Parenting a strong-willed child can be challenging. They are often bossy and argumentative, lack patience, and always want to know why they should do something before they obey.
Kids with strong, determined personalities tend to be more sensitive emotionally and display more intense emotions than other children and they can also be persistent and assertive, having very strong opinions. While the same resolve can help your child achieve their goals and stand up for what’s right when they get older, it also makes parenting more difficult at times for you.
Here are several tips to help you work with your child’s strong willed personality instead of against it. With some out-of-the-box thinking, you’ll be able to not only parent them more effectively, but gain insight into why they act the way they do!
1. Approach Discipline Creatively
While it’s important to set boundaries, traditional strict approaches may not always work with strong-willed children. Instead of using punishment or shame to discipline your child, try using discipline techniques that focus on teaching and learning.
Your strong-willed child is an experiential learner. That means he has to see for himself if the stove is hot. So unless you’re worried about serious injury, it’s more effective to let him learn through experience, instead of trying to control him.
Another way to put this is, let him face natural consequences. These are the results that happen due to a child’s actions or behavior, without any additional consequence or punishment from a parent. If a child continues to play roughly with a toy after you warn him, the natural consequence may be that it breaks. By allowing your child to experience the natural consequences of his actions, you can help him develop a sense of responsibility and learn from his mistakes in a positive way.
When parenting a strong-willed child, it can also be helpful to try a problem-solving approach instead of issuing strict commands. For example, when your child needs to put away his toys, let him decide how to tackle the task. He could pick up his blocks first, his trains second, legos third, etc. until everything is back in place. So, putting away the toys is not up for grabs but how your child does this can be.
2. Pick Your Battles
Strong-willed children are amazingly driven to be in control of any situation. Although this goes against most of our motherly instincts, we have to realize that some battles just aren’t worth it. If we attempt to correct every single opposition, we are going to face one power struggle after the other.
When my daughter was little, she saw her bedroom as an imaginary playground with endless possibilities for creativity and fun. Simply put- she greatly struggled to keep her room clean. Although her idea of clean and organized was vastly different from mine, I learned, over time, to compromise with her in this area. As long as her toys were picked up and her room was somewhat tidy, I was happy.
If it doesn’t really matter in the big scheme of things, then save your time—and your child’s patience—for what really does. Ask yourself, does the behavior need to change or is it just annoying? If a problem is a safety or quality of life concern, put your focus there. If it’s a personal preference, consider being flexible with your expectations.
3. Use Active Listening
Actively listening to children and talking to them in a way that makes them feel loved and respected can be a very effective approach for strong-willed children, in particular, because it respects their independence. When your child is upset or acting out, try to put yourself in their shoes and use active listening to understand their perspective.
If a strong-willed child feels that they are being misunderstood or isn’t being heard, it can create a power struggle between you. To avoid this try empathetic language like, “I can see that you’re feeling frustrated right now. Can you tell me more about what’s going on?”
Most important, when your child is being forceful, remind yourself that this is not an expression of strength, but of your child feeling vulnerable. The more you can connect and reassure, the safer your child will feel. That means less opposition and defiance.
Remember, defiance isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a relationship problem. And you are half of the relationship! When you change- meaning you stay calm and warm even in those tough moments- your child changes too.
4. Offer Choices
Strong-willed children like to feel in control and independent, so offering them choices can help them feel as if they have some say in the matter. While this can make you feel like you’re losing control, you want your child to have some ability to make decisions.
Children still want to know you as the parent has the power, but they also want to feel empowered themselves so providing choices rather than issuing demands can help you accomplish this goal with strong-willed children. For example, you could say, “Would you like to wear the red shirt or the blue shirt today?” or “Do you want to read a book or play with your toys before bedtime?”
This is called giving kids agency: when given choices between two things (and usually not more), they are more likely to feel a sense of agency rather than feeling forced into something, which can help them feel in control.
5. Explain Your Reasoning
Strong-willed children often need to understand the why behind requests, decisions, or boundaries that parents establish. Taking the time to explain your reasoning can head off what might otherwise be a battle. You don’t have to justify your requests, but your kid wants to understand your thought process.
Rather than just telling a strong-willed child “This is what we have to do,” you can explain why it’s important to do something in a particular way and what the beneficial outcome will be.
Of course you want your child to do what you say- but not because he’s blindly obedient, meaning that he always does what someone bigger tells him to do. No, you want him to do what you say because he trusts YOU; because he’s learned that even though you can’t always say yes to what he wants, you have his best interests at heart.
6. Use Rewards the Right Way
Rewards can sometimes get a bad rap in parenting, but rewards can be used effectively to reinforce behaviors that you want to see more of. Rewards don’t always need to be tied to material things, and they don’t solely need to be to curb unwanted behavior; they can be used to promote positive behaviors.
For instance, if your strong-willed child is refusing to do their chores because they’re in the middle of something else you can say, “You first have to finish cleaning up your room and when you finish, guess what? You can go play Minecraft for 30 minutes.”
You can also use your words as a reward. If your strong-willed child is bent on doing something their way but ends up listening to you, take the time to notice those moments and verbally acknowledge them. For example, you could say, “I really appreciate how you listened to me when I asked you to pick up your toys. You’re doing a great job!”
Positive praise goes a long way for strong-willed kids. All too often children hear what they are doing wrong and it makes a huge difference when they hear what they are doing right.
Raising a strong willed child can be emotionally exhausting, but as long as you resist the impulse to “break their will”, God can use it for your child’s good and His glory!
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