Dealing with an unruly child is never something we were looking forward to as parents, but it’s frequently something we need to learn. When that occasion arises, it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking your child’s behavior personally.

When your child is acting out at the grocery store, or says something rude to you in front of your friends, the first thing we feel is some measure of shame or embarrassment. We feel like the people around us will have a bad opinion of our parenting if we don’t do something about the child’s behavior.

The reality is that an unruly child is not attacking or disrespecting you, so much as trying to exert power. The child is entirely concerned with personal desires and goals, and it honestly has nothing to do with you – let alone anyone who might be watching.

The unruly child, in general, doesn’t feel much power to do things. Children can be told what to do and when to do it by more or less everyone, it seems – their parents, their teachers, their older siblings, sometimes any adult at all. This leaves them feeling powerless, and they have a strong need to have control over themselves.

When your child acts out, it is almost certainly not to embarrass you or make you look bad, and when you say something along those lines – you tell your child both that you don’t understand or appreciate what the child is really trying to do, and that this is in fact a way for the child to seize power.

Once you understand that the child doesn’t mean the behavior personally, and instead simply wants to have control, you can respond without feeling that your authority is being challenged.

The child does not want to take your authority away, but to have some personal authority. Opening up other areas for the unruly child to make choices (and have control) can be effective in filling this need.

If you’re at a loss for how to respond to these things without taking them personally, or what choices and responsibilities you can give your child, there are several books and programs available which can make the process easy to understand.

The overall goal of any parenting challenge is not to get the child to do what you want right this minute, but to help the child be a more effective member of adult society – and sometimes that takes a little more time and effort. In the end, like everything with your child, you’ll find that it was all well worth it.

To learn more about how to handle an unruly child, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

Although most of us have little trouble seeking help, for troubled teenagers, it’s frequently hard for them to know they need help. Bombarded on all sides with conflicting messages, lacking the experience and wisdom of adulthood, the path to their dream life may seem all too clear… even when there is no path at all.

The teenager is working from a flawed understanding of the world, trusting the voices of people in authority, in much the same way they did as children. At the same time, they are rejecting the family unit – a group they had no choice in joining – and gravitating to a circle of friends they have chosen themselves.

This combination can be volatile, and lead to additional bad choices, as an improperly chosen circle of friends will frequently look to an improper authority, leading to improper behavior aimed at an improper set of lifestyle choices.

While it’s certainly not possible to choose your teen’s friends, let alone convince them to wear different clothes or listen to different music, it’s certainly possible to educate them on the subtleties of the world… without dictating specific changes in their lifestyle.

It’s important to understand that the teenager believes our view of the world is flawed – that we are stuck in old ways of doing things, neglecting the new technologies and the new social groups that are available now.

Help for troubled teens is not usually difficult because of the teens themselves, but because of our approach. When you couple a universal principle too tightly with a tradition or standard, teens feel that you are simply selling them your tradition, not showing them the principle. As programs like James Lehman’s Total Transformation Program show, the principles themselves are what is important – not the traditions and standards that make us feel comfortable as adults.

When you draw a box around what you are offering help for, troubled teens have difficulty seeing beyond that box to the application of your principles in their daily lives. Instead of discussing how you can accomplish a specific goal, it is more effective to examine how goals like this one can be accomplished.

By taking that extra step back, you provide room for your teen to take a step forward into an additional problem… perhaps one that is embarrassing, and certainly not anything to ask an adult. When the principle is universal, and the reasoning is sound, your guidance can be used to solve other problems – and gradually earn the respect and trust of your teen, as the principles you explain prove their value in the real world your teen inhabits.

To learn more about help for troubled teenagers, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

When you have a child with behavioral problems, it’s only a matter of time before someone recommends you look into special schools for troubled kids. There are times these can be the right choice, but more frequently, the parents have other options that simply haven’t been tried yet.

There are a large number of well-researched systems and programs designed to help parents deal with their difficult children without needing to spend thousands on therapy sessions, or even more on schools. For troubled kids, there are a lot of reasons to look into other options before leaning on a special facility.

First and foremost, the way most of these facilities work is to establish a structure that deals effectively with misbehavior. Once the child leaves that structure, its effects are gone… and the misbehavior is likely to return. A structured environment can easily enforce rules, but when that environment is removed, the rules are frequently not followed.

Another important reason to use a more personal method of dealing with your troubled child is that the child isn’t the only one in need of instruction. The dynamic between parent and child is almost never exclusively one person’s responsibility… and learning to build an effective dynamic with your child isn’t likely, when your child is rarely at home.

