Losing Your Cool with Your Kids? Here’s a Better Way!
By Gary Direnfeld, MSW

You’ve told your eight-year-old son to put away his blocks—not once but three times...

The next time you enter the family room, you see piles of blocks strewn all over the floor. It’s been a long day, and you’re tired. So, you scream your child’s name, and when he appears, you ask him why the blocks haven’t been picked up. Without waiting for a reply, you let him have it! As you vent your anger and frustration, you realize that you are yelling loudly. Your child bursts into tears and runs to his room. The blocks remain on the floor.

When parents are frustrated and angry, they sometimes lose their cool with their children. Given how kids can test our patience, this is not surprising. However, as a means of managing our kids’ behavior, angry outbursts rarely succeed. In most cases, such displays of anger leave children thinking about our behavior, not their own!
We often yell when we reach the end of our rope—and out of ideas for how to handle our kids. However, if parents think in terms of consequences rather than punishments, they might not feel so frustrated. When the time comes to deal with misbehavior, a plan of action will work better than venting our frustration, which can so often lead to unintended verbal or even physical abuse.

First Calm Yourself. The first step in managing children’s behavior, especially when you are angry, is calling a brief time-out for yourself. If you find yourself enraged with your child, first try to regain your composure. Leave the room for a moment, count to ten, and take a few deep breaths. It generally doesn’t require much time, but taking a few moments to calm down is really necessary before confronting your misbehaving child. Once you feel calm enough to handle the situation, then you are ready to deal with the be-havior problem.
How should you respond to misbehavior? Many parents find it useful to show their children that their actions have consequences by withholding from them anything that involves enjoyment or pleasure. This might mean the temporary deprivation of a favorite treat, a beloved toy, a preferred activity, or personal freedom by having to spend time without their playmates or alone in their room. When parents enforce consequences, children learn that, like everything else in life, our actions elicit a positive or negative response. For example, if I am caught speeding, I will lose some money and acquire some points on my driving record.

Now Call a Halt. A time-out can be an effective consequence because it involves the loss of something pleasurable for a determined length of time. One of the advantages of a time-out is that it can be served anywhere—sitting in the corner of a room, on the stairs, or quietly in a chair with hands folded. Time-outs can even work while riding in the car.
A good rule of thumb for determining how long a time-out should last is to let your child’s age be your guide. A two-year-old would serve a time-out for two minutes, while a five-year-old would sit still for five minutes. Generally, longer “penalty periods” of more than five or ten minutes lose their effectiveness. After a few minutes, the child is likely to be daydreaming, so there is no longer any benefit to it. In fact, time-outs that are very brief, even for less than one minute, are sometimes even more effective, particularly when the misbehavior continues repeatedly.
Some parents send a child to his room and forget that he may be playing with his toys and having a great time. This is not a time-out and may have a counterproductive effect. Remember, time-out should not be a picnic. For some children, sitting on the stairs or on the floor is more effective than being banished to a bedroom.

Ignore the Protests. Many children whine and complain when parents try to enforce consequences. This behavior occurs when the child believes that the consequences are unjust or simply doesn’t want them to happen. “No! You can’t make me!” the child may tell his parents in protest. He may also scream, cry, or stomp around the house.

Remember, however, that these protests don’t necessarily mean that the consequence is the wrong one. Often it just means that the child doesn’t like it. Protesting should not be unexpected, particularly in younger children or with children who have not been disciplined consistently. As children experience appropriate consequences on a fair basis, they should stop or reduce the behavior that leads to the consequence, and the protests will stop as well.

Many parents believe that if a particular consequence doesn’t work, they have to increase its severity, intensity, or duration. This escalation should be avoided, since it can lead to overly harsh or even abusive behavior on the part of parents. More important than increasing the intensity or severity of a consequence is applying it consistently. With children who are out of control, you may have to sit them down repeatedly. Continual problematic behavior requires more time, patience, and consistency, but not harsher consequences.

Improving Behavior. Here’s an example of how a consequence can change a child’s behavior. Susan complained that her six-year-old daughter Terry never turned off the bedroom light when she left the room to go down to the family room to play with her toys. Susan dealt with this situation by shouting down the stairs, “Terry, you forgot to turn off the light!” Then Susan turned off the light herself.

It seemed that no matter how many times Susan would nag her daughter about turning off the light, Terry would always “forget” to do it. Unfortunately, Terry had learned that it didn’t matter if she turned off the light or not, because her mother would inevitably turn it off for her.

Susan decided to try something new. Any time that she found the light still burning in Terry’s bedroom, she would call her daughter back upstairs. Terry protested because she didn’t want to be interrupted during her play, but Susan insisted that Terry return upstairs, no matter what she was doing, and turn off the light herself. Although it would have been easier for Susan just to flip off the light switch herself, for five consecutive days she persisted in summoning Terry back upstairs.

On the sixth day, Terry left her room with the light on and started down the stairs. However, about halfway down, she stopped, turned around, and then returned to turn off the light. Susan made a point of praising Terry for turning off her bedroom light. Now Terry usually remembers to turn off her light, and when she doesn’t, Susan calls her back upstairs rather than doing it herself.

Many situations, of course, are not so easy to resolve. Keep in mind, however, that while it’s normal to feel angry with your child at times, venting your anger by yelling will probably not produce a change in your child’s behavior.

Next time you become angry with one of your children, remember first to take a deep breath, walk to another room, and count to ten. Then deal with your child in a calm, rational manner, imposing appropriate consequences. Children who are treated in this way tend to be better adjusted, play more cooperatively with others, and respond better to their parents’ requests. In every situation that requires correction and discipline, your goal should be to leave your children remembering their behavior, not yours! n

Gary Direnfeld is a social worker and child behavioral expert in private practice. He lives in the small town of Dundas, Ontario, Canada, with his wife and teenage son. Mr. Direnfeld is also director of the “I Promise Program,” a parent-teen mutual safe-driving program.