Am I going to survive this strong-willed child?So, how do you know if you have a strong-willed child? (Insert a maniacal laugh here) If you’re not

sure, then you don’t have one. They are not subtle...

How many are living with…

A child who scream “no!!” at you? A child who chooses to ignore your commands unless you make a scene? A child who knows your hot-buttons and how to use them? A child who skillfully argues you into a state of confusion?

Believe it or not, those can be the signs of a FRUSTRATED strong-willed child. Now, I’m not saying that this is what life with a strong-willed child is like – not once you understand and figure out how to work with them. However, this is may well be the case if a strong-willed child’s behaviors have been allowed to fester. Live with a strong-willed child does not – and should not – need to look like that . You can change that – and both you and your child will be happier for it.

The Vision:The first thing to understand and own about your strong-willed child is this: their stubbornness is

their greatest gift from God. And no, God is not punishing you with this child!! Nor is it some sick sense of humor on His part. I’m serious. Their stubbornness is their greatest gift, and they will need it for the work He has for them in their lives.

I’ve told my daughter that her stubbornness will enable her to do great and difficult things that others, who lack her determination, would never be able to get through. God has designed her to do great things for Him, but she will never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile until she is the master of her own stubbornness.

The pressures of the world will not change a strong-willed person – the strong-willed person will change the world!

The parent’s job is nothing more or less than helping them become the masters of their own

nature.

But let’s begin at the beginning – and catch you wherever you might be along this rollercoaster ride.

When do you know that you have a strong-willed baby? We had our first clue 1 hour after she was born! Our first child had wanted to snuggle face-in when he was newborn, and in our ignorance, we assumed this was the way for all babies. So, when we finally got to settle down and rest after her birth, my husband snuggled her in to his chest and picked up his book to read. Low and behold, she didn’t give a contented sigh and fall asleep – she began to fuss and fight. It wasn’t until his experiments turned her to face the world that she sighed and settled in. She wanted to see the world – rather or not her eyes were open, and she wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

Our second clue was 8 hours later when she decided nursing was a waste of time and she wasn’t going to do it. She didn’t change her mind when she got hungry, either. It got so desperate that the doctors were on the verge of forcing us to bottle-feed when a clever nurse presented us with a way to trick her back onto the milk bar – but it still took a whole week before she truly accepted it. More details at my booth later if curious mothers want to know…

Personally, my favorite part of early childhood is the innocent baby stage – those precious months before any training needs to begin. It is utterly exhausting, but so very sweet. When they begin to assert their will in contrast to yours, though, that’s when the battle begins. All children will do this, but the strong-willed child thrives on doing this.

Raising a strong-willed child requires a constant give-and-take balance between

three points: Training, Bending, and Bonding.

Training Begins with Establishing Your Authority

When your child challenges your authority, you must win the battle EVERY TIME, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES. Be calm, be consistent, and be unrelenting. Continue to fight the good fight and hold the line until you have a moment of submission from your child.

Inform them in advance of what the consequence will be if they choose the wrong path. Don’t get excited or upset when they choose that wrong path – just issue the expected consequence with unwaveringly firm love, explaining what-and-why in as adult a way as the child will understand.

When you receive defiance in return, issue an additional consequence specifically for that – explaining your actions again. Brace for repeated attacks, because your strong-willed child will not give up until they are completely sure that either (a) this fence cannot be broken down, or (b) it isn’t worth the effort to break it down.

When our daughter was around three, she began testing us with a very bad attitude towards chores. She was expected to help with 3 chores each day. These changed each day according to what Mama needed, and were things like: pick up these toys, carry these towels to the bathroom shelves, get these 10 books back onto your bookshelves, etc. Each chore

Warning:Strong-will

enclosed

would only have taken 5 minutes to do cheerfully. However, with her strong will, she had to find out if there was a way out of the drudgery. She would refuse to do the work – rather it was directly or indirectly (poor attitude, turtle speed, or similar avoidance). Each time she refused, she earned an extra chore.