According to James Lehman, the single biggest problem most troubled children have is that they don’t understand how to socialize with other people. The first and most critical social interaction they have is with their parents, then their families, and then their neighbors and communities. When they aren’t sure how to respond, they make strange choices of how to behave, because nothing seems like a good choice.

It’s worth noting that the community of children in these schools is not a normal community, and if your child is having difficulty with social interactions, the other children are not going to be much help. As troubled children themselves, they are not going to respond the same way as “normal” children, and the social skills developed in these schools may not translate to the world at large.

While schools for troubled kids have their place, it is worth the time and effort to use a system that instructs the parents and family as well as the child – so you can help your child learn these skills in the outside world, rather than just in a small artificial environment.

It may not be as easy as signing your child into the care of a facility, but in the long run, it is frequently more effective… and always a lot less expensive.

To learn more about are schools for troubled kids what my child needs, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

As parents, we all deal with the question of how to handle our children every day. When dealing with an oppositional child, this question becomes much more complex. It can seem like no matter what you say or do, your child simply refuses to behave appropriately, and you might feel like it’s purely to be contrary.

From the child’s perspective, however, this is a classic power struggle of two people who want different things. When you want something from your child, and your child wants something else, it appears to be a very simple dynamic of “this or that” – and the child naturally prefers one side of the question.

In many cases, the oppositional child is behaving this way not because of some inherent flaw, but because of learned behaviors which are no longer effective – the behaviors that worked when they were younger, for example, do not work quite as well now that they are older.

As children grow, oppositional behavior can become more pronounced simply because the child’s wants and needs are becoming more sophisticated. With time, they gradually contruct a mental framework that allows them to deal with the world around them. This framework initially deals with only one or two people – their parents – and gradually expands to deal with siblings, friends, and teachers.

But what worked with a smaller group of people may not always work with the world at large, and small errors can add up over time to create a way of viewing the world which is not accurate.

According to James Lehman MSW, the single most common problem children have is in identifying and interpreting the emotions of other people. Like most things, this is a skill that improves with practice, and many children don’t get much real practice.

Whether it’s because they only encounter a few people, or they only encounter a few emotional states, they have trouble seeing how other people are feeling… and interpreting what their words mean, over and above the verbal content, can be very difficult.

Many studies have shown that most of what we communicate – some studies say up to 93% – is not verbal. While we concentrate heavily on teaching our young children to speak, read, and write words, we don’t often spend much time teaching them how to understand the other elements of communication: tone of voice, pauses in speech, inflections, and body language.

When we exert a little effort in teaching these additional elements of communication, the oppositional child often finds the world a more understandable place, where there are other ways to achieve their goals.

To learn more about the oppositional child and you, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

When your child exhibits oppositional behaviour, it’s not always for the simple reasons that immediately spring to mind: trying to avoid responsibility, simple contrariness, actively wanting to make your life miserable. The real causes are simple, and can easily be dealt with using a system such as James Lehman’s Total Transformation Program, once the root of the problem is understood.

When you try to deal with the oppositional behaviour on its own, you’re treating the symptom and not the problem. Oppositional behaviour may be the problem for you, but for the child, it’s an entirely different problem that is causing it.

The first and most important element of this is the child’s ability to read social situations and interpret other people’s feelings and emotions. When a child doesn’t understand the way other people are feeling, it’s easy to say or do the wrong thing; without the ability to understand the social framework of the situation, the right thing is difficult to understand or identify.

A secondary element – which dovetails with the first – is the child’s own ability to identify and manage emotions. When a child cannot see any way to deal with anger except by lashing out, it seems pointless to respond appropriately when someone else is angry – because what else would someone do except lash out? If they’re going to lash out anyway, it doesn’t matter… and when you combine oppositional behaviour with this, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The third and most important aspect is an understanding of problem solving. When a child is faced with a situation where choices must be made, it can be hard to know what the right choices are – and without some basic problem-solving skills, the child simply has no way to make a good choice. All the choices seem to be equally good (or bad), and the child just picks one.

With these three skills, a child can rapidly understand that there are choices in his behaviour when dealing with a social situation. Understanding how to handle one’s own emotions can help avoid the frustration and confusion of dealing with someone else’s emotions, and then the problem solving skills can come into play.

By understanding these three skills yourself, the situation can become markedly better. Many parents find that they spend much of their time looking angry or upset, and the child feels like the cause of this emotion. By simply expressing the target of your emotions, you can relieve this stress and anxiety for your child, and oppositional behaviour is likely to decrease or stop altogether.

And armed with these skills, your own life will improve, as well as your child’s.

