Does your child talk back to you? Some parents tell me that their children are
little attorneys or litigators. And this is so frustrating for them. Other parents
tell me that their children always have an excuse for why they can't do
something they've been told to do or why they won't do something though they've
been told they need to do. This is called talking back. In this video, we're going
to talk about some of my foster care experience and some of the main reasons
people choose to talk back and the 5 steps for disciplining a child who talks
back.
As a mother of four strong-willed children and as a previous foster parent
of troubled youth ages 12 to 18, I have seen my fair share of talking back. In
fact, with most of my foster children, I would know that we had really succeeded
with their treatment when all of the urges to talk back stopped. That's right,
it's an urge that a person has. And any urge can be controlled. I remember one of
my foster daughters said to me once. "Nicholeen, I never thought that I could
get rid of that urge to just shout back out what I was feeling or saying. I feel
so free, so liberated. Do not have to follow through with that anymore." True.
Not having to talk back but just choosing the better way to be understood
is liberating. And don't we want everyone in the family to feel more free? There
are 2 main reasons that children choose not to talk back. Number one, they
want you to go off course. Which means they want you to forget if they happen
to earn a negative consequence or they want to steer you in the direction of
power struggle. The second reason though, I don't know if people often consider
but it's the most obvious. Which is maybe they just feel like they're not being
understood and they want to know you truly understand them. So, they're trying
to tell you something that they think you don't know. Before we villainize our
children and put them in the number 1 category of trying to just throw us off
course and litigate their way out of things, maybe what we should do is give
them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they just really want to be
understood. In fact, they should be understood. It's healthy. When I was young,
I would ask my father why when he would tell me I needed to do something or not
do something even. He would say, "No, you can't go to the party." And I would say,
"Why?" And he would get frustrated and he would say, "Because I'm the boss. That's
why." But I really did want to know why. And whenever he would say that, I
realized he wasn't understanding me. I didn't know how to break through that
barrier of him being unwilling to understand me. Here are 5 steps for
disciplining back talkers. In fact, I should call these 5 merciful steps
for disciplining back talkers because you really can discipline someone in a
merciful kind way. Step number 1, don't get emotional. Don't take it personally.
They just want to be understood, there's a way to do that. They're not doing it
the right way. But we can point them in the right direction. It doesn't have to
feel like an attack. You get to choose what their words feel like to you.
We process what they're saying to us. So, be calm. Because talking back to their
back talk just perpetuates a power struggle. In fact, it's one of my cardinal
rules. If a child starts back talking to me, I will not talk back to them. So, what
does that look like? Because I do say something, it does not look like this. If
they say, "You don't even care about me." Then I don't say, "Oh, yes honey. I do, I
love you so much." I do not say that. Of course, it's true. I
care about them and I love them so much. But that is not the time. That is just
throwing everything off course and throwing the whole communication moment
into an emotional pit. Instead what I say is I say, "Honey, I know you want to talk
to me right now about how you're feeling and about our relationship. But we can't
talk until we're both calm. You need to choose to be calm first and then we'll
talk about this. I just point them in the direction toward calmness instead of
talking back. You can't accomplish any problem-solving with them unless you're
calm first. So, allow yourself to be calm. Tell yourself that it's okay. Tell
yourself that this teaching moment is natural normal, feels good. In fact, tell
yourself "I was meant for this. I signed up for it." I don't know how many parents
have told me, "I didn't sign up for this." And I think to myself, "Yes, you did.
You had the child. You've got them. You signed up for this. So now, just live up
to it." When you embrace, who you really are in the lives of that child, a teacher
and you can be more calm more comfortable and you can communicate
better with them. And then they'll communicate better with you. Step number
2. And this happens before the moment when they've never talked back. Teach
them a skill called disagreeing appropriately. This is one of the skills
in my teaching self-government implementation course that we teach. It
has 7 different steps to it. First, they look at the person, then they keep a
calm face voice and body. They say they understand the other person's point of
view then they share their point of view. Then they listen to what you have to say,
they say okay and then drop the subject. That's how a person disagrees
appropriately. And if they know that skill then instead of just launching
back to you with some emotional outburst, they can say, "Okay. May I disagree
appropriately?" And of course you will have told them that anytime they ask
that question, the answer is, "Yes, you may disagree appropriately." And then you'll
listen to them, share their appropriate disagreement which includes seeking to
understand your point of view. Which is a really mature thing to do. And it draws
them from the emotional place in their brain to the logical place in their
brain which is super good for their own self-government and feeling of
empowerment. Step number 3, in the minute when you think the back talk is
going to happen, they're just about ready to have it fly
off the tongue, that is the time where a parent does pre-teaching. This is another
one of the self government skills that I teach with my parenting courses. With pre
-teaching, there's 3 different ways to do a pre teach. But in this instant, I
would just do a quick prep and I would remind them of the skill they already
know. I would say, "If you want to disagree appropriately, remember you can always
disagree appropriately with me after I'm finished with this instruction or after
I'm finished with this correction." And I will always listen to you then.
If you just feel it's coming, you feel it's coming, be merciful. Tell them what
skill to wait to use. And then when they use it,
listen. Step number 4 consistently correct them every time the back talk
occurs. If they ever get away with the back talk or you start talking back to
them instead of correcting them as you should, that back talk will be
perpetuated. They will do it again and again and again. Even if they only get
away with it a portion of the time. You've got to be consistent. And do a
proper merciful connective and calm correction. Step 5,
help them learn cause and effect by giving them the opportunity to earn an
extra chore. That's the main negative consequence that we use in our family is
extra chores. Because work is the antidote for a sick character. So, give them the
chance to do a little work so that their character can improve. When a child is in
the habit of back talking, in order to break that habit, they have to be
corrected again and again. And they need to have a negative consequence to accept
again and again so that they properly learn that cause-and-effect principle.
When they are working on that extra chore that they earned, doesn't have to be hard,
can be easy. But when they're having that moment to do that work, they can reflect
on why it is that they need to do that, what they need to improve for next time.
Because of course during the correction, you would have already talked about that.
For more help disciplining children who talk back, watch my next video How To Get
A Strong-Willed Child To Listen