To make this tangible, I would start her with 3 mega blocks in a nice stack. With each additional chore she earned, another block would be added to her stack. With each cry of protest or show of attitude, another chore would be added. You can imagine that the stack grew precariously high! Yet the moment that she mastered her attitude and began submitting to authority, the jobs would become ridiculously easy (put that Kleenex in the trash, take this shoe to the shoe rack, etc.). She artificially learned that work goes much faster and becomes much easier when you are cheerful about it –and she would delight in taking block after block off the stack as she completed each chore. Within two weeks, all I would have to say is, “Oh, did you want another chore?” and she would very quickly change her attitude.

Be very precise with your choice of words. o “You can’t” or “I won’t” are words that can be challenged and argued with. “No”, which

works well with a compliant child, will only challenge a strong-willed. o “If you…, then …” is much less emotional, and gives the information your child needs to

make their decision. Your theme song may be “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way”, but theirs is “Climb every

mountain, ford every stream, follow every footpath, till you reach your dream…” Depersonalize the process of issuing consequences.

o “If you choose to leave your bike out, you are expecting someone else to put it away for you. I am willing to put it away for you, but then it will be off-limits for the next 2 weeks.”

o When the child leaves the bike out next time, and then is upset at the loss of it, you can genuinely sympathize with them. “I know. I wish you hadn’t made that choice either. I hate to see you lose your bike for two weeks. I wish you hadn’t forced me to do that, but I wouldn’t be doing a good job of parenting if I didn’t follow through.”

Don’t get excited, mad, or upset. Just follow through with what they knew would happen.o With my toddler daughter, these battles took 45-90 minutes each – and could happen

multiple times per day. The darnedest thing was that she would battle me over and over again on the same issue! She might capitulate and submit in the morning over a certain issue, but by afternoon, she was raring to go again and give it her full strength again! There is hope, though. When I would consistently win the battles for 2 straight weeks on a particular issue, she would eventually become convinced that this wall would stand. Her resistance would lessen from 45 minutes to 15 minutes, and then finally to a token protest that she would instantly quell when challenged to have a good attitude.

o When those moments come, REJOICE!!! Each one is a major milestone. Sure, they leave you hollow and drained – feeling like a fragile husk that could wither and crumple in a slight breeze, but you prevailed – and your child will be blessed for it.

o I can’t tell you how many times I despaired and cried after winning a 45 minute battle – I absolutely hate conflict.

o As a friend told me, though, “I know that God was right to give this child to me. You see, anyone else would have killed them by now!!

When the battles are raging, remember this: If you fail to win a battle, even once, your strong-willed child will be 10 times more determined to overcome your defenses and win another time. If in the past, you have been allowing your strong-willed child to win, this gives you a very hard row to hoe now – but with God’s help, you can do it, and you must!

Bending to a strong-willed child without losing your authority

Now, while it is very important to establish that your strong-willed child will submit to your authority, it is only one third of picture. Just as important is your ability to be flexible and bend to your child

in lesser matters. Wow – don’t jump up and leave. I didn’t just fall off the wagon of good parenting or Biblical principles. Your strong-willed child has wonderful ideas and a determination to do things

their own way. God made them this way – so to effectively parent one of these marvels, we need to bend to their design.

Offer choices that guide your child to the desired outcomes – rather than issuing commands

You want: You say:

Your child to eat healthy Would you like carrots, celery sticks, or neither with your sandwich? (Only offer choices that you are willing to have picked)

Something they value picked up and put away

If you don’t want to pick up the blocks, that’s fine. I will pick them up for you. However, anything that I pick up will disappear for a month. I’ll come back in 10 minutes to see what you want me to pick up.

(This is also a great way to lessen toy clutter!)

A task done before a certain deadline

I need your toy mess picked up before you go to bed in 1 hour. If you get done before the hour is up, you may have the

rest of the hour to (play, read, snuggle – whatever motivates them). If not… (pick an appropriate consequence).

A job done with a good attitude

You have these two chores (age appropriate in complexity) to complete.If you are quick and cheerful, then that is all you will have to do.

