Confrontational Kids: How To Adjust Your Parenting To Keep Up With New Challenges from Your Children

It's very as easy parents to sit there and say, "man, kids have changed since I was there age, I never challenged my parents as much as they challenge me", but in the end that statement is wrong. As a parent now your memory just isn't all that great about when you were a child and challenged your parents. Just ask them, I'm sure they would be more than willing to share many stories with you about the defiance you provided. The key to dealing with defiant children is to know your child and decide what types of rules need to be implemented. Is your child one of those that needs very strict guidelines set with definite consequences as a result of violating those guidelines. Another type of child is one that needs very strict guidelines on issues that involve their own safety but more flexible guidelines on less important issues.

For the first type of child that is extremely defiant and takes advantage of any leniency in the rules their parents display, strict guidelines must be set. Make sure your child is aware of the rules of the house, and exactly what will happen when they break these rules. As a parent then you must be consistent in enforcing these consequences any time your child breaks the rules. With very defiant children you will even need to have strict restrictions for less serious policies. In this situation with an extremely defiant child, when you originally make your house rules and consequences make them a little stricter and more severe than what in your mind will be the final policy. This way as your child finally starts obeying the house rules (and this will most likely be after challenging them many times), you can relax them to what you originally had in mind as the long term rules and consequences. Your child will feel like they are getting a certain degree of control, but will also realize what they had to go through to get to that point. It will help them realize it would have been better to obey the house rules to begin with.