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Overview
Do you battle with your kids over bedtime? Have fights over food? Are tantrums and conflicts ruling your day? If time-outs have quit working and you find yourself at wit's end, giving in to your kids' demands just to have a moment of peace, know there is hope!
In The Well-Behaved Child, beloved psychologist John Rosemond shares his seven essential tools for raising a child who pays attention and obeys. Once you learn how to use his proven, user-friendly techniques, you'll have everything you need to deal effectively with a wide range of discipline problems in children ages three to thirteen, what John terms "The Decade of Discipline." This clear, step-by-step program includes:
- Seven Fundamentals of Effective Discipline
- Seven Discipline Tools You Can't Do Without
- Seven Top Behavior Problems of All Time—Solved!
- Seven Tales of the Strange and Unexpected
You can raise well-behaved children! In this readable, entertaining "workshop in a book," John shows parents how to use the C-words of commanding communication, compelling consequences, and confirming consistency to create a well-behaved child and a family in which peace replaces hassles. It's not complicated at all, and the best part is, it REALLY works!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781418586300 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nelson, Thomas, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/12/2011 |
| Sold by: | HarperCollins Publishing |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 672 KB |
About the Author
John Rosemond is a family psychologist, popular speaker, featured guest on major television talk shows, author of thirteen books on parenting issues, and syndicated columnist for more than two hundred newspapers. He and his wife, Willie, have been married more than forty years and have two adult children and seven grandchildren.
Read an Excerpt
The Well-Behaved Child
Discipline That Really Works!
By John Rosemond
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2009 John RosemondAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4185-8630-0
CHAPTER 1
Why Children Misbehave
This book exists because children misbehave—not some children, all children. Some are blatant and loud about it, and some are subtle and quiet about it, but they all misbehave. It would be one thing if their misbehavior were the result of ignorance, of not knowing that they were misbehaving, but children misbehave even when they know what they're doing is wrong. It is therefore necessary, at the outset, to explain the "why?" behind this ever-present feature of their nature. In other words, for you to discipline your child successfully, you must first understand what makes children "tick." That makes sense, doesn't it? After all, you can't train a dog successfully without knowing what makes dogs tick.
If asked "Why do children, all children, misbehave?" most psychologists (of which I am one) would employ one or more of the following words or phrases: unresolved issues (or unresolved conflicts), anxiety, stress, conflicting messages, cries for help or attention, trauma, post-traumatic, power struggles, chemical imbalances, and genes. Nope. Some of those words may help us understand why four-year-old Jonathan Schmedly-Jones of Omaha refuses to obey his parents, but none of those words explains why all children misbehave, and deliberately so. As it turns out, the explanation is simple—so simple that most psychologists never think of it (and if they did think of it, they would deny they thought of it): children are bad. They do not misbehave because their innocent nature has been corrupted by bad parenting or chemical imbalances or rogue genes or "issues" (although, and again, explanations of that sort may apply in some small way to some relatively small number of children). Children misbehave because they are bad, and the sooner parents understand and accept this, the better for them and the better also for their children. The incontrovertible badness of children is why it takes most of two decades to fully socialize them. Their badness is the reason for this book.
I fully realize that kicking things off with the assertion that children are not good by nature will surprise, if not shock, many parents. It would not have shocked parents of bygone generations, but then those were parents whose common sense had not been drowned in a deluge of postmodern psychobabble. When their children began to misbehave, they were not surprised; rather, they fully expected it. They understood that good parenting, no matter how good, did not guarantee good behavior. Because their child-rearing feet were planted firmly on the solid ground of common sense, bygone parents were able to maintain their sense of parenting balance and respond to bad behavior authoritatively, with generally calm purpose.
According to a continuing poll I take with my numerous parent audiences per year, today's parents are far, far more likely than were their parents to yell at their children. This relatively recent upsurge in parental yelling is a sign that parents have lost confidence in themselves. That has happened, I submit, because parents have been listening to professional voices for more than forty years instead of listening to their elders. Reclaiming that confidence—that sense of balance and authority—requires a restoration of common sense where children are concerned, and the cornerstone of parental common sense is the understanding that in any given situation, a child is inclined by nature to do the wrong thing, the self-serving thing, the bad thing. Parents who refuse to accept that are in for a rough ride.
A child's badness awakens from the slumber of infancy sometime during the second year of life. Parents put a sweet little eighteen-month-old angel—a child who's never given them a moment's trouble—to sleep one night and the Demon Spawn of Satan wakes up the next morning, raging. When she's picked up, she rages to be put down.When she's put down, she rages to be picked up. When picked up again, she bites or scratches. She rages for milk, but when given milk she knocks it to the floor and rages for orange juice. Given the orange juice, she rages for milk. And so it goes.
