Tag Archives: behavior modification technique

Good Behavior is not Magic, It’s a Skill: The three Skills every Child Needs for Good Behavior

photo by flickr
photo by flickr

When you have a child who acts out and is disrespectful or disruptive, it’s easy to compare him to the so-called “good kids” who never seem to get into trouble or give their parents grief. Many people feel hopeless about the possibility of ever teaching their child to “magically” become the kind of well-behaved member of the family they envisioned before they had him.

The truth is that good behavior isn’t magic-you can’t just wave a wand and turn your child into who you want him to be. Rather, good behavior is a skill that can be learned, just like carpentry, teaching or nursing. I believe three of the most important skills for children to learn as a foundation for good behavior are: how to read social situations, how to manage emotions, and how to solve problems appropriately. If your child can learn to master these three tasks with your help, he will be well on his way to functioning successfully as an adult.

Skill #1: Reading Social Situations

The ability to read social situations is important because it helps your child avoid trouble and teaches him how to get along with others. If he can walk into a classroom. lunchroom, playground or a dance, read what’s going on there, and then decide how he’s going to interact in that environment in an appropriate way, he’s already halfway there. So if your child sees a bunch of kids who usually tease and bully others, the skill of reading social situations will help him stay away from that group, rather than gravitate toward it.

Parents can help their kids develop these skills by getting them to read the looks on people’s faces at the mall or a restaurant, for example. If your child can learn to see who looks angry, frustrated or bored, two things will happen: the first is that he will be able to identify the looks on people’s faces. Secondly, he’ll learn that he should try to identify how others are feeling. Both are integral in learning how to read social situations.

Skill #2: Managing Emotions:

It’s critical for your child to learn how to manage his emotions appropriately as he matures. Managing your emotions means that it’s not OK to punch a hole in the wall because you’re angry; it’s not OK to curse at your dad because he took your iPod away. Children need to learn that just because they feel bad or angry, it does not give them the right to hurt others.

  • Ask the Right Questions – If your child calls his little sister a nasty name, it’s your job to first sit down and ask, “What did you see going on that you thought you needed to do that?” Not, “How did you feel?” but “What was going on?” You’ll find that usually this type of behavior is generally self-centered. Perhaps your child’s little sister is getting more attention or she’s watching a show and he wants the TV, or she’s playing with the video games and he wants to play them. When your child does not know how to deal with that situation and he becomes nasty or abusive, it’s time for you to step in and put a stop to it. And I think you should very clearly state, “Just because you’re angry, it doesn’t give you the right to call your sister a nasty name.” That’s an important, direct way of teaching the skill of managing emotions.
  • What Giving Consequences Does (and Doesn’t) Accomplish – I believe that consequences are part of accountability. In other words, your child should know that if the inappropriate behavior happens again, he will be held accountable. Saying that, I don’t think people change simply because they’re punished or are given consequences. Although parents often focus on them, consequences alone are not enough. Rather, it’s the learning process associated with the consequences that changes a child’s behavior. So it’s the part of your child’s thinking process that says, “Next time I’m upset, if I call Sarah a name, I’m going to be punished. Instead, I can just go to my room and cool down.”  Here’s the truth: you can punish kids until the cows come home, but it’s not going to change their behavior. That’s because the problem is actually not the behavior-the problem lies in the way kids think. This faulty thinking then gets externalized into how they behave. If you punish them for the behavior and neglect to challenge the way they think about the problem-or discuss what their options are for dealing with that problem effectively in the future-then really, what are you doing? You’re punishing your child, but he hasn’t learned anything and he’s not going to do anything differently. In fact, he’s probably just going to do it again when you’re not looking.
  • “What Will You Do Differently Next Time?” – I think it’s very important that you talk to your child about what he can do differently the next time he feels angry or frustrated. This tool is something I developed as part of The Total Transformation Program, and it’s an important way to focus on changing your child’s behavior. When you use this technique, it encourages your child to come up with other things he or she might do instead of using ineffective behavior. By the way, when you have this talk with your child, it should be a pretty businesslike conversation-it’s not all smiley and touchy feely; it shouldn’t be abusive or negative, either. Stick to the facts and ask, “What can you do differently next time?”