Each time you are slow or don’t have a good attitude, I will add one additional chore to your list.*

A poor attitude changed

Oh, are you too tired to be cheerful? If you can’t change your attitude, then I’ll know that you are too tired to manage – and we’ll give you the

nap that you need. Crabby children need a nap (so do crabby mamas for that matter, but we don’t usually have that luxury).

Instead of giving step-by-step instructions for how to do a task, clearly describe the goal, give necessary information, and let them go!

o For example, how to wash dishes: With my logical, compliant son, I go step by step – expecting him to exactly replicate the method and sequence of my instructions (checking frequently on actual results): first you get the dish wet, then you scrub it with a soapy sponge, then you set it in the second sink and scrub the next dish, only rinse when the 2nd sink is full of soapy dishes, etc. With my strong-will, I explain the purpose of soap, why the water needs to be hot, which motions of the scrubber will loosen food off the dishes, how rinsing pushes the remaining food off after a good scrubbing, and why dishes need to be stacked in a way that lets air move between them. Then I leave her to figure out her method and frequently spot-check to point of deficiencies that need fixing.

o My daughter just brought in a wet receipt that she found on the ground outside. Now I knew that the receipt was probably unimportant –but it was excellent initiative on her part, so that couldn’t be mentioned without belittling her or discouraging future initiative. For my compliant, logical son, I would have said, “Put it on an old towel to dry.” For my strong-willed, though, that would have been an abrasive command. Instead, I told her, “If you put it on the countertop to dry, it might stick to it and be ruined. I would put it on a dry cloth myself.” Then, as she unerringly headed for the clean dish towel, I mentioned, “Of course, since it is dirty from being outside, you wouldn’t want to put it on anything we’ll be using for dishes.” This elicited the desired response, and the receipt was put on an old rag. All of this round-about instruction gave her the knowledge she needed and trusted that she would make the right choices. It was just the same, in the end, as commanding her to “Put it on an old towel “ – but it was adapted to her bent.

o Don’t tell me what to do, tell me why it needs to be done that way. Teach me how to fish – don’t give me the fish. It’s an exhausting process – with a tremendous pay back.

Allow them to make and learn from their own mistakes. If you see a train-wreck coming, provide knowledge – but don’t force conclusions. There is no substitution for personal experience in a strong-willed’s mind.

Tell them what they do right – being supremely silent about what parts were wrong. They are very good at reading between the lines, but hate to have their faults pointed out. If you need to hear them say it, ask them what they thought should have been done differently. It isn’t quite so bad if they say it themselves.

Have a sense of humor – you’ll need it! Be willing to laugh at yourself. Be open to change. Those who are stuck to their own way and ignore better options really annoy

the strong-willed.

Respect your strong-willed’s opinions. Keep them involved in the decision-making process and they will be invested in the results. Be willing to listen to (and use) their ideas and solutions (they may have the better idea!)

o If Gwyn needs to do something on a timer (skill race), she wants to tell me when to start it! So, I don’t say “go”. I wait for her to say “go”, and then I start the timer. It’s a small thing to me, but a big difference to her.

Don’t be threatened by their enthusiasm. When they get started on something, they will really take off!

o I had started pushing reading too early on my eldest two. Since I had easily learned to read when I was three, I thought I’d better at least start them by ages 4 & 5. It was too soon – and nearly killed their love of learning. When I realized what I was doing, I dropped the whole reading thing and focused on to other areas of homeschooling that they were ready for. I decided to wait until they asked to learn before bringing up reading lessons again. When she was nearly 7, Gwyn decided that it was time. BRACE FOR IMPACT!! She was relentless – demanding every minute I would give her (often totaling 4-5 hours each day). I finally had to limit her parameters to only asking me when I was at my sewing machine – so I wouldn’t feel under siege. She went from being a non-reader to reading at the 6th grade level in about 6 months – because she had decided it was time. Had I tried to force her sooner, that same stubborn strong-will would have been working against us both – and we would have gotten nowhere!

o When she is eager to learn a subject, it is a wearing experience – but so very productive. When she is set against doing a subject, I can mostly relax – knowing that she will come back around to it in her own time. If she truly decides against a subject, then I need to provide her with compelling reasons to start herself on it again. “What’s the point” is a very important question to a strong-willed.

