To think a lot of MNetters do not understand what it’s like to parent a child who is not quelled by your anger

[andanotheryear]

or quashed by a stern voice
or who cares if you get angry / furious / apoplectic
or who gives a damn about consequences because they live for the moment

aibu

(I’m not)

sometimes I don’t want them to learn a lesson, just do as they are bloody well told!

If I realised that I used anger and control as my method of parenting, I'd feel like a fool and a lazy one at that. I'd be upset and disappointed in myself and learn to do better as quickly as I could.

In general I agree with the frustration from parents with naturally more compliant children...

But I would also add that I do see a lot of frustration because parents don't appreciate how long a time it takes to build up behavior in challenging children. I've experienced this as a teacher and a parent - you can't just make a change in "leadership" and then expect results. The foundation and groundwork can take years to slowly grow and develop.

So what you see is a parent or teacher who makes mistakes/doesn't have a good handle on it, but lets it slide because it "isn't that bad" and then when it does become too much, they try and change to implementing stricter methods, and it doesn't work at all. Of course it doesn't work. the culture of a family/classroom takes ages to develop, and changing it is very hard, once a way of working is in place.

Are there really children who are quelled by parental anger? Mine get scared and upset when adults are angry at them.

violent and a danger to themselves and others.

Reported this serial pest

I agree that some children are harder to manage than others, but all the more reason to take a very considered, well-informed approach to parenting.

I think a lot of parents don't understand that a parent of an 'easy' child has often put considerable work in to build a strong foundation.

I also think a lot of parents don't understand what is developmentally normal or even possible for toddlers. I hear parents say "we're leaving, put your coat on and say goodbye to your friend, where are your shoes?". That's obviously not going to work.

It's worth considering that a good, experienced teacher can get almost any group of children following rules and learning something. So clearly it's possible to get even 'difficult' children to cooperate. Although yes, there are (very) rare cases where nothing works, generally with some sort of SEN involved.

In the adult world we need all sorts of people.

In most scenarios we need people able to follow the rules and do as they are told. If you work in a supermarket stacking shelves, you don’t get very far if you wander off and start maintaining the freezer. If you work in insurance compliance and start making up your own process you’ll be sacked.

But we also need people who operate by their own internal moral compass and sense of direction, who aren’t swayed by people around them. Whistleblowers, journalists, company CEO’s.

I don’t think that it’s coincidence that the two populations where adhd is really regularly reported as being over represented are prison and company ceos.

Ive got one of these kids and one thing which often works for us is “if you were the parent here what would you do?” “I’d let my child go out without shoes” “What would you do if they hurt their feet” etc.

Natural consequences also sometimes work “I’m not going to wear shoes” “ok, I’ll bring them with me incase your feet get cold and wet”.

But you can’t make them care about consequences if they don’t!

I have a friend with a child like this too. She was very wishy washy with him by my standards (sweetie, use your gentle hands 🙄) but tbh he was unstoppable. He just didn’t care about anything that she or I or any other adult could say to him whether it was shouted or sweet talk. He looked at us like we were irrelevant. She and I used to help run a playgroup together and were neighbours and saw a lot of each other so we did tell each others kids off from time to time. As they got older we saw them less and partly it was down to his awful, uncontrollable behaviour. He didn’t care if she saw him pushing his little sister over onto gravel or not, because nothing she could do touched him. He did not care. My oldest was a drama llama but I’d take that over a child that doesn’t care any day.

The bright ones learn what they can get away with in particular situations and the steps they have to go through to achieve their goals. Many develop an internal moral compass along the way. But they are not easily swayed by adults or their peers.

This is one of those circumstances where money and socio-economic background really count, I'm afraid. Children like this often do far better in private schools than in the "zero tolerance" low stimulation environments that exist in many state secondaries nowadays. Much easier to get them through the difficult teen years unscathed and achieving and keep them out of trouble.

I worry about this a lot @rickyrickygrimes , that I look very permissive. But if getting angry or even ‘stern’ fuels that fire that isn’t helpful.