Skill #3: Teach Problem Solving Skills

There’s No Such Thing as “Good Kids” and “Bad Kids”

I believe that the kids who are labeled “good” are children who know how to solve their problems and manage their behavior and social life, and the kids who are labeled “bad” are kids who don’t know how to solve those problems. A child is often labeled “the bad kid” when he’s developed ineffective actions to solve the problems that other kids solve appropriately. So this child may turn to responses that are disrespectful, destructive, abusive, and physically violent. In my opinion, there’s no such thing as good kids or bad kids, there are simply kids who have learned effective ways of solving life’s problems, and kids who have not.

As they develop, children have to continually adjust their problem-solving skills and learn new ones. For instance, for a three year old, being told “no” is the biggest problem in her life. She stomps her feet, she throws a tantrum. Eventually, she has to learn to deal with that problem and manage the feelings associated with it. And so those tasks continue for five-year-olds who have to deal with the first day of school and for nine-year-olds who have to change in gym. They continue for 12- and 13-year-olds when they’re at middle school, which is a much more chaotic environment than they have ever faced before.

I’ve devoted much of my career to dealing with kids who behaved inappropriately, all the way from kids who were withdrawn and depressed to kids who were aggressive and acted out physically. I believe a very key element in helping children change their behavior is for parents to learn techniques where they help their child identify the problem they’re facing. Together, you look at how to solve problems and come up with other solutions. So talk to your child about the problem at hand and how to solve it-not about the emotion your child is feeling.

In the end, there is no magic solution to good behavior. The secret is really in teaching kids how to solve problems; good behavior is simply one of the fruits on that problem-solving tree. Your goal as a parent is to give your child the tools to learn good behavior. It’s never too late to get these tools, but know this: if your child can’t read a situation in the ninth grade and doesn’t know how to respond, reacts by getting aggressive, and then gets into trouble, how do you think they are going to handle it when they’re an adult and their boss tells them something they don’t want to hear? That’s why it’s important for you as parent not to “wish away” the bad behavior and to start teaching your child the skills he needs to change his behavior for good.

For three decades, behavioral therapist James Lehman, MSW, has worked with troubled kids and children with behavior problems. He has developed a practical, real-life approach to managing children and adolescents that teaches them how to solve social problems without hiding behind a facade of defiant, disrespectful, or obnoxious behavior. He has taught his approach to parents, teachers, state agencies and treatment centers in private practice and now through The Total Transformation Program — a comprehensive step-by-step, multi-media program that makes learning James’ techniques remarkably easy and helps you change your child’s behavior. Click now for your Risk Free Trial.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Lehman

Anger as a Weapon: Does Your Child Point the Gun at You?

Photo by Flickr
Photo by Flickr

From young children to teens, we explain why your child is in trouble if he or she uses anger and acting out behavior to control others.

When children use anger to get what they want, it can feel for all the world like they’re pointing a loaded weapon at you. As a parent, you dread the ugly and sometimes violent emotional outbursts that come with this type of behavior. Before I discuss children who use anger as a weapon-or the way that I like to put it, as a problem solving technique-I want to caution people that once a child is using extreme anger, they’re in a lot of trouble. And by the way, I’m not talking about a two-year-old throwing a tantrum, I’m talking about a five-year-old throwing toys around the room or an eight-year-old hitting his sister or a twelve-year-old kicking holes in the wall. Once a child is at that level, there are some serious issues at stake, and you need to get them some help fast. There’s no way I can address every aspect of this problem in one article, but what I can do is explain a little bit more about what’s going through your child’s head, and the steps you need to take as a parent to change this pattern of behavior.