Compelling reasons are what really get a strong-willed moving in the right direction.o Our daughter had quite the problem sucking her them – and no matter what we did to make

her stop, it didn’t work. We tried putting bandages over her thumbs (she would “accidentally” rip them off). We tried the bad-tasting nail polish (at first she scraped it off, eventually she adjusted to the taste). We bought special gloves (which she constantly lost). Then we began explaining to her how this was bending her teeth, and would give her an ugly smile. When she finally decided that was important to her, SHE decided to stop. She asked us to help her, so we asked how she would like help. She thought a new bad-tasting nail polish would do the trick, so we found one – and she made it work.

o When possible, treat them as equally able to make good decision as you are. Explain the needs that are at issue, and engage them in helping you find the solution – even in matters of discipline this can be effective (as long as you retain the upper hand and the final say-so).If

you corner them, you are invoking a fight-response on their part. Since they love a good argument, you will be the only one stressed out by this!

Teach them that commands will only be used when there is no time to explain.

o We avoid giving absolutes whenever possible. If we yell “stop”, “jump”, or “run”, Gwyn will do so without hesitation – because she knows that we’ll only issue a command if there’s no time to explain it first! Yet when it isn’t a matter of life or principles, there is wiggle room – and this is what a strong-willed child values most.

Bonding with your Strong-Willed ChildBecome a student of your child.

Observe them. Seek to understand them. As the Lord shows you things about them, teach them what you’re learning! This will help your child understand themselves. It is very important to a strong-willed child to be known and understood for who they uniquely are.

Once my daughter was old enough to stay dry faithfully during the day, we still had troubles with her getting wet at night. She was very upset by this – as it was beyond her control. She felt like she was failing, and yet knew that she wasn’t. At this point, I came up with the “Sleepy Self” notion. It was her sleepy self that was getting wet at nights, not her. She had done a good job of toilet training, but sleepy selves take longer to learn. So, we would put her in training pants at night until her sleepy self was old enough to learn.

Depersonalizing the problem and removing the self-condemnation allowed her to think more clearly and work towards the solution.

If you really want to have fun with a strong-willed child, try to teach them something they aren’t ready to learn. Phew. It’s almost enough to make you embrace public schooling! To help Gwyn (and her brothers) understand why they weren’t always ready to learn, I developed my Bookshelf Analogy. This has proved so useful that I’ll share it here:

The bookshelves are the brain’s readiness. This cannot be hurried – think of a baby’s readiness to roll over or a toddler’s readiness to speak words. There are similar points of readiness for schoolwork. When you hit a concept that is just too tough for them – or something that despite their best efforts isn’t sticking – then it is a matter of readiness. You must wait for bookshelves to be “built” before you can start filling them.

Some bookselves come “ready to assemble” – as if they were a kit from the store. These are your child’s natural talents and bents. For other bookshelves, it seems like your child has to tramp into the woods, cut down the trees, season the wood, hew them into boards, measure, cut, nail and glue. Patience!!

Next we parents need to provide 3-ring binders for our children’s bookshelves. These start out empty, and our students add pages to them as they come to understand new things. The more experiences your student has outside of formal schoolwork, the more binders they will have sitting on their shelves. When you refer to these experiences (making connections to those binders) as you sit down to your schoolwork – and you’ll engender wonderful “a-ha” moments. Meaningless information doesn’t get filed anywhere – it has to make connections and find a relevant binder to reside in or it drift out as soon as you

shove it in. This is a very important reason to take your children with you when you are out and about doing things – it builds more connections in their learning!

Things stick in our memory best when they trigger an emotional response. Humor, fear, empathy, and surprise are usually linked to our strongest memories. If you are trying to get your student to memorize facts, humor is the most powerful tool you can use – because we all like to remember things that make us laugh. Rote memorization does work, but it’s painfully boring. Acting out, sketching funny notes in the margins, sing-songing, memory tricks, or other ridiculous methods will speed up memorization exponentially.

