Children tend to make you feel that the family is complete. They are a blessing to any couple and can improve the relationship between people to a great extent. But bringing up a child and teaching them the right and wrong, the good and bad and the dos and don’ts may sometimes become very challenging. Especially during teenage, many children may develop some behaviour which may be difficult for you to control.

You may find that children display odd behaviours in a social gathering. They may not listen to you properly like before. They may develop a lot of resistance to what you say and start ignoring you. They may do things that can really pull your nerve badly.

The issues may be different. It could be family conflict, frustrations, peer stress, stress at school, and differences with friends, sudden insecurity, and fear to perform, anger, neglecting, unfair treatment, biased behaviours and many more. You feel the child is gone out of control when you know that he/she is resorting to bad habits, lying, using foul language, displaying violent behaviour or completely non-cooperating at home. Some of the factors may be beyond your control and you may find a lot of difficulty in understanding what is really going wrong.

This is a very tricky situation and parents may often find it difficult to handle. But it is all the more important that you streamline your thoughts and behaviour with the children before losing total control of them.

Try to be patient and calm even when the child tends to irritate you. Talk with your child and tell him politely that you are finding it difficult to deal with some behaviour that you are observing recently. Try and understand what the child wants or why he is trying to resort to these deeds. If the response is aggressive, try to calm the child by not raising your voice but by requesting to talk softly so that they do not develop an argument. Try and reason out whether there are challenges at school with teacher or friends.

Make sure you listen to the child without retorting back. Give assurance that you are there for the child all the time and you would protect him in case there is a problem. Talk supportively in case the child opens out for any challenges that he is facing in the outside world. In case he has a problem with your behaviour, try to reason out how to solve it rather than express your dominance.

Let your child know how important he is to you and the happiness you would get in case he can get along very well. Educate on why it is important to maintain a healthy relationship between parents and children throughout life.

If the child talks softly or opens out politely, first praise the child for being open or frank. This would boost their confidence levels to confide anything with you. Be kind and not threatening so that the child does not find any reason to avoid or lie. Respect the child’s self esteem and do not be insulting.

Kyle Oliart

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