Let me explain to you why I think that your child is in trouble if they’re using anger to seek control. I believe that kids who act out this way haven’t developed the appropriate problem solving skills to deal with the stressors, emotions and situations they experience at their age level. Don’t forget, anger is a feeling, but anger is also a problem that has to be solved. When you’re angry and you’ve got all that chaotic energy inside of you, you have to learn what to do about it besides take it out on others. When you’re afraid, you have to learn what to do with that fear-that’s a problem you have to solve. Too many times feelings are looked at solely as feelings and not as problems for which your child needs to find a solution.

It’s also important to understand this: kids get a sense of power from acting out and they use that power to solve the problem instead of learning how to cope with life. These children don’t learn the mechanics of problem solving or how to deal with their feelings appropriately. And that’s an important and critical misstep, because it leaves them on one side of the cliff with no bridge to the next phase of life, the phase where they learn to negotiate, to get along with others, and to solve the problems that arise without losing control.

How Kids Use Anger to Control Their Environment

From the age of four, almost all of us learned how to solve our anger problems, and now we do it so easily and quickly that we don’t even realize that we’re solving them. We feel angry at our boss but we keep our mouth shut. Perhaps we jog after work, or we go to the gym. Or we watch a movie or read a book. We do things that enrich our lives to compensate for the stressors that we feel: We find a way to solve those problems.

But with kids who use anger to manipulate a situation, it’s a whole different story. They’ve learned to solve the problem of feeling uncomfortable by striking out at others. When they have a hard time, instead of dealing with their emotions, they strike out. And in the short term, that solves their problem-usually people back off. If their parents or teachers or caregivers don’t back off the first time, they back off the second or third or fifth or tenth time. Even if they just kicked a hole in your wall, they don’t even see it as their wall, they don’t care. To put it plainly, the child or the teenager has nothing to lose.

Once children learn how to use acting out, aggression, destructive behavior and verbal abuse-that whole family of behaviors-as a coping mechanism, as a skill to solve life’s problems, they are treading on dangerous territory. Because when they find that it works, they keep doing it. And the older they get, the more that technique becomes ingrained in them. And so by the time they’re older children or entering early adolescence, this is their main way of coping with anything that frustrates or upsets them.

Are Your Younger Child’s Meltdowns Giving him Control?

It’s simple: the more your young child succeeds at using anger and destructive behavior as a way to solve his problems-and the more you let him get away with doing that-the more entrenched that behavior is going to become.

Here’s what happens: Your child is faced with a situation that’s frustrating. He responds by losing control. As a parent, you see your child melting down. But if you look at the bigger picture, is he really losing control? Because here’s the thing: the next time you tell him he has to go clean his room, you’re going to remember the last explosion and you’re going to ask in a different way, or soften the request. If he explodes again, eventually you’ll clean his room yourself. So even though it looks like he’s losing control by melting down, in reality he’s getting more and more control over everybody in the house.

The same thing happens at school. Even though these kids look like they’re losing control when they act out, in fact, they’re getting more control over the class because they wind up not having to do the work. Somewhere along the line the child learned that acting this way gave him an edge, and gave him some power-it gave him some control over the adults in his life. The expectations placed upon him were diminished, and the tolerance for inappropriate behavior was raised. In his very bright human mind, he realized that it worked. And so he tried it again, it worked again, and it worked again until it became a pattern.

When these kids lose control, in their mind, they’re in control. They’re getting back at you. They’re showing you that they’re not going to do what you ask of them. If not now, then maybe the next time you’re going to ignore their behavior and do it yourself. And that’s their goal. It’s a very difficult pattern to break as a parent and you may very well need guidance from a behavioral program or a behavioral specialist, even when your child is still young.

For Parents of Angry, Acting-out Teens

I think if teens are acting out and using anger to control you, they certainly have years of experience that says that this method works for them. They may behave themselves around their friends, or around the police. They have to behave themselves in public for the most part, and they tend to do so. But when they get home or are at school where this behavior works, they readily employ it.

