Parenting a strong-willed child can be challenging, but with various techniques, it can be very rewarding. Channel their energy into productive activities, and communicate clearly with them to achieve mutual goals.

I’ll begin by saying: I love my strong-willed child.

She’s full of light, is daring, boisterous, spirited, and loud.

Strong-willed children, as defined by Psychology Today, are children ‘who are stubborn and always have to get their way.’

Writing for PT, clinical psychologist Erlanger A. Turner explains,

‘These children often have difficulties associated with disruptive behaviour disorders’ and the ‘key to coping with and understanding these children is that these behaviours are malleable and can be changed with the use of behaviour modification.’

While we were free of the disruptive behavioural disorders, we were not free of the stubbornness, nor spared clashing with determined defiance.

Every age presented itself with its own set of unique challenges.

Understanding what we were dealing with from the start helped us to parent better. We adapted, we never gave in.

Modifying our parenting approach early on, made for a smoother ride when encouraging our strong-willed child to modify her behaviour.

Goals

The dad-hack I used to help achieve this, is leverage.

Leverage employs responsibility and reward. By applying lessons that teach individual responsibility, the challenges we were often met with became character-building exercises.

For example, I encouraged our kids to participate in shopping trips.

As I’ve learned over the years, strong-willed children need tangible goals. They like to be on the move, are goal-oriented, often energic, and love participating.

So, I invested in trust and responsibility, instead of yelling and red faces.

I asked for their opinions on products, and the shopping list. When they were toddlers sitting in the trolley, they would pack things carefully, and when old enough, push the trolley, and pack bags at the register.

Mission

Dad-hack number 2 of this process is to prepare the strong-willed child for a “mission” beforehand. Make something as mundane, and as simple as shopping for food, an adventure.

Speaking their language, without caving in to their demands, is an effective way to introduce behaviour modification.

Participation removes the triggers for embarrassing public tantrums; and reduces parental frustration, despair, and stress.

Leverage done right is positive reinforcement.

Our blanket application of leverage gave our strong-willed child something to focus on. Seeing my kids acting out because they were plagued by sheer boredom, or upset because someone was given special treatment, has never been a problem.

We rewarded effort.

I suspect this is why I’ve never had to “pay” my kids to keep them quiet in a store or offer them goods in exchange for good behaviour. Kids are smart — bribery only reinforces bad conduct, and in turn bad character.

As Turner noted in the PT piece cited above,

‘The main goal of behaviour modification and behaviour therapy techniques is to decrease undesirable behaviour and increase desirable behaviour.’

Give and Take

Dad-hack number 3 is knowing which hill to die on. While every issue is important, some issues aren’t worth the (proverbial) ammunition.

Raising a strong-willed child is difficult, but the right approach eases the burden, and pain, because it defuses unnecessary conflict.

The adage “work smarter, not harder” seems to fit well here.

Veteran in the field Cynthia Tobias describes this as ‘choosing your battles by deciding what’s really worth wrestling over.’

Borrowing from Sun Tsu’s Art of War, I’ve often translated this as the tactical imperative: “Maintain the high ground.”

Among the 10 tips offered by Tobias in her book You Can’t Make Me, But I Can Be Persuaded, three resonate with my own strong-willed child-raising experiences:

1. ‘Value my ability to see the world from a unique perspective.
   Find ways to appreciate and make the most of my strengths, even when I annoy you.’
2. ‘Ask for my input; keep me in the information loop.
   Give me some ownership in the process and the outcome.’
3. ‘Don’t let me push you around, but don’t push me around either.
   Don’t be afraid to stand up to me; just don’t run over me.’

Loving Discipline

In my experience, creative age-appropriate strategies offer opportunities to teach discipline in ways that avoid crushing the strong-willed child. They train up and cultivate uniqueness.

Although raising a strong-willed child is tough, comfort comes from the confidence found in knowing exactly what you’re dealing with.

There are parenting strategies out there which, when applied responsibly, are effective tools in parenting a strong-willed child into a responsible adult.

To refer back to Cynthia Tobias, at the core of these is ‘reminding the strong-willed child how much you love them and will always be there for them.’

On a practical level, this means acting in ways which remind our children that discipline is always about fighting for and alongside them, never about lashing out or attacking them.

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Photo by Julia M Cameron.