He’s bad and you’re mad. How do you get out of the downward spiral?

Yitzy has been absolutely terrible lately! He won’t listen to anything I say. I have to ask him over and over again to get into the bathtub or eat his dinner or start his homework — whatever it is he refuses to cooperate. I’ve got other kids and other responsibilities and I can’t spend all my time trying to get him to do the basics. I’m so frustrated that I feel like I don’t even like him anymore! And then of course I feel guilty for being an awful mother. I just don’t know what to do.

Raising children has a way of bringing people to both their heights and their depths. A parent may be willing to throw herself under a train for her child yet in other moments she may wish that she could have an extended vacation from the very same youngster (“Please come back when you’re an adult!”). While children can be adorable they can also be extremely taxing challenging alarming and maddening.

One core difficulty is that when children enter a negative phase — becoming defiant argumentative aggressive dramatic demanding or otherwise impossible — parents tend to follow suit. In other words parents react negatively to children’s negativity.

This parental reaction feeds the negative cycle: the more negative the child is the more negative the parent becomes which causes the child to become more negative which causes the parent to become more negative … and so on. Eventually the parent is so completely overwhelmed that she wants to “quit” her job of raising this child!

Why Good Kids Act Bad

Children fall into negative behaviors for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are victims of their own nervous systems. Anything from hunger to fatigue to weather to circadian rhythms can trigger episodes of difficult behavior. Other kids fall into negativity due to stress: problems with siblings friends teachers and parents overwhelm their capacity to cope and they disintegrate. Stress can also be aggravated by boredom academic challenges conflict between parents and other external factors.

Other children have mental health disorders that wreak havoc with mood and behavior. Some children misbehave because parents have failed to provide adequate discipline or have accidentally reinforced unacceptable behavior. Some children misbehave because they feel rejected by their parents. Feeling hated causes them to feel hateful which leads them to acting hateful. To put it simply the child who feels that her parent rejects her rejects her parent.

Of course it is totally possible that the child is very much loved but ordinary parenting techniques can often leave a child feeling the opposite. (For instance a parent may yell at a child to go study for a test because the parent really cares about the child but the child misinterprets the yelling as a form of hatred and rejection. Deficits in parenting skills can increase the chances of a child’s misinterpretation.)

When a parent is on the receiving end of a child’s abuse it’s not because the child actually hates the parent or is trying to destroy the home. Rather it is because the child is suffering inside — due to physical factors environmental factors or both. Moreover no matter what is causing the child to act in unlikeable ways it is not the child who can fix it. A child is a child — naturally immature (even in adolescence) and lacking knowledge experience wisdom and skills.

Changing the Cycle

Except in very rare cases there is no magic pill that can make a child cooperate and be pleasant. Nor can parents themselves always effect a change. However parents can help the child both directly and indirectly (by seeking outside help for the child).

To help pull a child out of a negative cycle of behavior at home parents can stop all forms of discipline for one or two full weeks. This includes refraining from all punishment and all reprimands criticisms corrections or complaints. During this time parents should give plenty of attention to positive behaviors and smile a lot. When a child misbehaves the parents look the other way or very quietly intervene when absolutely necessary (i.e. to remove another child who is being hurt). The parents can use their “parenting holiday” to read a book or two on parenting skills with the goal of increasing their options for positive parenting strategies.

In the first few days the child’s bad behavior may escalate but the parents must stick steadfastly to their plan. They should absolutely refuse to give any sort of attention to unpleasant behavior. In the subsequent days they should see a great improvement in the child. At the end of the two weeks the parents can go back to the 80-20 Rule using a minimal amount of not-so-good-feeling communication to guide the youngster. Repeat this circuit-breaker process whenever the child is in a negative cycle.