Handling stubborn children is a very difficult task for parents. From morning to evening, children are
stubborn in different activities and you get irritated and shout at them or scold them. But this does not
yield any result, rather the children become more sad and you also get upset and your mood gets spoiled.
In today’s parenting tip for parents we will discuss this blog on how you can handle such problems
smartly. This will not only help you but will also help you in dealing with children, how to handle them
so that they either stop being stubborn or reduce their stubbornness.
Who are Stubborn Children?
First of all, let us understand what it means to be stubborn. Your child often doesn’t listen to you and does his/her own. That doesn’t necessarily defines him/her as stubborn. There is a pattern in child’s autonomous behavior that you need to understand.
Not-Stubborn Children
You must have noticed that children always want to do something according to their wish and there is
nothing wrong with it. Every child has his own individual thinking, liking. There are some children who
have a firm determination of what they are doing and they have well defined logic and purpose behind it.
This type of child doesn’t fall in the category of stubborn children.
Stubborn Children
Stubborn children are those who are adamant about anything. These children have very strong will power
and strong thinking abilities. They have leadership qualities. And they want that the attention should be
on them and their words should be acknowledged and listened to.
Parenting Stubborn Children
How to parent stubborn children is the prime point of discussion and will constitute the major part of the
parenting tips by Anshu in this blog.
If your child falls in the ‘stubborn’ category then you have to keep in mind a few things while dealing
with them. You have to listen to them carefully, understand them and all these are possible only when you
yourself remain calm.
Calm Down Yourself First
Whenever you talk to children, first of all see whether you yourself is calm or not. This is very important
because when you are angry, then definitely something comes out which is not good for the children.
Suppose the child has a habit of not eating whatever food is cooked, rather he/she wants to eat something else. Instead of losing your cool, ask him/her what to cook today. Give him two or three options and tell him to state his/her choice. Then you cook the same on that day and when the food is served, remind him that this was decided by him/her only. In such a case, the child does not have the option to throw a tantrum because it was decided by him/her only.
Give Them Options
Some children are very haphazard about their choices. For example, sometimes when they have to go
somewhere, they take out all the dresses of their choice and certainly all of those are not going to be worn at a time. But it will definitely create a mess. In such a case, parents can show two or three options to the child and ask him/her to choose one from those. When you give two or three options to the child, he/she will feel that he has decided.
Spend Time With Them
If the child refuses to go to school many times after waking up in the morning, then listen to him/her
carefully and try to understand if there is any issue. If there is no issue and still the child does not want to
go to school just because he/she doesn’t like studying. In such a situation, parents usually explain the
benefits of going to school. However, most of the time, the child refuses to understand. What you need to do before going to bed is spend some time with your children. At that time you should tell some stories and those stories should be such that the children can relate to the benefits of going to school. By telling such stories and real examples, you should prepare them mentally that going to school is good.
Have Patience
It is not the case with children that you will tell them one thing at a time and they will understand. It does
not happen like this, both patience and consistency are required. There are some tasks which the children
do not want to do. Like children spread things here and there and if you tell them to go and clean their
room, they will not do it. They will insist that they do not want to do it. What you have to do is that you
go to their room and start cleaning their stuff and you can tell them that let us clean this room together
and see who does it first. When this kind of feeling comes in the mind of children that I have to defeat my
mother, or this competition is going to happen, then they will take it as a game and they will start doing
the same thing.
Let’s Wrap Up
Let’s have a quick recap of what we learned in these parenting tips for parents. While dealing with children who are stubborn and obstinate, you have to keep yourself calm, have patience and be consistent.
This way you will see that such children will become very analytical, independent and often they are also very resilient. So, we will meet in the next blog with a new topic. Till then, like and share this blog and
comment and tell us which strategy you adopt.
