"Your Shortest Path to a Respectful Child and a Peaceful Home"
“Discover Secrets that Will
Eliminate Arguing and Talking Back, Put an End to the Anger, Permanently End School Problems, and Transform Your Difficult Defiant Child"
Are you tired of your child fighting with you? The arguing? The talking back?
Is your child’s behavior destroying your home? Your marriage? Your life?
These are some of the many problems that go along with having a defiant child.
Difficult defiant child behavior doesn’t just affect your child. It causes a ripple of disharmony and discord that seem to flow from your child and cause pain and discomfort to everyone around him.
If you are the mother of a defiant child you might hate to be seen on the street with your child. You may be embarrassed to be with your child in a public place.
Many fathers don’t want to be at home. They spend more and more time away because it’s painful and unpleasant to be at home with their family.
You may be trying everything you can think of but nothing seems to work with your child. Your child fights and argues with you.
And you never know what is going to set him off. One day it is because you didn’t cut the ends off of his bread. The next day it is because you did cut the ends off his bread.
You never know what to expect. You just go through your day, moment by moment dreading the next unpredictable explosion that you cannot anticipate but that you know is going to come.
You may feel like you are losing control of your child, your family and your home. Your child is getting worse day by day, more argumentative, more defiant, and there is nothing that you can do about it.
What most mothers and fathers don’t realize when they are faced with such a child is how simple and easy the solution usually is. This is what over 5897 parents have learned since I have released How to Improve Your Child’s Behavior in 2003.
Parents who participate in the program tell me that they can enjoy their child again. They are happier, their lives are better and their children behave better. Some parents see results the second month, some the first month and many parents see a change in their child as soon as they apply the first lesson.
What I have seen time and time again, is how even in the most seemingly desperate situations, how quickly parents can turn things around. All it usually takes is a little change here or there and you will have a warm, loving, obedient child.
Warmly,
Anthony Kane, MD
ADD ADHD Advances
http://addadhdadvances.com
P. S. If you would like to have a quick step-by-step plan on how to end your child’s difficult behavior forever,
Note: This program is designed for children between the ages of 2-11. If your child is a teenager or even a preteen, there is a new excellent program designed to help you with your child.
If you have a teenager, you need to find out about this program immediately.
I sent this article out to a number of parents who were having difficulty with homework issues.The responses were so favorable that I thought I would make this available to everybody.
If you like this article (or if you hate it) or if you have no feelings about it at all, please let me know by posting a comment with your feelings.
My daughter walked in the door from school, threw down her backpack, and raced back outside.
I called out to her as she ran through the yard.
“Do you have any homework?!”
“No, not tonight!” she called back.
When I heard this news, there were always mixed feelings. I was relieved that she attended a school which gave very little homework to the students in grades one through six, but I worried at times that she might be falling behind students at other schools.
After all, doesn’t homework help prepare kids to perform better in their later years, increase their discipline, and help them on test scores that are crucial for college admission?
The research on homework might surprise you.
The research shows limited verification of homework’s effectiveness, but does show that it’s been on the increase for a number of years.
A 2004 national survey of 2,900 American children conducted by the University of Michigan found that time spent on homework is up 51 percent since 1981.
A 2000 survey showed that students ages 6 to 8 did an average of 52 minutes a week in 1981, and, by 1997, were up to 128 minutes a week, says Alfie Kohn, author of “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing” (DaCapo Lifelong Books).
But, according to Harris Cooper, professor of psychology and director of the Program in Education at Duke University in Durham, N.C., homework doesn’t measurably improve academic achievement for kids in grade school.
In fact, he found that, “there is almost no correlation between homework and academic achievement in elementary school and only a moderate correlation in middle school. Even in high school, any benefits start to decline after kids reach a maximum of two hours a night.”
And not only can excessive homework be ineffective in helping your kids perform better, it can take a toll on the quality of a family’s life.
Sara Bennett, author of “The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It,” says homework can “take away from family time, puts parents in an adversarial role with kids and interferes with the child’s ability to play or have other after school activities.
“For middle school and teens, it limits crucial time with their peers. Students of all ages are getting too little sleep, which then impacts their learning in school.”
