you will be able to do it yourself." More kicking and screaming and refusal to cooperate, but I kept holding and repeating.

After just a few weeks of holding time, the actual "holding" was cut from 20-30 minutes to 10-15. Eventually, over months, I could say to Tom as he was verging on loss of control and not responding to other techniques, "Do you need me to hold you, or are you going to be able to control yourself?" Often, that was enough for him to be able to get himself together. Other times, he still required holding. As he became able to project the consequences of his actions into the future, we were able to reinforce self-control in more traditional ways that had worked for our other children. For instance, "If you behave in the store, Mommy will feel good enough to go back to the park so we can play some more." Holding time became a thing of the past, but now is somewhat fondly remembered by our family.

Instinct tells me that parents who find the use of holding time to create more fury in themselves shouldn't use it. Being calm and matter of fact is key, and it would certainly be a misuse of the technique if it made a parent feel or act violently toward her child.

Help articulate feelings. Throughout all of Tom's toddlerhood and early years, I also worked hard to help him voice his feelings. Tom was articulate at an early age when calm, but when he became frustrated, he immediately "went into his body" and began acting out physically. Taking a cue from Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish in How To Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk, when he was on the verge of a meltdown, I'd say, "You feel frustrated" or "you feel angry" or "you feel left out." I didn't allow these feelings to be an excuse for poor behavior, but found that dealing with the feelings as well as limiting the behavior really helped. His "feeling vocabulary" eventually became exquisite, and as a four-year-old, sometimes expressing the feeling precisely headed off inappropriate physical action.

Establish healthy family rhythms. Throughout my struggles with trying to help my child grow civilized, I kept reading, thinking and talking to people. An idea I got from reading about the Waldorf approach to education was the importance of "rhythm" in children's lives. I found that alternating quiet, intensely focused, inward activities (crafts, stories, cooking together) with boisterous activities that used gross motor skills (outdoor play, biking, dancing) helped create a positive daily rhythm. I also paid attention to the rhythm of our week—an "out" day of errands and taking older kids to activities was best followed by a "home" day where we could recoup. I noticed Tom was better behaved when I did a better job at creating a good rhythm for our family.

Physical exercise for a physical child. I also found ways to emphasize something Tom was really good at: using his body. On the playground, he "pushed the envelope" with his antics, and I found a low-key preschool gymnastics program (which emphasized personal development as well as physical skills) when he showed enough progress to be able to participate with a group. He became a fast and fearless ice skater at the age of four. Huge quantities of exercise and outdoor time seemed to help—and I got in better shape too. "Running Tom" became a daily family task much like "walking the dog." During our stay in a hotel, the employees watching the security monitor asked what we were doing. It happened that the security cameras were pointed directly outside where we were exercising our four-year-old boy by racing up and down the sidewalk. Wind sprints were never more useful.

Affirm the strength. One day, I hit on a great phrase by accident. "Tom, you are powerful, so remember to tone it down so your power doesn't run over people." Soon, before playing with friends or entering a group, one of us would remind the other about his "power" and the necessity to "turn it down." The results were incredible. At four-and-a-half, Tom would whisper to me, "Mom, I've got my power on low" in the middle of a play date. We were getting there.

Try some behavior modification. One more book I should mention is 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12, by Thomas Phelan. This book is basic behavior modification, something I had not used much of with my more compliant older kids. Whatever rewards I set up they found they could do without, and any consequences were something they could endure anyway. The reward system also seemed to have a more negative effect on our relationship without providing much in terms of long-term self-discipline or character development. But with some adjustments, the 1-2-3 approach was helpful to Tom and me, especially during the second half of his four-year-old year as we were beginning to phase out holding time.

Recognize the effect of development on behavior. I don't find much need for behavior modification and some of these other tools on a daily basis any more, since now, as a five-year-old, Tom is blooming. Much of his improvement is due to his hard work and that of his family. In the same way that some children walk earlier or ride a bike later, some children attain developmental milestones related to behavior at different times. Most five-year-olds simply grow into a greater capacity for self-control, assuming they have had both love and limits. But I do think that our attempts to help Tom control himself, and my efforts to find support for the intense job of mothering this spirited child, were of great value. We could have ended up with a resentful mom, a sullen angry child and a miserable marriage.

Instead, I'm a mom with new perspectives, greater empathy for those parenting difficult children, and profound gratitude to friends who recommended books, listened to me cry, and talked me through my ideas and worries. My husband and I tested our commitment to parenting with love and guidance and emerged with a stronger partnership. Older brothers Mike and Richard have learned a lot of nurturing skills and seen firsthand the commitment it can take to work with a young child, and they have expressed relief that the techniques we used helped Tom turn a corner. And Tom himself is a sunny five-year-old who runs up the mountain in our back yard with his brothers and can now go to play at a friend's house knowing he will be able to get along and be invited back.

Today, rather than saying good morning, Tom woke me with a gentle voice. "Mom, when the snow melts, I will be able to pick wild flowers to give you."

I can't wait.

Jeanne Faulconer is a member of the Board of Directors of Family and Home Network. She and husband Rick have homeschooled their three boys in North Carolina, Mississippi and Virginia. Jeanne is happy to report that since this article was written there has been even more improvement in Tom's ability to control his behavior (people who meet him now would never suspect he had dealt with such challenges). A lover of words, Jeanne is a poet, writer, reader and speaker. She enjoys leading workshops on family life, raising boys, home education and combining motherhood and creativity. She has been a La Leche League Leader for over ten years and is the grateful daughter of an extraordinary mother and father.

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