Giving your student this “bookshelf” concept can help them understand how they learn. It also removes much of the self-condemnation and frustration of students who haven’t been able to grasp new concepts. Once they realize that is isn’t a deficiency on their part, but just a simple lack of the necessary bookshelf, it depersonalizes the failure and puts it into perspective. They know the bookshelf will be built when their brain is ready, and it’s okay to wait until then.

This can also be applied to understanding Grandad’s Alzheimer diagnosis. Something has hung a heavy curtain in front of his bookshelves, and it makes it much harder to get information shelved – or to find the information he’s already stored. In addition, his bookshelves have termites – eating away from hidden places – until the bookshelf suddenly crumbles, and dozens of books are gone without warning. He has to work hard to build new bookshelves faster than the termites eat away his old ones – so that he can transfer those books in time.

So, after internalizing this “Bookshelf” analogy, my daughter comes up with this: One day, she is working on her math – and she asks me for the umpteenth time, “Mama, how many does 8 take to get to 10?” I patiently answer, “You have that on your bookshelf.” The little stinker answers, “I know, I just wanted the librarian to find it for me.”

When Gwyn was seven, another story occurred to me to help her understand herself: Each of us is born with a certain number of horses belonging to us. These horses represent our will, our determination – in other words, our stubbornness. These horses, if allowed to run wild, will cause nothing but destruction and trouble – yet if trained and harnessed to do the will of their owner, are sources of tremendous power. An average person will have somewhere between 3-6 horses, but a strong-willed person has at least 2 dozen! Only the owner of the horses can bring them under control, although parents can help them learn how to do this. The question for the strong will, then, is “Are you going to control your stubborn horses, or let them control you?” (This is a wonderfully double-edged question, since strong-willed hate the idea of anything controlling them!)

Avoid Assumptions – Ask Instead

Assuming things about a strong-willed child is a very quick way to annoy and frustrate them - rather it is the assumption that you know what they are thinking, or that you know what they want. It doesn’t matter if your assumption is correct or not – it’s that you haven’t bothered to find out for sure. To many of us, being constantly asked what we thought or what we wanted to be annoying – but the strong-willed likes it, as much as they enjoy being unpredictable in their choices!

When Gwyn was four, we realized that she had become very, very good at lying. After much prayer and thought, we decided on a week-long training mission. Each day, at noon, she would receive her least-favorite consequence – in case she had lied that day. And, for the entire week, we would assume that she was lying to us – nothing she said would be trusted. At the end of the week, we would give her back our trust, and things would return to normal. We thought that the daily consequence would be mostly influential part of this training – but it was the assumption that she couldn’t be trusted. That had a huge effect on her, making her determined never to go through such a week again. And it worked – for 4 solid years. Once she discovered the concept of misdirection and learned to be deceitful, it had to be repeated – but again had the desired effect of inspiring her to change. She loves knowing that we trust her word completely – and has learned to value that.

If there is a conflict between siblings, I never assume that one of them is telling the truth or a lie. I always ask both sides for their version of the happenings – even when it if extremely obvious. Especially when dealing with a strong-will, always ask them for their side of the story – because even if what you assume is the truth, they will be ready to fight you for assuming it.

Transparent Parenting

Early on, I began explaining my parenting choices to my strong-willed daughter. I couched it in terms of “you’ll need to know this someday when you are a parent.” Since she had a very strong desire to mother her younger brothers, this was very relevant to her. It became a pattern in my parenting quite quickly, as I discovered how powerful it was to shape the way she interacted with her siblings. I’ve come to call this method “Transparent Parenting”.