And while homework can create one more piece of the stress pie most American families are feeling these days, it can also have benefits. It especially benefits kids when it teaches new concepts and adds to what kids have learned during the day, increasing their ability to think independently.
But too often, homework involves tedious busy work that consumes great amounts of time and won’t be remembered a month later. So if your child or family is being unduly stressed by the “homework demon,” here are some options:
Talk to your child’s teacher directly, and tell them what you’re experiencing. Most parents do not communicate these concerns, so teachers don’t see it as a big problem.
Get together with other parents and talk to administrators about the amount of homework given out.
You’d be surprised at what you can accomplish.
Don’t do much of your child’s homework for them.
A dependent child will not do well when they go out into the world. Provide a quiet and well-lit space for them, and let them be. Help them when it’s needed.
Give your child options when they get stuck with homework:
They can call friends for help, get online, get a tutor, find extra help at school, etc. As long as they know there are options, they can stay in action and find solutions.
Our kids are being robbed of one of the most important things that exist in their life, stress-free time with their families. First and second graders with homework stress isn’t just a bad idea, it’s ineffective. So is five hours of sleep a night for high school age kids.
Excessive homework doesn’t just rob our kids of precious time, it extinguishes a love of learning. I think it’s time for parents to sound the school alarm.
Many parents of ADHD children are worried about giving their children medication to treat their child’s ADHD. There are many reasons for their concern, but one of the greatest concerns is the fear that parents have that they are setting up their children to have a future drug abuse problem.
Most parents know that ADHD teens have a much higher level of drug abuse than their normal counterparts. Parents have also heard theories that taking drugs like Ritalin increases the risk of drug abuse. The idea is that routinely taking Ritalin, which is actually very similar to cocaine, will expose children to habitual drug taking and will make them more open to experimenting with hard drugs when they become teenagers.
These theories were first proposed by physicians. The ideas were later picked up and expanded upon by distributors of natural treatments for ADHD and are used to play upon the fears of parent in order to sell their ‘drug free’ alternatives.
So the question is, is there a connection with Ritalin and other stimulant medication use in children and future drug abuse problems? That is what we are going to explore in this article.
Ritalin Treatment and Future Drug Abuse
The truth is that this question has been researched and we have a very clear answer. In fact, researchers have found a very strong connection between childhood use of Ritalin and other stimulant medication to treat ADHD and the risk of future drug abuse in ADHD teenagers.
However, the results are exactly the opposite of what most parents think. Use of stimulant medication in ADHD children does not increase the risk of future drug abuse. It reduces the risk of drug abuse, and reduces it dramatically.
In 1999, a study funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health compared three groups of boys – those with ADHD who had been treated with stimulants, those with ADHD who had not been treated with stimulants, and those without ADHD. The researchers followed the children to determine their susceptibility to substance use disorder.
This research project was a combined effort of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School. The scientists divided 212 boys into three groups and followed them for several years.
The first group consisted of 56 boys with ADHD who received on the average four years of drug treatment for their ADHD. The second group was made up of 19 boys also with ADHD, but who received no drug treatment for their condition. The third group consisted of 137 boys who did not have ADHD.
When the boys were 15 or older, they were evaluated for substance abuse disorders involving alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, stimulants, or cocaine.
(I want to point out that there is a difference between substance abuse and a substance abuse disorder. Substance abuse is recreational use of medications. This may include inappropriate use of alcohol or other drugs. This is fairly common in our society and does not always indicate a significant problem. Our real concern is when recreational use of medication becomes a disorder. A substance abuse disorder is where the person continues to use a mood- or behavior-altering substance despite the fact that this substance causes significant problems in the person’s life.)
Results of the study were fairly dramatic. 18 percent of children without ADHD had at least one substance abuse disorder, when surveyed in their mid teens. The group of ADHD children who received medical treatment fared almost as well. Only 25 percent of that group had at least one substance abuse disorder.
However, among the ADHD children that did not receive medical treatment, 75 percent of that group had at least one substance use disorder during the follow up study.
