Children who don't care about consequences.

[alligatorpurse]

I have one.

He is 7, almost 8. I think he wants to rule the world. His temper is overwhelming and the only way for him is 100% his way.

I have read Alfie Kohn's book "Unconditional Parenting" and I do agree with parts of it, I see that some children do not respond to rewards and punishments, and that long-term it's better to have a curious, intelligent thinker than a yes-man or, worse, a military coup on my hands when he's a teenager.

But my goodness, dealing with this little dictator day to day is bloody exhausting. And I don't feel I'm really into UP to be honest. I have 3 dd's who behave quite normally and mostly do what they are asked etc.

One of our current issues is homework. He won't do it. He has some maths, spellings and sentences to do each week. He screams, cries, throws stuff, and once put the homework in the bin. He can do the homework if he tries, he just hates the "waste of his life" as he always says. I have talked to the teacher about it - she said try not to make too big a deal out of it, but she has sometimes kept him in at playtime to finish it. He was angry about that, but still says he's not doing any homework.

He eats and sleeps well, no issues there. He resists any organised activities but we've insisted he learns to swim, which is another weekly battle, and he makes very little effort with it. I've told him many times he can stop once his swimming is good enough (it's not), but he says he can already swim and doesn't need any more lessons.

I'm finding it hard to get the balance between letting him have the freedom he seems to need - I'm acutely aware we will have a big rebellion on our hands before too long otherwise - and insisting he accepts some boundaries and that life cannot be 100% the way he wants.

You really can't imagine what it's like unless you have a child like this. Any advice from those who do (and anyone else too) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

And like I said before activate, you really can't understand unless you have a child like this.

I do almost all of the things you suggest. I set boundaries, I enforce consequences, he couldn't give a monkeys. And it's a very unpleasant struggle a lot of the time.

I suppose ignoring is the way. But it's difficult to ignore something that impacts us all. We have big problems in the morning, when it's time to go. He will do anything to disrupt and delay the process. Writing that down ... maybe he simply doesn't want to go to school. Damn.

The other flash point is toileting. To be frank, I am sick to death of lies, avoidance and, inevitably, him wetting himself and whatever is around. Just. Go. To. The. Toilet.

LeninGrad that sounds exactly like my situation. I have developed a strategy of almost talking to myself to keep calm when he's kicking off. I know getting loud and shouty back at him will not help, he can't even hear me when he's in a rage. But sometimes I really want to let him know in no uncertain terms how difficult he's making everything, and that his sisters are being ignored a lot because of him. I talk about all this when we're both calm and happy but them main response is a non-eye contact yes ok yes ok yes ok which really means can we stop talking now?

FKC we had big toilet problems between being supposedly potty trained just before age 3 and until over 5. I still don't know why but he would wait and wait and wait and refuse to go and there would be a big wet patch at the front of his trousers. I tried all different reward systems at various intervals and NOTHING made a difference.

In the end I had to just leave it all to him. He had total control over that and he knew it. He would wet himself at school in reception a lot and didn't seem bothered at all, even when a couple of times other children told him he smelled of wee.

I'm pretty sure that he finally decided to go before alredy being wet was his own decision in the end!

Re Activate's points: I can understand the irritation in your post, actually. You're the critical voice I hear, urging me to get tough and not endlessly go through this crap.

The problems I have are that a) like Alligator said, it simply hasn't worked. Your "no arguing" suggestion - he argues EVERYTHING. And b) I don't want to force him to be compliant, through fear. I don't want a well behaved child now, if it means he despises me for it later. I don't think that good behaviour is all (going on from Alligator's point). I want the relationship for life. I think you can lose children by insisting on being the only one calling the shots. My mother lost me.

He is brave, clever, funny and independent - I like him very much when he's not kicking me in the tit and telling me he loves me smaller than an ant. In fact, he's just my kind of person, but - ugh - being the person responsible for him is bloody difficult.

It's also difficult to explain my feelings on this without talking bollocks here and there

Alligator - re toileting - you have described my son! He's 5 +3m, into his second term of Reception and - well, everything you said is our true for us.

So best to just leave it? I HATE that other children notice that he is wet/smells.

Lenin: i'm not sure if expectations are a problem for DS. Sometimes he responds very well (cue my 'should I be more structured?' debate with myself), but that's usually in a one-off situation. Longer term, he really struggles to maintain it. His main instinct is to please himself.

How popular are your boys? DS often plays on his own. DH is very worried, but I remember doing the same ...

it takes two people to argue

Ah, that's just easy to say.

The fact that my son argues everything doesn't mean I do. I ask/tell him to do something, he refuses.

no it's not easy to say

and it's not bloody easy to do

but after 4 kids - 2 of them well into teens I have learned to say, repeat and ignore outbursts then once they've spent their ire say and repeat

no arguments

FKC you summed up exactly how I feel when you said you don't want to your son to obey at any cost. I often say to DH that in Victorian "seen and not heard" times our son would have been severely beaten! And the thing is, I don't think I could rule him by fear. On the occasions when I have lost my temper and shouted, he's not remotely bothered. One thing I can do is force myself to stay calm (outwardly.

We also had problems getting out this morning. It was over getting dressed. Nothing was right, he didn't want to wear anything in his cupboard and got himself all worked up. He did in the end get dressedin clothes of his choosing, all unmatching and unsuitable for the weather but that is a non-problem for me nowadays. I always feel it's so unfair to my girls who get ready quickly and do what I ask.

He is VERY popular with the kids at school. I think he gives off such an independent, don't care attitude that they all seem to flock to him. He is often the one who comes up with the ideas that form the games they play outside at school. He is quite happy to play on his own too.

