The First Step to Solve Child Behavior Problems

If you’re listening to the Project Parenthood podcast, you might be hoping to learn some respectful parenting tools and collaborative ways to encourage your child to behave in ways that are more acceptable to you. And sometimes collaborative parenting tools can be a quick fix for less entrenched behaviors.

But in my private practice, by the time families seek my services, the cycle of anger-triggering child behaviors and angry parental reactions has resulted in an adversarial atmosphere. And that kind of dynamic isn’t conducive to collaborative parent-child interactions, so respectful parenting tools usually lead to resistance instead of cooperation.

You might be the kind of parent who’s good at expressing anger in ways that don’t leave your child feeling emotionally cut off from you. Perhaps you’re able to let your child know you disapprove without leaving them with feelings of rejection.

But if you’re a parent who struggles with regulating your emotions—maybe you’re more likely to show overt or underlying rage, react coldly, or withdraw from your child in a way that conveys disappointment and helplessness—you may inadvertently evoke shame in them. And if your child has a lot of challenging behaviors, they probably invite a good deal of criticism from you and other adults, which only reinforces the shame.

Your child can internalize these chronic admonishments and the resulting shame can get tied up with their self-identity. When parent-child dynamics have veered off the rails, the first thing that needs to occur is for your child to feel more positively about themselves and less anxiety about the relationship with you. Before you can work on behaviors with parenting tools, you have to work on the atmosphere you’re parenting in.

For your child’s brain to create new relational pathways, it requires new relational experiences.

Imagine that, growing up, you were certain that you were exactly the person your parents or caregivers wanted and loved. That there was nothing you needed to do differently to earn their love, because that love couldn’t even be won or lost in the first place. Imagine that you grew up in an atmosphere that demonstrated to you that your parents’ care for you didn’t depend on how you achieved or behaved because their love was unconditional. They let you know when your behavior wasn’t okay, but they didn’t behave in ways that left you feeling unacceptable as a person. You could show as much developmentally normal emotional distress or unpleasant social behavior as you needed to without being afraid that your relationship with your parents would somehow be in jeopardy. This is the type of environment that allows for connection and collaboration with a child.

The vicious cycle of challenging behavior and angry reactions disrupts your...

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