This study suggests that if your child has ADHD and does not take medication, he is three times as likely to get seriously involved with drugs, than if he does receive medication.
Other researchers have found that the younger age that medical treatment began, the lower the risk of a future drug abuse problem.
Other Risk Factors
Other factors have been identified that predict a higher risk of future drug abuse.
Wilens found that the two biggest indicators of future substance abuse disorder in ADHD children were coexistent conduct disorder and coexistent bipolar disorder. Other researchers found that with regard to conduct disorder, IQ played a factor.
Children with conduct disorder and high IQ scores were more likely to later develop a drug problem. In contrast, in children who did not have a conduct disorder, those with a lower IQ were more likely to develop a substance abuse disorder.
Conclusion
Most parents are concerned about starting their ADHD children on stimulant medications. This is for a variety of reasons and many of these reasons are valid. However, what many of these well meaning parents fail to consider is that there are concrete risks involved with not starting their children on drug treatment. One very measurable risk is the risk of future drug involvement.
Parents must consider that the risk of future drug abuse gets larger the longer they withhold medical treatment from their children. The risk becomes three times as great when they withhold medical treatment completely from their ADHD children. If ADHD is complicated by conduct disorder or bipolar disorder there is even a greater chance of future drug abuse developing.
So if your child has ADHD it could be that giving medication may not be the best approach. But you should know that not giving medication also carries with it some danger. When you manage the ADHD treatment of your child be sure to consider all the risks before you make your decision.
Getting angry with your child or teen is a common parenting mistake, and one which is very, very detrimental to parenting/education, particularly if your child has Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It is considered a grave mistake.
When you get angry you are exploding. You are losing control of yourself, and this has very severe ramifications for a number of reasons.
1- When you lose control, you are showing your child that he can do something that gets to you. This is a golden opportunity for an ODD child to be able to have some type of control over you. They love to have control. And I can guarantee you that if you get angry about something, you are going to see that behavior over again and again from your ODD child or ODD teen.
2- When you get angry, the anger itself becomes the central issue in your child’s mind. This means that whatever you’re trying to accomplish, whatever behavior you’re trying to get rid of, has lost its importance. The only thing in your child’s mind that’s important is that you’re angry. And that’s a serious problem, because even if your child does obey you, he will not learn anything from the lesson you teach him.
3- When you get angry you are role modeling that anger is okay under certain circumstances. Your child learns from what he sees happening around him. Since you are your child’s most important role model, how you behave is how you can expect your child to behave.
Simply put, when you get angry you’re teaching your child that there are certain problems and certain circumstances when it’s okay to be angry and temperamental.
One of the best examples of poor modeling behavior that I’ve ever seen is actually something not in real life. It’s something I saw in a commercial in a foreign country. I was watching a movie in a foreign country. I did not understand the language so I don’t know what was said. But, here is what I saw.
The commercial was for a certain snack food that the company was trying to make look desirable. The first scene shows the mother with that snack food in her hand. The teenage daughter walks in the room and tries to reach for the bag. The mother smacks her hand and says something which seemed to imply, “Get your own!”
The following scene shows the teenage girl with the snack food in her hand. Her 12-year-old brother comes in the room and reaches for the bag. She smacks his hand and the same thing repeats itself. Now the 12-year-old brother has the snack food in his hand and the 5-year-old sister comes in the room and reaches for the food. He smacks her hand and says, “Get your own!”.
The final scene shows the 5-year-old girl holding her dolly and the snack food in her hand. And in this scene she is pounding and beating up her dolly repeating what they said –“Get your own” – again, pounding her dolly.
That’s what role modeling is. When you get angry, you’re teaching your child that anger is acceptable and that it is a good thing. Whereas we know that anger is not a good thing. It’s not a good characteristic not for you, nor is it healthy it’s not for your child. It is something that you must avoid at all costs.
ANNOUNCING::
“A Simple Way to Stop Your Child’s Anger, Out of Control Aggression, and Abusive Behavior-
RIGHT NOW!”