Lenin, I think there is often genuine anxiety under DS's hostile surface, too. And if not anxiety, there is generally something else motivating him to resist. I will try asking 'why', I think ... he goes to football tomorrow and generally kicks off (unintentional pun) beforehand. He does enjoy it once he's there, but it can be such a trauma.

We've removed all computer stuff this weekend (he usually has some time on Club Penguin and/or a kid's app on the iPhone) and he's been far less explosive. There's a lesson.

With mine a normal consequence not working is usually a sign that there's something under the surface like anxiety. It took us a long while to work that out. Now we do a plan B approach (Explosive Child jargon) whenever that's going on to try to get to the root of the resistance. It must be very hard if the anxiety comes merely from the fact that a demand has been made (not the case here, I don't think PDA is the issue for us, but other sources of anxiety can be).

The Negotiation Generation by Lynne Reeves Griffin is worth reading - it is all about setting boundaries, in a good way.

www.amazon.co.uk/Negotiation-Generation-Parental-Authority-Punishment/dp/0425217019/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1295731154&sr=8-1

I am also interested to see that book Greeninkmama

This thread is helping me to stay calm I think! Had on ok morning so far today. One angry outburst so far - told him to go to his room and calm down. He went reluctantly but came back fine after a few minutes.

I've also had a talk with DS about "compromise". I can see this is really hard for him, but we are a family of 6 people and he can't have everything 100% his way. I do think this is the root of the problem. For example, he came into the kitchen and said he wanted to make "his own recipe". I was using the oven already and said, yes, we could bake something together but after I had finished using the oven. He didn't want to wait, and he only wanted to make his own idea, not something from a book, which basically equates to him mushing together flour, sugar, eggs etc then the whole lot going in the bin later because it's inedible. After A LOT of discussion where we both managed to stay calm (he even said at one point "I'm getting angry now"), we agreed on a recipe of his choice from a book.

A large part of me still think it's ridiculous to negotiate for 15 minutes over which biscuits we're going to make, but it's preferable to screaming I guess.

I think you may find the Explosive Child book very helpful for that kind of situation, as it basically gives a script for that kind of negotiation where a simple "no you'll have to do it this way" leads to an outburst. You would start by empathising - something like "you really want to just get on with it and start mixing it all up straight away don't you?", then your aim after that is to get him to join in with what the book calls collaborative problem solving. You express your personal point of view - your concern that it might not work if he doesn't follow a recipe (even the obvious concern - that if he starts straight away it'll ruin whatever's in the oven already - is worth putting into words for a child who's very narrowly focused on getting what they want). You propose the idea that you find a solution that works for both of you. Ask for suggestions. His first ones will probably be just that he does what he wants. You might say you've got a couple of suggestions if he wants to hear them. You discuss possible solutions and you point out where one of them doesn't work for the other person. Ideally you then settle on one that works for both of you to some extent, but crucially you haven't just jumped to that solution but you've laid out the reasoning and the need for both people to be considered.

The good thing about the Explosive Child book is that it doesn't just give you this script and assume your child will follow it. It's a process. Maybe the agreed solution won't be stuck to the first time, maybe the process will be stormed out of, but ideally over time you work towards a method of reaching a compromise that involves them truly having to think of the other person's point of view. It does seem longwinded and hard work compared to just suggesting a compromise and having it instantly accepted by a fairly compliant child, but in the long term I think it's very positive - it's a real skill they're learning, even if it's hard.

You do need to be prepared to compromise yourself as well obviously, to some extent. (In the recipe situation, if the thing he really wants to do is to experiment and see what happens then a good compromise could be to sacrifice a couple of eggs and some out of date flour to experiments.) You'll find that the empathy step is the one where you can find out what's really going on and sometimes it's surprising, the resistance isn't coming from where you've assumed. You might try a few things and hit the jackpot on only one - "you're really excited about trying this and just want to start straight away" or "you're worried that if you don't start straight away I'm going to use up all the eggs and there won't be any left for your recipe" or "you think a recipe from a book will slow you down and make it boring" - one of them might get lots of nods and then you've got useful information to work with when moving towards a compromise.

Sorry didn't mean to waffle so much. It is well worth reading the book - it goes into troubleshooting that kind of collaborative problem solving too so it will show you how it can go wrong - how tempting it is to jump straight to suggesting a solution and skipping the empathising stage or the stage of inviting them to provide their own solutions. And because it's all aimed at getting it to work with 'difficult' (for whatever reason) children it doesn't just give you the script and assume it will be easy. It also helpfully deals with some of the arguments from people who think you just need to be firmer and everything will magically start to work.

I'd also recommend this for anyone who's interested in reading in more detail about it all. It's aimed at professionals dealing with children more so it's a bit less simplistic, which I quite liked.

And I know just what you mean about it seeming ridiculous for it to take 15 minutes - especially if you've got other children who would just go along with your suggestion straight away, and when it's so obvious to everyone else that compromise is needed and that the one you're suggesting is a good one. Going step by step through a tortuous conversation to try to get at what the real problem is and get some kind of joint agreement can be hellish, but it is great when it works even a little bit. It's much more satisfying than getting the threat of a consequence to finally work.

I ought to add that we still do do consequences some of the time, partly because some of the sources of anxiety my child had were (luckily) temporary and when they went he has become less explosive. Over issues where there's no anxiety and really we need instant compliance ("please get down off that bookcase"), if the first request doesn't work then a quiet firm friendly-voiced "or else this will happen" (which we follow through on if necessary) usually does work for us. But wherever possible I still try to do a collaborative problem solving type of approach because (and I suppose this is what AK is saying) I do believe that in the long-term it's better and teaches them a vital skill for adult life. Understanding where their resistance comes from, showing them that what they feel isn't irrelevant, teaching them how to find solutions to difficult situations... all good IMO.