The mentality of the awakened human being, otherwise known as "a toddler," consists of five related beliefs:
1. What I want, I deserve to have.
2. Because I deserve what I want, the ends justify the means.
3. No one has a right to deny me or stand in my way.
4. The only valid rules are those that I make.
5. The rules, even ones that I make, do not apply to me.
That same set of beliefs is also shared by criminals and dictators, and indeed, the toddler is at turns a criminal-in-the-making and a tyrant-in-the-offing. As such, it is a measure of God's grace and mercy that, of all the ambulatory species on the planet, human beings do not to grow to full size in one or two years. It's one thing to deal with a tantrum in a toddler who is twenty-four inches tall and weighs the same number of pounds. It would be quite another to deal with a tantrum from a two-year-old who was five feet ten and weighed 160 pounds. America doesn't have enough emergency rooms!
One does not need to teach badness to a toddler. They are factories of antisocial tendencies. As soon as they learn to talk, they begin to lie. They assault people who don't give in to their demands. They steal other people's property. (I said this to a group of parents once, and someone rejoined that this age child does not know he or she is stealing. They take things because they are curious, she said, to which I simply asked, "Then why do they hide them and deny they've taken them?" End of discussion.)
No psychological paradigm exists that will explain the antisocial behavior of the toddler. How is it that a twenty-month-old who has never seen an act of violence or heard one described, who has been the recipient of nothing but love, slaps his mother across the face one day because she has told him he cannot have a cookie? How is it that a two-year-old who has been treated generously by everyone in his life is malevolently selfish? Why does a toddler who has never been screamed at scream at his parents when they do not obey him? I am describing here not just the behavior of two toddlers, but the behavior of all toddlers. I repeat: toddlers are criminals-in-the-making. Behavioral theory—which posits that all behavior is learned—does not suffice to explain their misbehavior. Humanistic psychology says human beings are by nature good, so we can toss that out the window with a big guffaw. Not one of Freud's notions concerning the nature of human beings rises to the occasion. The only explanation that fits is that humans are born this way; it is their nature to be cruel, to be criminal, to be Lords and Lordettes of the Flies.
Parents who understand that badness is the natural state of the child will not be knocked off balance when the Demon Spawn awakens.They will simply look at one another and shrug their shoulders, realizing and accepting that the honeymoon is over. Prior to this sea change, they were merely caretakers, concerned primarily with making their child feel welcome and wanted, as well as keeping her healthy, comfortable, and safe from harm. Now, however, their real job—the task of raising Master or Mistress Bad-to-the-Bone out of a state of narcissistic savagery into a state of prosocial civility—begins. From this point on, parents are exorcists. Their job is to exorcise those demons that can be pried loose and help their child learn to control those that refuse to let go. The end result is a child who willingly walks the straight and narrow path toward good citizenship.
Some children submit to their exorcisms more easily than others. "Why?" is anyone's best guess. These days, children who cling to their demons for all they're worth are usually called "strong willed." But all children are strong willed. They all want their own way, all of the time. So do you. So do I. (You and I, however, have accepted that [a] we can't always have our way, and [b] it's sometimes better in the long run to let someone else have their way.) Some children, as is the case with some adults, simply go about trying to get their own way more subtly, more cleverly than others. They charm adults into giving them their way. To charm means to cast a spell, and casting spells is evil. These very charming kids, therefore, are just as bad as children who, lacking the talent of spell-casting, go about trying to get their way in clumsier fashion.
Exorcising a child's demons requires punishment. The operative principle is simple: when a child does something bad, the child should feel bad about it. Unfortunately, when they do bad things, children do not feel bad on their own. A conscience does not fully develop until early adolescence, at best. Therefore, when they do bad things, children need other people, adults, to help them feel bad. That requires punishment. What a wonderful world it would be if that weren't the case! What a wonderful world it would be if children could be talked out of misbehaving!
In the 1960s, mental health professionals decided that reasoning with children was possible. Where they came up with that idea is beyond me, but they did.Lots of dumb ideas emerged during the 1960s,most of which have fallen by the wayside. This particular bad idea has proven especially stubborn, however. Today, nearly every issue of every parenting magazine contains an article suggesting that children can be reasoned with. The truth is they cannot be, period. The phrase "reasoning with a child" is an oxymoron, which means only morons believe it's possible. When a child is old enough to be successfully reasoned with, he is no longer a child. He's ready to leave home—and he should.
Adele Faber, the coauthor of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (can you tell that Ms. Faber and I are not on the same page?), once accused me of being "hung up" on punishing children. That's the equivalent of saying that a successful gardener is "hung up" on yanking weeds out of her garden. Punishment is every bit as necessary to raising a well-behaved child as weeding is to growing a successful garden.
The analogy works at several levels:
• Gardeners do not enjoy weeding; they simply accept that it must be done. Likewise, parents should not enjoy punishing; they should simply accept that it must be done.
• If not pulled, weeds will eventually choke the good plants and take over. Like weeds, bad behavior is more powerful, more insistent, more aggressive, more tenacious, and more insidious, than good behavior. It has to go.
