Occasionally testing limits and boundaries through acts of defiance is a normal part of child development. Most kids break the rules to define their social role and express their desire for autonomy, which is why rebellious behaviour occurs most frequently from ages 2-3 and during early adolescence. For kids with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), however, being hostile and uncooperative isn't ...
Knowing when and how to discipline a child is never easy, but gifted kids present unique challenges that require patience and careful consideration. With their combination of emotional intensity, keen language skills, and need for fairness, gifted children can seem rebellious and argumentative – but their behaviour is often driven by good intentions. By knowing what to expect when parenting a ...
Kids misbehave for a wide variety of different reasons, and some children are inherently easier to parent than others. Finding the right methods of guidance can therefore feel confusing and overwhelming, especially if techniques that worked with one of your children don’t work with his or her siblings. However, while it’s true that parenting is an adaptive and ...
We all want our children to treat others with kindness, empathy, and compassion. Many of the rules and boundaries we set are designed to teach our kids what is (and isn’t) socially appropriate, and we constantly strive to inform our children about the ways their actions can affect others. However, the manner in which we discipline our children has ...
Over the last two decades, ideological polarization has become a prominent threat to democracy, education, and society as a whole. ...
For parents, even the little white lies that children sometimes tell - e.g., claiming to have completed their homework ...
Autism has been in the spotlight for many years. In movies, television, and novels, autistic characters are portrayed to have ...
The word “spoiled” has been used so extensively that its meaning seems, for many parents, hopelessly vague and indefinite. The concept is blurred both by generational differences and by the fact that the term “spoiled” can also have positive connotations—it's often associated with being indulged at Christmas and on birthdays, for instance, or with the attention of doting relatives. ...
Trust is one of the most fragile facets of any human relationship; it can take years to build and just minutes to break. For parents, losing trust is an especially complicated and painful phenomenon; not only must parents deal with their own feelings of betrayal when a child does something so unthinkable that the foundations of trust are shaken, they ...
With the best of intentions, many parents get into the habit of repressing what they are feeling - bottling up their annoyance and frustration in an attempt to indulge their children's needs, energy, and enthusiasm, or to handle their bad behaviour with grace. While this practice seems noble at first (we all want to set a good example, after all), ...
It's natural for parents to get somewhat desperate when faced with a stubborn child, and to escalate the severity of rules and punishments in the hope of provoking obedience, but as most parents know, this approach is hit-and-miss at best. It's ultimately more effective to have a ready supply of clear, enforceable rules memorized beforehand, so that one can apply ...
