Inevitably, sometime within your parenting career, you will face a power-struggle with your child
Inevitably, sometime within your parenting career, you will face a power-struggle with your child. If you don`t, you may be too intimidating, your child may be rather compliant,
or you have mastered the art of managing conflict. Power-struggles occur due to a variety of factors, but invariably make a parent
feel fatigued, frustrated, and helpless.
Power-struggles emerge as a conflict over demands, wants and needs. Parents will attempt to get their child to manifest certain desired behaviors
while the child may choose to react to the request in a negative manner. Children demonstrate various techniques for “testing” their parent`s patience. They may cry, have temper tantrums, manipulate, avoid contact, become aggressive,
and refuse to comply with expectations. Parents may employ various methods in trying to hold their children accountable
regarding their requests. They use control, lecturing, pressure, guilt, bribery, sulking, or aggressive
behavior as strategies to get what they want from their children. None of these methods generally work very effectively.
Parents who seek counseling will indicate that they have tried everything in their arsenal in an attempt
to get appropriate behavior displayed by their children. Power-struggles may occur over issues such as schooling, household chores, and
a child`s desire for more freedom, or a child merely wanting his own way. Power-struggles can be minimized if parents will change their tactics with their
children. This process can be accomplished if a parent is open to new ways of managing
problems:
logical consequences. Children should be informed regarding the nature of positive
and negative consequences. Fight the urge to engage and merely lay out the consequences for appropriate
or inappropriate behavior.
a means of managing your children.
rationally.
to the offense.
means of avoiding the potential for power-struggles. Unreasonable consequences imparted to a child while a parent is angry will serve
to reinforce the power-struggle.
education are number one on the list. Rather than pontificate with children about grades, capabilities, and school
failure, ask them to explore and make value judgments about their performance. On occasion, monitor their performance, but fight the urge to continuously confront
them about their failures. Set positive consequences to encourage completed work. Emphasize the quality of their work (process) rather than grades (outcome). Utilize outside resources, if necessary, such as tutors, parent advocates, and
counseling services rather than confronting educational issues yourself. Maintain a sense of involvement with your child that is not conditional upon
school success. Ironically, it may break the power-struggle and generally lead a child to change
his perspective about schooling.
are reasonable.
- Always explore problems rather than confront them aggressively. Have your children make value judgments about their behavior rather than you
making judgments on their behalf.
Avoiding power-struggles involves setting appropriate limits for your children,
being consistent in enforcing them, and being reasonable with the management of
consequences. Remember, positive consequences are much more effective in leading to improved
behavior and help eradicate power-struggles. Children will respect you more if you are significantly involved in a positive manner
in your child`s life and choose to role-model the behaviors that you desire your
children to emulate.
James P. Krehbiel, Ed.S. LPC is an author, freelance writer, and nationally certified
cognitive-behavioral therapist practicing in Scottsdale, Arizona. His personal growth book, Stepping Out of the Bubble is available at amazon.com. James can be reached at www.krehbielcounseling.com.
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