Counseling Connection

What can you do when you encounter defiance? For example, have you ever heard this from your child at home?

“I’m not doing that! You can’t make me!”

Success in this situation rests entirely on resisting the urge to rely on power and coercion to force kids to do what we want.

Listed below are some tips that can help you handle defiance.

• Sidestep the power-struggle by delaying the consequence. It’s okay to let children think they’ve gotten away with something in the short-term—especially if handling it later will buy you time so that you can do a more effective job.
• Calmly say, “No problem. I love you (or respect you) too much to argue with you about this. I’ll take care of it.” This is perhaps the most challenging part—saying this in a truly calm and empathetic voice even though you feel the urge to raise your voice and issue ultimatums instead!
• Put together a workable plan. Get some help from other adults if you need their ideas or support.
• Allow empathy and logical consequences to do the teaching.

In both PE and Stephanie's RAK lessons, we've been exploring happy brains and stressed brains, how it shows up in our body, in our emotions and in our thoughts. We also have explored (and continue to practice) strategies for noticing ourselves and bringing ourselves back into regulation.

We adapted some work around brain states and created a kid friendly version of that we all fondly refer to as the "Squirrel Scale". We use it to identify where we are, what it feels like, what it takes to regulate, and the challenges of returning to regulation when we get too far down the "squirrel scale". 

We've also spent time learning about what's happening in our brain in each state and how that shows up.

Upper El students have been noticing that competitive activities create wonderful opportunities to practice! Noticing how stress shows up, how we can bring ourselves back, and how we can notice and help a teammate come back.  In PE classes we also have been sharing regulation "success stories" that happen in our daily lives at school/home.

After generating and exploring a variety of regulation strategies, we also do the following daily practice as a group:

Step 1:  Noticing our bodies, thoughts and emotions (slide # 3)

Step 2: Using that information to determine where we are on the squirrel scale and asking the friend next to us to share where they are on the scale.

Step 3: Practicing a regulation strategy (FLOW) videos.

This practice is like a fire drill... we practice frequently so that we can notice what's going on with as and then use the strategies easily when we need them.

At Love and Logic, we believe that the single most important factor affecting children involves the quality of relationships they experience with important adults in their lives. We believe that there will never be enough rewards, consequences, or techniques to get kids to behave and learn responsibility if we are not first developing positive relationships. In fact, rules, consequences, and rewards can backfire without healthy relationships.

• Rules provided without relationship result in rebellion.
• Consequences given without relationship lead to resentment.
• Rewards without relationship feel like bribes.

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