The earliest example I gave her was “Always say what you mean, and mean what you say”. If you issue a threat, it has to be one you are comfortable following through on. If you say, “If you don’t stop that, we’re leaving the store,” then you need to be prepared to calmly leave the store. Parent who don’t quickly loose the respect of their children and just become jabbering noisemakers.

o Then we applied this to her brothers. Don’t say, “If you don’t stop that, I’m never playing with you again!!” This statement, made in anger, is one you will have a very difficult time following through on. Make your consequences something realistic. Soon, I began to hear her saying, “If you don’t stop that, I’m not going to play this game with you” or “then I’m going to leave the room.”

When she had earned a consequence for an action, and was giving me the stubborn I-shouldn’t-have-to look, then we would talk about my role as a parent. What kind of lesson would I be

teaching if I didn’t follow through on the earned consequence? What would that teach you? I’m not saying this made her cheerful, but when a strong-willed child can see the purpose, understanding the compelling reasons behind something, they don’t feel such an urge to challenge and fight.

Transparent Parenting can even be something as simple as saying, “Right now, I am much too upset with you to think clearly. Any decisions I made right now would not be wise or considered. I need time too cool off and think, and then I will decide how to handle your choices. I want you to go and pick up your room while I calm down – and if you are wise, you will do it quickly and quietly!”

I’ve even gone to the next step by making appropriate aspects of our marriage transparent to my children. High up on that list is the fact that Rob and I will never speak badly of each other to anyone – and will not tolerate hearing another speak badly of our beloved either. It goes deeper though. As I’ve heard it well expressed: Your thoughts will become your words. Your words will become your actions. Your actions will become your character. Your character will determine your destiny.

Imagine how many teaching opportunities you will have if you begin to explain the how’s and why's of the choices you make as a parent and a mate!

Be on the Lookout for Passions

When I was a little girl, I begged my seamstress mother for 3 years straight to let me sew. She finally gave in and started me on hand-sewing when I was 5. Yup – I knew my passion at the age of 2 – and to this day, I love my sewing time. The Lord uses my sewing skills to supplement our family’s income through my craft shows and occasional large orders of custom work for rich folks.

Early on (age 3), my daughter would pester me every time I entered the kitchen. “Can I help? Can I help? Can I help?” I was so embroiled in the early years of training – when every day was a battle – that I just mistook this for another way she was out to get me! (Yes, you can get to feeling rather besieged in those early stages of training.) Then one day, when recanted the story of how I began a seamstress, I suddenly spotted the parallel. I began to teach her how to make simple dishes when she was 4 – and she was a different child. Having her passion met deepened the bond between us and gave her much more patience for being trained.

Encourage Their Problem-Solving Abilities

Watch for situations that you can have your child develop solutions for - training opportunities with high learning potential and low risk. Explain your need to them – what you would like to have done, but don’t quite know how to accomplish. Ask them for their ideas. If possible, step back and let

them develop and execute the solution on their own. If not, have them work side-by-side with you, hashing over ideas until an acceptable solution has been found. Be ready for their ideas to startle you – and for a completely unexpected perspective. Be open to their ideas and willing to try them. Failure is much less at issue than the chance to stretch their abilities and be trusted to try. If the ideas fail, praise the effort and them challenge them to figure out what went wrong (do not point out their mistakes for them, but listen to and guide their evaluation).

My daughter suddenly decided one day that she would be my organizer! She wanted to organize my spaces (cupboard, pantry, shelves, and fridge)! I went with the strong-willed motto of “How bad could it be, how long could it last?” and said yes. She is now the master of the fridge (only she knows where everything is) and a frequent organizer of other spaces for me. It may not be done the way I want, but it is done well – and frees me up to do other things. She is doing a valuable service, and she knows it. I just have to be flexible (and have her handy to find things for me). Don’t micro-manage your child.

Remember to have fun together

This can be so hard when you are in the early stages of training – when you feel besieged by this unstoppable force of nature – but it is so important.

o Set aside special alone time together – even it is a trip to the store or doing an unusual chore together.

o Try to engage in their favorite activities with them at least once a weeko If you have simply had a horrible day with this child, ask your spouse to put in some special

bonding time (while you get some alone time) that evening. o If each conflict with your child breaks one of the ties that bind you together, you need to make a

special effort to create extra ties in between conflicts.