So, what happens? You see these kids get moved through school. There are countless conferences with teachers and parents and school psychologists. But really, in the end, if the child is resolute, nothing changes. He goes to Special Ed classes where they tiptoe around him and he does easy work. They pat him on the head when he spells ten words right and tell him what a great guy he is. In short, they do everything they can to manage his behavior. And the school’s goal, by the way, is not to educate him at that point-it’s to manage his behavior. And that’s exactly what he wants. He wants to control the environment, control you through his behavior. He wants it to be your job to not upset him. The message to you is, “If you upset me, bad things are going to happen.”

Never lose sight of the fact that as a parent, your most important job is to teach your child how to learn to solve problems. Teens are miserable half the time because they’re dealing with some tremendous problems and at the same time, trying to learn how to manage life. They’re not children anymore and they’re not adults, but they are starting to have some adult expectations of responsibility-without the benefit of all the tools adults have. In fact, the only way they can get those tools is by learning how to manage situations. There’s a saying I like: “Action precedes understanding.” In other words, teenagers have to go through all of this stuff, and in the end, they’ll understand how it helped them.

But kids who avoid solving problems through intimidation, abuse, anger and acting out behavior don’t develop the skills to deal with life. Sadly, they wind up as young adults whose primary problem solving skill is to intimidate others and break things if they don’t get their way. The truth is, there’s no future in our world for adults like that. And they rarely grow up without encounters with the police, substance abuse, and criminal activity.

For kids who learn how to solve problems through defiance, all they do is defy. And if you ask them why they did it, they’ll tell you it was your fault or somebody else’s fault. “I was wrong but you made me. You wouldn’t let me have the money. You wouldn’t let me stay up and watch TV. You wanted me to clean my room and not let me finish my game.” You, you, you. And these kids wind up feeling like a victim all the time, and you know, if you feel like a victim then the rules don’t apply to you. And so they strike out defiantly, and that becomes their main technique to solving problems. Who are these kids I’m speaking about? They’re the brooding teenagers who are angry all the time at home. They become teens who get involved with drugs and alcohol. They become teens who get involved with petty crime and the police. And you know, you’ll see them do antisocial things in the community. They’ll be destructive, knock down people’s mailboxes, or break into cars. And they get involved with all that because they actually see themselves as victims and therefore, somehow it’s different for them. But as a parent, you’ve got to really rigorously and strongly challenge that feeling and that way of thinking. For people who aren’t able to give up that victim identity, it becomes very hard to change.

Getting Control Back

I think the way that you get control back is to grit your teeth and be ready for a big fight. Start saying no, and mean it. Be prepared to lock up the video game in the trunk of your car. Be prepared to let your child scream in the store for 15 minutes. Be prepared to call the police. Be prepared to go through these things and be ready to do what it takes for your child to understand that this strategy, this problem solving skill of acting out, doesn’t work anymore. If you aren’t able to deal with this problem, you’re endangering yourself and you’re endangering your child. The behavior is going to escalate. Parents need to understand that and seek outside resources, have a backup plan, and be prepared to stand your ground.

I suggest you read as much as you can on the subject of managing kids with behavior problems. Find a behavior-oriented therapist. Work with the school and do whatever you can. Also, there are books available at the book store and programs available online that can help you get the skills you need. Because, if this problem doesn’t change in your child, in adulthood it becomes really terrible and sad. The terrible part is, of course, adults can’t solve their problems by acting out and exploding. They wind up in jail, they wind up fired, they wind up hopeless. And it’s sad because when the child becomes an adult, he really feels cheated by life. He doesn’t understand why he hasn’t made it and other kids have. And he really feels like a loser-in fact, these kids feel like losers for a great amount of their lives, because they know right from wrong. Many times after they act inappropriately they feel sad and confused. Deep down, they know what good behavior is and bad behavior is-they just can’t operationalize it when they’re upset.

So if you’re in this position with your child, you need to learn new problem solving skills. In essence, you have to develop special parenting skills for kids who have special needs. And you know, you can tell if your parenting skills are working or not if your kid’s out of control. And if that’s the case, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent-far from it. You’re tolerating your child, you’re doing the best you can. What it means is that your child also needs to develop a new set of skills, and your child needs a parent with a level of skills that you don’t have yet.