To learn more about the root causes of oppositional behaviour, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

When your child is diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, treatment options can be confusing. One of the more difficult decisions you can make is how, exactly, to deal with the situation; there are any number of people suggesting treatment plans ranging from basic disciplinary methods all the way up to expensive boarding schools.

But for oppositional defiant disorder, treatment is not simply a question of teaching your child how to behave – it’s also a matter of understanding, as a parent, how your child thinks and makes decisions. The emergence of ODD in a child is not a disease in the classical sense – something strange and unusual that has happened to your child, with no rhyme or reason. It is evidence of a series of rational thought processes which need to be understood and corrected.

The biggest flaw in the thinking of children with oppositional defiant disorder is having only a surface understanding of human behavior. To the ODD child or teen, defiance is a way to get what you want – and when people want something contrary to your own desires, patterns will emerge based on what has worked in the past.

These patterns are not based on a deep understanding of human nature, but on a flawed and impersonal notion that people are tools you can use to achieve your goals. The ODD child does not suffer from some sociopathy or psychosis, where they believe that other people have no feelings or emotions at all, but from a basic inability to discern what feelings and emotions someone else has at a given time… or will have after a given situation.

The single most effective thing you can do with a child like this is to provide education on the larger picture. The ODD child tends to be analytical and intelligent, and to understand small interactions quite well. It’s the larger interactions that are confusing. When faced with complex interactions, children with ODD see only the simple surface interaction, one step at a time.

So the best oppositional defiant disorder treatment you can use is not some strange technique or expensive facility, but a process of education. Using a simple system like James Lehman’s to understand the flaws in how an ODD child thinks, you can begin the process of correcting those flaws, bit by bit… not by demanding specific behavior on the surface, but by addressing the logic and feeling behind their behavior.

To learn more about oppositional defiant disorder treatment, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

The frustrations for a parent are never simple or easy, and when your child has ODD, support can be hard to find. It’s common for other parents to assume that you simply don’t know how to control your child.

In a certain sense, this is true – the child frequently appears out of control. But with ODD, support is not a simple question of making the child behave like a normal child, but understanding why children behave the way they do in the first place… and what specifically is different about your child.

All children, regardless of age or background, have a fundamental idea that they want to get the things they want. We all have this basic need, and this simple desire. When children try to find the way to get what they want, defiance is an option that frequently works well; particularly in situations where a parent has proven unwilling to discipline the child.

Our society is changing in many ways. The disciplinary methods our parents used are frowned upon, but we rarely receive any education or instruction in the methods that should be used today… and on daytime television, there is a constant parade of people telling us what should work, but that we rapidly find doesn’t.

While the conventional wisdom is that you should look to other parents for help with your children, other parents don’t have your children. It’s more productive to turn to a social worker or other professional, such as James Lehman, who has dealt extensively with troubled and “problem” children… and, if you’re looking for ODD support, children like yours.

Mr. Lehman’s extensive experience has led him to a conclusion that not only works with the troubled or ODD child, but also with normal children – a hallmark of sound study. The problem is not simply that the behavior is wrong, but that the way it was chosen is wrong.

This stems from what Lehman calls a “thinking error,” usually learned at an early age. While you can “show your work” in math class to demonstrate that you have used the right method as well as gotten the right answer, our day to day decisions aren’t as easily examined.

When the process we use to make larger and more complex decisions is flawed beneath the surface, those larger decisions develop larger errors, which can manifest in several ways. Underneath, however, the massive errors are frequently caused by simple and small problems in the process – like not understanding when and how to “carry” a digit during addition.

When dealing with a child that has ODD, support is not simply for you, but for the child. Correcting these thinking errors is frequently all that is necessary.

To learn more about ODD Support For The Frustrated Parent, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

While a juvenile boot camp may seem on the surface to be an excellent place for your child to learn proper beahvior, especially if you’ve been to military boot camp and seen the difference it makes in your life and your outlook, there’s a hidden problem in the process that can make it a truly horrible choice.

In military boot camp, the graduates are expected to work for the training agency, and to produce valuable and correct results. It is critical, in a military situation, to produce not only soldiers but leaders from boot camp; to encourage the independent thought and strength of personality that go into leadership.

The analogy of a juvenile boot camp to a military boot camp is inherently incorrect, because while the disciplinary methods may appear similar on the surface, the intention of the program is very different.

The military has a vested interest in the quality of its graduates; from a recruit to a soldier is an arduous journey, which culminates in a well-disciplined individual who can handle the rigors and stresses of combat.

A juvenile boot camp, on the other hand, only produces someone who behaves as directed. It is not important for this person to display initiative, intelligence, or individuality; indeed, these things are difficult to manage, and a higher degree of uniformity is actively desired.

