How to Parent a Difficult Child 101

By Don Lewis, Program Director

In my opinion, the most important thing to remember in parenting a difficult child is that you cannot control your child's behaviors; you can only control your own (hopefully). "What," you say, "I cannot control my child's behavior?" "How dare you...#$%#@!!!" But I repeat: you cannot control your child's behaviors, you can only control your own (hopefully). And I think I can prove this point pretty simply: your child is here at SCA; if you could control his behavior, he would be at home. Hopefully, you now accept my first premise. If so, let's look at the second: "you can only control your own behavior (hopefully)."

Each of us makes choices about what we do and when, based on situations as they present themselves. What is more, we cannot escape making choices. Even the decision not to decide is a decision/choice. Since we cannot escape making decisions, perhaps we should ensure that we make good ones. Not a bad idea, I think.

So how do we make good choices in how we parent our child? In my opinion, first we must ensure that we never tell our son that we will do something that we then do not do. We may agree with this, but do we follow through? Really? If we do not follow through with stated consequences, we are teaching our son a very bad lesson. We are teaching him to not believe we will do what we say we will do and we are teaching him that consequences are not determined by his actions but by whether we choose to enforce logical consequences for his actions. We are teaching our child that we (not his actions) determine the consequences he receives. To me, this is a very bad lesson for a child to learn and is contrary to the legal and social reality our children face in adulthood.

Second, a good decision in parenting a child is to tell him what we will do, not what he must do. We can control what we do; we cannot control what our son does. When we say "I am not going to have a son who lies to me live in my house," we have set a clear boundary. This boundary identifies what we will or will not do. If our son chooses to cross that boundary, he has made a decision. His decision is to no longer live in our house. When we follow through with a stated logical consequence, our son may blame us initially; but in the end, he cannot escape his own responsibility for what has occurred. It is extremely difficult for our son to not accept responsibility for the results of his actions if we have consistently applied the two simple tenets stated above: first, we never tell our son we will do something and then not do it and second, we do not tell our son what he will do, we tell him what we will do.

Hopefully the simple ideas expressed in these short paragraphs already reflect our personal parenting practices. If they do not, hopefully they will soon. Regardless, I think it is essential for us to remember that we cannot control our child's behaviors; we can only control our own (hopefully). By appropriately controlling our own behaviors we will be more able to help our child make consistently sound choices. By consistently showing the causal link between his choice and his consequence, we will help our son recognize that it is he who determines the outcomes that occur in his life, not blind fate or our parental whim. Consistently practiced, these simple parenting skills will help our son grow into an adult who acts responsibly and who accepts responsibility for his actions.

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