If you are worried that your aggressive and angry child is going to grow up and become a problematic teenager
If you already have an angry teen in your home
If your child’s temper interferes with his ability to have friends
If your child is stealing, then you are probably extremely worried about it. You also may be wondering what exactly is the best way to handle the problem. In this article we will discuss the reasons why children steal and what you should do to help your child with this problem.
Preschool children do not steal. Until a child reaches the age of four or five he does not have a well-developed concept of ownership. As a result, he cannot understand viagra taking things that don’t belong to him is wrong. A preschooler is too young to understand the concept of stealing.
Elementary school children do understand the concept of possession. A child in elementary school steals because he sees something that he wants and he lacks the self- control to hold himself back. A child this age knows that stealing is wrong. Since the child knows what he did was inappropriate this is the age where you can begin to give discipline for stealing.
Preteens or teens steal for the thrill of it. They are also highly influenced by peer pressure and they fall into a crowd that steals for fun, they will steal too. Preteens or teens may steal to fill an emotional void, or to gain a sense of control.
Whatever the age of your child and whatever the reason your child is stealing, you as the parent must act with wisdom to respond to this issue. If you just respond according to your natural inclination, you will almost certainly do the wrong thing and your response might even exacerbate the problem and be destructive for your child.
Five Reasons Why a Child Steals
We are now going to discuss the five most common reasons children steal and how you should respond.
1- Your Child Lacks Self-Control
This is primarily a problem for younger children as we have stated previously. An elementary school child knows that stealing is wrong, but sometimes he sees something that he wants, sees the opportunity to get it without being caught, and can’t control his impulse to take it. He knows that stealing is wrong, but he can’t help himself.
The most important way to handle a child who steals for this reason is to give him an honest way to get what he wants. To do this you figure out what types of things are tempting him and then use them as rewards for good behavior. However, make it easy for your child to get these things. If your standards are too tough for him, he will feel unable to meet your expectations and he’ll think that stealing is the only option.
In addition, you must try to limit temptation. If your child likes to steal money or candy, then don’t leave these things lying around in plain view.
2- Your Child’s Basic Needs are not Being Met
Your child is completely dependent on you. If a child feels that his parents are not giving him those things that he needs, he will eventually try to get these things on his own. The easiest way for a child to get something is to steal it.
If this is your child’s situation it is not a criticism of you, nor does it mean you area bad parent or are depriving your child. What a person feels he needs is mostly subjective. What happens frequently is that what a parent views as a luxury a child feels is a necessity. That means having an extra treat frequently or carrying a bit of pocket money, may be something that you feel is not something your child requires. However your child may feel a real lack without those things to the point where he is driven to fill that need.
3- Your Child Needs More Attention
This is probably the most common reason a child steals. He has an emotional void and he is tying to fill that void y taking things to make himself feel better. Your child may feel lonely and distant from you, or he may be having a lot of trouble in school or with friends. He steals to feel better.
Many children feel that they do not get the love that they need. This is not because their parents don’t love them or give them love. It is just that the love being given comes in a way that the child does not perceive it as love.
When a child does not feel he is getting love, he may act out in a number of ways. He talks back, argues, disobeys, and can be disrespectful and abusive. Some children steal.
If this is the reason your child is stealing, then punishment is very counterproductive. The solution is to show your child love in a way that he perceives it as love. This will improve your child’s behavior in every way, including getting him to stop stealing.
4- Your Child Needs More Control
Children have very little control over their lives. Some children have a great deal of trouble handling this sense of helplessness. This type of child might steal to gain a sense of power and control or just to rebel.
Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder tend to have a big problem with authority and control issues. The best way to handle this type of child is to get help from someone who knows how to handle these types of children. Normal parenting techniques do not work well with these children so you need an expert in ODD child behavior or ODD teen behavior.
5- Peer Pressure
This is more of a problem with older children, where friendships play a greater role in their lives. If your child has fallen into a group where stealing is one of their pastimes, then there are some very specific things you must do. For more information, see the article, What to Do When Your Teen Chooses Bad Friends.
In the next two articles in this series we will discuss in more detail ideas how to handle your child if he is stealing.
If stealing is a problem for your child or teen you can learn specific step-by-step ways to handle this behavior.