When considering these sorts of programs, it is worth examining whether you are actually just fed up with trying to discipline your own child. It can be difficult, and there are times that every parent wishes there was somewhere to send their child and stop worrying about it; with a problem child, these times are more frequent, and tend to last a little longer.

But when a boot camp isn’t appropriate, what can you do when you’re at the end of your rope and simply can’t get your child to behave?

The answer, of course, is to put some time and effort into one of the many programs available that can be implemented at home, such as James Lehman’s Total Transformation Program. While a juvenile boot camp is likely to have some effect on your child, it is hard to monitor that effect and see whether it is working.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling like you need help, and there’s nothing wrong with looking into the help options you have available. Certainly, for some children, a juvenile boot camp can work wonders… but for others, it can be destructive. Only you know which is most likely for your own child, and only you can make the decision that is best for your child’s future.

To learn more about alternatives to juvenile boot camp, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

Children with ODD can obviously be more difficult to raise than other children, but the reasons behind this are frequently misunderstood. While it’s tempting to think that there’s nothing you can do about the behavior, the truth is that this problem is not without solutions – and with a little effort, you can help your children overcome this difficulty and improve their lives.

While children with ODD are clearly under a disadvantage, the disorder is not the same as a disease; there is an underlying error in the way these children think about their social interactions, and once both you and they understand the error in this thinking, it can be corrected.

It’s important to remember that these errors are not caused by bad parenting, but by the natural process of children trying to understand the world around them. Their questions may not be easy to ask, and the answers they produce on their own are likely to be incorrect.

Of the skills children need to learn, one of the most important is the process of understanding a social situation. When a child sees a group of people, it’s not always obvious how those people are feeling or even what they are doing – and it’s certainly not obvious how they will feel after you walk in and do what you’re thinking of doing.

Most children are fundamentally self-involved. Without any way of knowing what you are thinking or feeling, they naturally assume that you are thinking and feeling the same thing they do; when you’re fixing dinner, and the child doesn’t think fixing dinner is fun, it should be a welcome distraction if someone comes in and plays a game with you.

Of course, this isn’t what happens, and the child can’t understand why. Without the tools to understand facial expression and body language as indicators of someone’s emotional state, the response is confusing – and the child is frequently angry or hurt.

There is a reason children spend an inordinate amount of time asking “why” at a certain point in their lives. They aren’t equipped to figure out why on their own – and they need help to understand. Spending a little time to help them understand social interactions, and how people relate to one another, can go a long way in helping children with ODD learn how to deal with the situations they encounter every day.

To learn more about raising a child with ODD, I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.

When you’ve had difficulty with your child, whether it’s trouble at school or destructive behavior at home, sooner or later someone gets around to recommending a behavior modification school. And while it’s true that these facilities have a solid track record for addressing behavior problems, there are simple facts that cannot be ignored.

The goal of a behavior modification school is simply to modify the behavior. That is the end of their interest, in most cases. They are not interested in making your child a healthy and productive adult; they are interested simply in getting your child to follow their rules.

Those rules aren’t constructed for the best interest of society, but for the best interest of the school – making it easier to run the school, and manage a large number of children with a small number of staff.

The purpose of a behavior modification school is, initially, a noble one: to help parents with their problem children. The trouble with these schools is that they don’t have any vested interest in the future success and happiness of your children.

If you’re considering a behavior modification school, it’s probably because you recognize that it’s a full time job to handle your one child. Imagine having sixty or more of them. NO level of expertise or education can make that easy.

Over time, the focus of the school changes from efficiency in results to efficiency in operation, and the children are treated less like the individuals they are – simply because there are not enough staff to handle the workload.

While this may do a reasonable job of preparing your child for a life in unskilled menial labor, perhaps at a fast food restaurant, it doesn’t do a very good job of preparing a child for future success… whether in college, or in business.

For a more balanced approach to modifying your child’s behavior, it’s worth the time to check into various systems like James Lehman’s, which provide you the tools to manage your child’s behavior at home.

With your involvement, you can be sure that your child’s education and training are in line with your values and ideals. Instead of letting other people raise your child with the priorities that matter to them, in an environment that doesn’t match the real world where the rest of us live, you can ensure that your child is given the skills and behaviors that really matter – the skills that can make them healthy and productive members of our modern society.

Overall, the results you’ll find with a program you can implement at home are well worth the extra time and effort you put into it.

Parents – before you send you kid away, do something that will teach you skills as well as help your child. I highly recommend The Total Transformation Program, by James Lehman.