I don’t think comparisons to schools are helpful; it’s a different atmosphere and most children (even compliant ones) play up more for their parents.

Look at PDA techniques and read The Explosive Child OP.

Even if your child is NT there are some good tips to handing challenging children.

My extremely challenging 10 year old (3 broken TVs - kicked walls, school refusal) is the kindest and gentlest adult now (nearly 20 years old) and is living away independently at university.

Things can get better. Best advice is don't battle with them.

"quelled by your anger"??! What a strange way of talking. Anger doesn't "quell" any child unless it is fierce enough to terrify them into passivity.

The ordinary levels of parental anger agitate children, they don't "quell" them.

I certainly agree with what I think may be the thrust behind your post - that some children are very much harder to parent than others, and ordinary parenting strategies may simply fail to work. But those may be precisely the cases in which "quelling" anger is actually extremely agitating for the child and likely to make a meltdown worse.

I don't believe in exclusively 'gentle' parenting. I don't even think that it is wrong for your child to see anger in you, up to a point. But "quelling" them with anger? Who wants a quelled child anyway??

I think I’m possibly unique in not finding The Explosive Child very helpful. The way of approaching problems ‘the thing is … do you have any ideas’ just aren’t effective in dealing with my ds. I wouldn’t say he’s explosive, more able to tune out adult annoyance and disapproval.

‘the thing is, if you don’t stay in your car seat, you could easily be killed. And I don’t want that to happen so we can’t go to the park, the beach, soft play, anywhere you could actually run off your energy (oh and you can’t go to school either) do you have any ideas?’
ds ‘hahahaha can I have a spiderman cake on my birthday’

perhaps it is just us!

Is it, @MyThreeWords ? Certainly a lot of advice I’ve read is to get really angry, shout, scare, over car seat misdemeanours. Doesn’t work for us though.

Ok, so this child is fearless. No point in shouting or showing you are crossed with them.
What about a logic well put explanation?

And consequences... if you child has zero rection to natural consequences, then I would think of a child psychologist at that point.

I agree entirely with this. Even in some Anglophone countries (Ireland springs to mind and I grew up there) don’t have anywhere near the same number of children standing out as challenging/difficult/spirited/whathaveyou. I think there’s something wrong with some English parenting culture. I don’t think our children are innately inferior.

I had an easy to manage child that responded really well to rewards and consequences.

And I had a child that was not motivated by rewards, was not deterred by consequence. Didn't recognise adult authority and would not notice a stern look. He was very challenging at 6-9 (throwing chairs challenging) and has autism.

Anyway, had to learn to reparent along PDA lines and us now a pretty mellow young man, who is very helpful and does what is expected. (Lots of other things like a special school and ot and salt as well to help) but at home, pda parenting techniques got us results over traditional parenting.

Wow. I've never read any advice like that. Sounds terrible. I do remember one instance as a small child when my dad was angry with me for taking the handbrake off when he left me alone in the car for some minutes.

His anger was effective, but I think that was only because it sprang spontaneously from authentic fear - the fear that by leaving me alone in the car he might have caused my death. It was the fear that I responded to.

Some blustering performance of anger, adopted in response to advice, would produce a different outcome. And of course, the more frequently it was repeated the less impactful it would be.

well, zero reaction to the natural consequence of climbing out of the car seat is ‘you die’ so I’m not going to see whether he reacts to that one or not!

of course this is a uniquely British problem and forrin kids never misbehave. (They do.)

So in the car seat situation give him choices, make him in control and if he refuses to put it on just don't go out.

If he has chosen the venue then he is missing out on his choice of activity by not wearing the seat belt. That's a natural consequence.

Don't make it a battle and don't get angry with him over it.

Absolutely this. I had a similar situation with my autistic son.

PDA parenting is the opposite of what many would see as 'common sense' but it really works. It puts the child in control and a lot of this behaviour is anxiety driven.