The good news is you can get those skills that you need to teach your child how to manage his behavior. You can go online to find support. You can see a therapist who deals with behavioral problems and who can teach you techniques to deal with your child. Yes, action precedes understanding. And you can start taking actions now. Don’t be so intimidated by your child’s anger that you are afraid to take action and get the help you and your child need.

For three decades, behavioral therapist James Lehman, MSW, has worked with troubled teens and children with behavior problems. He has developed a practical, real-life approach to managing children and adolescents that teaches them how to solve social problems without hiding behind a facade of defiant, disrespectful, or obnoxious behavior. He has taught his approach to parents, teachers, state agencies and treatment centers in private practice and now through The Total Transformation® Program.

The Total Transformation Program® is a comprehensive step-by-step, multi-media, child behavior modification program for child behavior problems like oppositional defiance disorder and child anger issues.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Lehman

James Lehman - EzineArticles Expert Author

Low Self Esteem in Kids Part I: Forget what you’ve Heard, It’s a Myth

Photo by Flickr
Photo by Flickr

Is your child struggling with low self-esteem? As a parent, it’s tough to stand by and see our children feeling like they don’t “measure up” or can’t handle things as well as their peers seem to do. Here we debunk the myth of focusing on children’s feelings at the expense of teaching them how to master life-skills.

Self-esteem, self-worth and self-respect are interchangable phrases we use to identity the feeling of everything being OK, that we’re going to be all right. Kids’ self-esteem is constantly being challenged because they’re constantly challenged with new things to experience. Every day in a child’s life, there are new opportunities and new tasks to deal with. And so their self-esteem, their sense of “I can handle it,” is constantly being put to the test. To state it simply, if your child is able to deal with things, if they have support and they learn how to solve life’s problems, their sense of self-esteem grows. If they don’t know how to manage this, their self-esteem diminishes and in fact, doesn’t develop the way it should.

One of the critical truths you need to know about your child’s self-esteem is that you cannot fix it as a parent. You’ll go crazy, you’ll drive your kid crazy, and you’ll find yourself having screaming arguments and fights trying to make all the pieces fit so that he doesn’t experience any discomfort. Instead, you have to learn how to give your child the tools to deal with his problems. And make no bones about it, in this world, how to have self-esteem is a problem we all have to solve, every day. Remember, dealing with something is often the solution. If your child fails a test, the best thing he or she can do is handle it emotionally by recognizing they’re in control of getting a better grade next time. What this means is that they learn how not to take their disappointment out on other people, to not beat themselves up, and to try again. And parents need to be concerned about self-esteem, but in a way that empowers them to teach their kids the skills they need.

So as a parent, how do you build this quality in kids? In my experience, kids develop self-esteem by doing things that are hard for them. To give you an example, when my son was young and he learned to tie his shoes, we were proud of him and praised him. But when he was eight and he tied his shoes, it was no longer a noteworthy event. When your child solves a problem that’s challenging and relevant to them now-and not just doing the same thing over and over again and being successful and getting praised for it-itbuilds self-esteem.

If you’re rewarding your kids for things that are artificial, understand this: those artificial rewards don’t build genuine self-esteem. At best, they build artificial self-esteem, which means your child feels better for a few minutes, but then goes downhill when the realistic challenges of his life surface. So if you’re still telling your child “nice job” for tying his shoe laces when he’s eight years old, that’s not going to accomplish anything. It may be a nice thing to do, because it’s always important to give your kids encouragement as often as you can, but since tying his shoes isn’t hard for him, that will not develop self-esteem. It won’t lead him to develop self-respect and it’s not going to help him solve the problem of feeling good about himself appropriately. If your goal is to show your child how he can build self-esteem-to learn how to manage problems and feel good about himself-that kind of praise is not going to get you there. You have to look at self-esteem through the framework of problem solving. Feeling good about yourself is a problem you have to solve. You solve it by learning how to do things better, not by talking about it and feeling better artificially.

