We get our topics from you and you've asked "How do you handle aggressive child
behavior toward the parent?" That's probably an important thing to take on
if you're the parent. -We're going to take this one on by starting with an acronym.
The word is chill. So, we're going to start with C. Calm your own emotional response.
And just model that calmness for them. -That's such a powerful learning tool.
What you show them is huge. -You know, it's so funny but a lot of times you have to
just kind of think about your face. "Is my face calm? Okay, I'm going to calm." Get
maybe my shoulders. Let them down. That sort of thing. So, get
good at calming your own self. Maybe even taking a big breath letting it out. -You
know I had Nicholeen Peck come and do a couple of episodes on the show. You can
look those up in the playlist. And Nicholeen, I love the way that she puts
this. -Calm voice, calm face, calm body. Think of those 3. Calm voice, calm
face, calm body. And that's what you're going to model for your child.
The worst thing that we can do is get all tipped over and upset when our
child's being aggressive. Because that just kind of fuels the problem
even more. So, the next part of chill is the letter H. And this stands for handle
the inappropriate behavior with appropriate consequences. -Okay. -So, we want
to kind of match them. The behavior and the consequence, right? -Right. And it
doesn't have to be... You know, you've heard a lot about natural and logical
consequences. It doesn't have to be natural or logical as long as it's
appropriate. -Okay. So, not going way overboard or way under. -Right. I've heard
it said before "Don't use a chainsaw when you need a scalpel". Okay. So, if you think
of the difference there and it's easy to go overboard. But some appropriate
consequence for whatever the behavior was. And some of that is going to be
determined by the child's development too. -Right, right. You know, we've talked a lot
about this before. When you've got a young
child, physical restraint is often one of the most important things you can do.
Within loving way of course. And also proximity. Small children, you want
to be in close proximity when you're trying to stop a behavior. Because
otherwise, you just end up yelling at them. One of the most popular
consequences especially for young children is timeout. Timeout
works because it isolates the child from the mainstream of family activity. And so,
that could be a very appropriate consequence to take them out of whatever
the activity is that's going on and isolate them for a short period of time.
It's a really effective consequence and that's why I think it's been so popular.
Older children that might be a little more difficult.
You got a 17-year-old, for example. You're going to put him in timeout. Right.
-Physically is not going to happen. -He may be putting you in timeout. -Yeah. -So, we're
going to use a little different kinds of consequences for the older kids. But you
have a lot on the menu here that you can use. There can be restriction of
privileges. There can be a withholding of certain services that you offer or
access to certain things that they enjoy having access. -We've talked a lot about
this in other video. So, go ahead and look it up on the parenting videos on about
consequences. But you're going to use your consequences that are appropriate
for the misbehavior. -The I in chill has to do with instructing. Alright?
Teaching. How are they going to know? -Right. -Unless we teach them. So, you will find
yourself actually articulating things that you thought maybe they should have
known to start with. -And I'm going to put in a caveat here. It is really important to
remember that instruction time is not in the heat of the moment.
-Good point. -You know. When your child is yelling at you... "Now, son. We're
going to have a little instruction." It's not going to go over. But it's really important
to come back to it later and say, "Okay, you know, let's talk about when this was
happening here's things and you're going to give them the words. You're going to tell
them what's appropriate, what's inappropriate. -Probably their ears aren't
working when their mouth is. -Well, you know, it's biologically, if your your blood
work is go like crazy and it's into... When you're
a high-end emotion it's all out in your outer limbs. And everything and you're
not thinking. -We'll call it the fight-or-flight response. -So, just wait
until that calms down and then do some instructing. Part of that instruction has
to do with the appropriate expression of strong emotions. We've done other videos
about this too. Because it's such a common topic that comes up for us as
parents. And it's not wrong to have strong emotions. But we do need to find the right
way to express them. -So, you might find in your instructions. You're saying things
like, "Hey, when we feel angry, it's usually best to..." And then give them an
alternative. It's usually best to use our words to express that. -Or it's best to
leave the situation and take a walk. -Give ourselves time to cool off. Or calm down.
And you're not only instructing it but you're modeling that for them as well.
Vicki, I said earlier, sometimes the ears don't work when the mouth does. And that's
probably true of parents too. So, as we get to the first L in the word chill. I
want that to be assigned to listening. -Okay. -Listening and reflecting. Now, you've
got 2 ears in 1 mouth. So, keep that in mind as you turn on your own
listening power and you try to hear what your child is telling you. Sometimes you
have to listen through the aggression. Okay? Or through the anger to get
to the disappointment or the hurt or the sadness that they're feeling over
something. -Anger is almost always a secondary emotion.
Something else. So, we got to listen with empathy to get down to the heart of
what's really causing the turmoil inside them that that comes out and misbehavior
towards you. -Right. And then the last L in the word chill I'm going to assign to
limits. -Okay. -Fair enough. It's not okay for your
child to aggressively attack you. It's not okay for them. Now, it's not
fun for you either as a parent. But it's not okay for them to be that aggressive
toward their primary caregiver. That's just not a good thing. So, we want to set
limits around that. -And one of the most effective ones that
I've found is simply to say, "I won't let you hurt me", okay? How simple is that but
it's powerful as well. I think you've used this before with kids.
-My daughter-in lost so good at doing this. She sets the limits and says, "No, I
won't let you hurt me or your brother." Or whatever like that. She says it
very specifically. And there's no anger in it at the moment. That's just complete
"This is the limit". And we're going to set it. And it's really important to set that
limit because it shows a couple of things. One, it shows that you have the
right to kind of set limits about safety for yourself you're modeling that.
Because that... Sometimes the anger is coming out of fear or lack of control.
And so you want to show them how to set those limits. -Right. -Because you're
modeling that for them -This is actually very securing to children as well. When they
get overwhelmed with effect and emotion and they they end up exploding, they feel
out of control. To have a loving parent put an appropriate limit around that. "I
won't let you hurt me." It's almost like they hear that and they're like, "Oh, good."
-Well, it brings and that kind of brings in the second one is it actually brings
kind of comfort and some security to them. -Right. So, the acronym is CHILL/ C for
calm your own emotions. H for handling the misbehavior with appropriate
consequences. -I is instruct in the appropriate way to express your emotions.
-L is for listen and show empathy. -And the final L is to set limits. -Up next is
dealing with aggressive behavior in children. You're going to want to watch
that one as well and just keep working on this. We've got other videos
playlist that would be helpful. Positive parenting starts with positivity. If you
don't yet have a copy of my book, Pathological Positivity, we're going to give
you one for free. All you got to do is go to drPaulJenkins.com. There's a link
in the description. DrPaulJenkins.com, spelled with a D-R. Click on the big
orange button you're going to find there and we will ship you a copy for free. You
just cover the shipping, we'll buy the book. We look forward to be getting that
into there.