• A garden cannot weed itself, and children cannot discipline themselves (until they have been successfully disciplined).
• Any experienced gardener knows that the most critical time to weed is when the garden is young. The more effectively one weeds when the garden is young, the less one will have to weed later. The same is true as regards the discipline of a child: the more effectively parents punish early on, the less they will have to punish later.
• A garden that's virtually weed free is a happier, healthier garden. Its flowers will bloom more vibrantly. Its vegetables will be more nutritious. And so it is with well-disciplined kids: they are happier, healthier, they bloom more vibrantly, and my analogy breaks down at that point because I can't figure out how a well-behaved child is like a broccoli floret. But you get my point.
Before going any further, it needs to be said that effective punishment can only be done out of love. A child who is not completely secure in the knowledge and feeling that his parents love him without reservation will not accept their punishment. You do not need to worry about this though, because the only parents who take the time to read parenting books are parents who love their children without reservation. Now that that's been taken care of ...
While punishment is regrettably necessary at times, it is not the only means of skinning the cat of bad behavior. Sometimes, it is better to confuse the misbehaving child, to mess with his mind, than to simply punish him. This is nothing new. Your great-grandmother called it "reverse psychology." My good friend and fellow heretic-psychologist Kevin Leman, the author of Have a New Kid by Friday! (a recipient of the coveted Rosemond Seal of Approval) tells the story of a mom who came to him for advice concerning her seven-year-old son. He wouldn't eat the food she fixed for dinner. Kevin asked for an example, and the mother cited spaghetti, to which Kevin simply told the mom to fix spaghetti that evening but not to set a place at the table for her son. Don't even call him to dinner, he instructed.
"When your son wanders into the dining room and asks why no place is set for him," Kevin said, "just point out to him that you're having spaghetti, and he doesn't like it, so you didn't include him in the meal."
The next day, the mother called Kevin and reported that when her son discovered he'd been excluded from the evening meal, he promptly went over to the stove, smelled the spaghetti sauce, and said, "But Mom, I like this spaghetti."
Imagine that! Spaghetti anorexia cured in one mealtime!
Here's another fact of living with children: they like to misbehave. The reasons:
• They think it's funny.
• They take perverse satisfaction out of upsetting adults.
• Sometimes they get what they want when they misbehave.
• Rebelling against authority gives them a sense of power.
• They often get a lot of attention when they misbehave.
• They discover that they can control certain people and situations by misbehaving.
For all those reasons, misbehavior is addictive, which means it is in a child's best interest that parents do all they can to make sure this particular addiction never takes hold, or if it already has, to cure it as quickly as possible. Paradoxically, children like it when adults help them not to misbehave.
"Now, just you hold on there a darn minute, Rosemond," someone is saying. "You're not making any sense at all! How could children like to misbehave, yet also like it when adults make them stop misbehaving?"
Because children don't know they like behaving properly until adults make them stop misbehaving, at which point they have an awakening of sorts. They realize they really don't like misbehaving; they really don't like being the center of attention; they really don't like entering into power struggles with adults, much less winning them; they really don't like getting their way when they really shouldn't. It's at that point that children begin to realize they are happier, more relaxed, more creative, and even smarter (and more like broccoli) when they do what adults expect and tell them to do.
That is exactly what the best research into parenting style outcomes has discovered. But common sense will tell you the same thing. Think of some very disobedient children that you know. Do they seem like happy campers to you? No, they don't. They are tense, driven, uptight, angry, rebellious, and petulant. That does not describe someone who is happy.
Now think of some relaxed, happy children that you know. Without exception, they are calmly obedient, aren't they? And just to put a myth to bed, they don't act like they're obeying because they're terrified of what their parents will do if they don't obey, do they? No, they don't. They just obey because they have come to realize, intuitively (children can't articulate these concepts), that obedience is the ticket to a happy childhood. Freedom is not the ticket (although obedient children tend to enjoy lots of freedom); money is not the ticket; having a lot of toys is not the ticket; a brand-new bicycle or the coolest and most expensive skateboard is not the ticket; a trip to Dizzy World is not the ticket. Obedience is the ticket! The wonderful thing is that not all parents can afford to give their children new bicycles or trips to Dizzy World, but obedience is free! It costs nothing! And so every parent—including you!—can afford to give the gift of obedience to his or her child.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Well-Behaved Child by John Rosemond. Copyright © 2009 John Rosemond. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Read This First! (Because I Said So!), xiii,Chapter One: Why Children Misbehave, 1,
Chapter Two: The Seven Fundamentals of Effective Discipline, 19,
Chapter Three: Seven Essential Tools, 67,
Chapter Four: The Top Seven Behavior Problems of All Time ... Solved!, 113,
Chapter Five: Seven Tales of the Strange and Unexpected, 169,
Chapter Six: Seven Final Words of Advice, 187,
Read This Last!, 201,
Notes, 205,
Acknowledgments, 209,
About the Author, 211,