If Your Child Has a Learning or Behavioral Disability: The Pitfalls of Special Ed.

Some special education programs falter with kids because the educators in those programs ask their students to do easy tasks in an attempt to make them feel better. And then they say, “Oh, great job,” and they give them A’s and 100’s on their work. But the fact is, your child knows what he’s doing is easy for him. Though he might get some momentary gratification, he doesn’t get any real self-esteem out of it. Your child might feel good about himself and come home and tell you, “Look Mom, I got an A.” But after that’s over, he doesn’t feel more confident about his ability to manage life or deal with his problems.

If your child has ADD or ADHD, dyslexia, or dyscalculia, or any label in that range of learning or behavioral disabilities, their perception very often becomes, “I don’t see the world the same way other people do.” Certainly that’s going to challenge their self-esteem, because they’re constantly going to see themselves as being a little off in social situations. As they grow older, that becomes pretty pervasive. Their sense is, “Uh oh, I’m different.” And kids interpret “different” as “stupid.” To them, “I’m different” means “I’m ugly.” “I’m different” means “I’m a loser, I’m an outsider.” Believe me, those are scary things for a kid. But the answer for children with disabilities is the same, in my mind. You may have to gauge tasks differently, but the main principle still applies-have your child tackle things that are challenging for him or her that will help their self-esteem grow. There’s a saying that I use: “If you want to develop self-esteem, do things that you can esteem. And if you want self-respect, you have to do things that you can respect.” And that’s true for everyone.

Counseling and Your Child’s Self-Esteem

The theory behind counseling that focuses on feelings is that if people feel better, they’ll think and behave better. But I’m afraid I haven’t found that to be the case in the 30 years I practiced. In fact, what I discovered was quite the opposite: when people behave better, they begin to feel better, they begin to be more successful and they start to think about themselves differently. Here’s what I’ve discovered: you can’t feel your way to better behavior, but you can behave your way to better feelings.

Don’t misunderstand, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on helping your child express his feelings. Just know that it’s not going to help his problem-solving skill development, it’s not going to help his mastery of difficult tasks, and it’s not going to give him the means to produce self-esteem himself. Another saying I like is: “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, he can feed himself forever.” So, if you make your child feel good, he feels good for today, or for the moment. But if you show him what to do to feel good about himself, he can use those skills for the rest of his life.

Challenge the Thinking that Creates the Self-Esteem Problem

If you want to challenge a child who’s having behavioral issues and self-esteem problems, you have to confront the thinking they use to justify inappropriate behavior. So here’s what that would look like: Let’s say your child has an excuse for why he didn’t do his homework. As a parent, number one, you want to get him to complete his assignment. And number two, you want to let him know that giving you an excuse is not going to help; you want to challenge that kind of faulty belief.

Here’s how excuse-making breaks down in relation to self-esteem: Imagine that one child goes to school without his homework done, while another child has done the day’s assignment. The student who hasn’t finished his math homework feels bad-he’s angry, he’s frustrated. He watches the other kids hand in their work, and then the teacher says, “Where’s your homework, Ben?” She doesn’t listen to his excuses, she just gives him a poor grade. So Ben feels even worse. Later on that day when he sees a counselor, they talk about his homework problem with the goal of getting Ben to feel good, hoping that he’ll do the work if he feels better. When Ben walks out of the counselor’s office, he’s feeling OK, but within 30 minutes, when he fails to hand in his science homework, he’s frustrated and angry again. That night when he goes home, he hasn’t learned anything new, and the cycle starts over again.

But the child who completed his homework has every reason to feel good about himself. He’s mastered something; he’s on top of his responsibilities. And so that night when he goes home, he simply does his homework again. He may not understand how powerful his actions are, but in reality, he’s learning successful habits that breed self-esteem. Without a doubt, the more people learn how to be independent and do things independently, the higher their self-esteem is going to be, and the better they’re going to feel about themselves.

In fact, if you tested kids with solid self-esteem, you would find that they score high on independence and high on problem-solving skills. I believe that independence is one of the most important characteristics that a child can have, but parents don’t realize that, because no one tells them that truth. Many parents try to make their child like every other kid, when really, there are things they can be doing to help their child build independence. I believe this is one of the most important qualities a child can acquire in life.

How Can I Teach My Child the Skills They Need to Develop Self-Esteem?

If you have a child with low self-esteem or behavioral or social problems, you may have to actually develop a different set of parenting skills to help them. In the beginning of a child’s life, parents often have an ideal of what they will be like. For example, they might think he’ll be a good athlete, be well-liked, and do well in school. Or that maybe he’ll misbehave from time to time, but that he’ll learn from his mistakes when corrected. But when parents get a child who acts angry all the time, has low self-esteem, won’t deal with things in an appropriate way, and doesn’t admit mistakes, they simply don’t know what to do. Often, they still try to parent the child they wish they had instead of learning how to parent the child they have.

Most parents I’ve dealt with are doing just that when I first meet them. I’ll tell you what I’ve told them: the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of kids out there with problems that need a broader range of skills and deeper insight than other kids do. It’s not that this is an impossible task, but it’s one that may well need direct and immediate action on your part

For three decades, behavioral therapist James Lehman, MSW, has worked with troubled teens and children with behavior problems. He has developed a practical, real-life approach to managing children and adolescents that teaches them how to solve social problems without hiding behind a facade of defiant, disrespectful, or obnoxious behavior. He has taught his approach to parents, teachers, state agencies and treatment centers in private practice and now through The Total Transformation® Program.

The Total Transformation Program® is a comprehensive step-by-step, multi-media, child behavior modification program for child behavior problems like oppositional defiance disorder and child anger issues.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Lehman

Teen Behavior: What to do When Things Get Violent

Photo by Flickr
Photo by Flickr

What do you do with teen behavior like this? He has punched holes in the walls, is mouthy, violent, aggressive, makes his sister cry and steals her Mp3 player. When parents have to deal with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) or just simply violent teen behavior, that they do not know where to turn.

Let us look at what is going on here. Latest studies show that our brains go on developing until we are about 25. That is one of the reasons why powerful mind altering drugs are not such a good idea. This means in practice that our brains which control our impulses, and even some of our emotions are still not fully developed when we are teenagers. Research also tells us that the parts of the brain which is called the limbic system is what controls our reaction to a fight, flight or freeze response. This is basically what controls our aggressive instincts.

So, how do you deal with this sort of teen behavior? Research shows that children from violent homes are much more likely to be violent adults. We also know that behavior modification techniques learned by parents on child behavior programs are the only way to break this cycle. When the children of parents who had been on these courses were compared to those parents who simply did nothing, there was a 60% difference in the reduction of violence and other problem behavior. This research was carried out at the Feinberg School of Medicine at the Northwestern University.

Violent kids and teens are a big problem in the Chicago area and I know that chief of the Chicago Public Schools has implemented a drastic change of policy. Instead of strict curfews and video cameras everywhere, the school authorities are now concentrating on conflict resolution and dealing with the kids’ emotional needs. Child psychologists believe that there are protective factors such as learning social and emotional skills which can help kids to pull back from the brink of violence. The Director of the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois certainly is a great supporter of this approach.

Parents of oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) teens can help their abusive and violent children by following behavior modification techniques. They learn how to set the limits, help the teen to develop coping skills and also how he can treat people like fellow human beings. Parents learn how giving in and even bargaining can give power to their teen’s defiance and make the situation even worse. Find out how you can make the situation much better and get back in control again by clicking on the link below.

Want to learn how I dealt with violent teen behavior ? Discover a whole new world and learn about behavior modification techniques. Smart parenting is the key to successful ADHD treatment and the problem child. Sign up for FREE Parenting tips on
child behavior problems