How to Resolve Your Child’s Defiance for Good
Monday, February 17, 2025
Monday, February 17, 2025
How to Resolve Your Child’s Defiance for Good
Monday, February 17, 2025
How to Resolve Your Child’s Defiance for Good
Sarah is the mother of 9-year-old Ethan, who was struggling with defiant behavior for months. Years? Forever? Sarah couldn’t even remember anymore. She lived in a fog. Every morning, Ethan began the day by refusing to get ready for school, throwing tantrums and hiding in his room.
Sarah is the mother of 9-year-old Ethan, who was struggling with defiant behavior for months. Years? Forever? Sarah couldn’t even remember anymore. She lived in a fog.
Every morning, Ethan began the day by refusing to get ready for school, throwing tantrums and hiding in his room.
The defiance spilled over into the afternoon so much so that Sarah was beginning to feel too embarrassed to bring him anywhere. He yelled abuse at her in the grocery store. He refused to do chores at home. He soaked his nicest clothes in mud before a family holiday party.
Sarah tried everything from gentle encouragement to stern consequences, but nothing worked. Feeling like a failure, and desperate for help, Sarah took advice from anyone and everyone, trying different approaches and grasping at straws…
One afternoon, Sarah had an evening call for her part-time job. Her husband – who struggled with Ethan even more than Sarah did – planned to take Ethan to the park to get him out of the house. But when Sarah asked Ethan to please get dressed for the park quietly, Ethan started screaming.
He yelled non-stop at top volume throughout Sarah’s call. On the verge of tears, Sarah had to leave the call early. Her boss was not happy.
Sarah needed this job. The family needed the money, and it was the only job she’d found that was flexible enough for Sarah to care for Ethan.
Sarah felt panic set in.
She stormed out of the bedroom office and completely lost it at Ethan.
“Stop yelling at me!” he screamed back at her. “You’re so mean!”
“I’m not mean!” Sarah yelled. “I’m scared of losing my job! Don’t you get it? I’m scared!”
Ethan’s eyes filled with tears, and suddenly a new idea burst into Sarah’s mind.
Was Ethan scared too?
What’s really going on when children seem defiant
As a parent, dealing with a defiant child can be an immense challenge. It becomes impossible to keep your family life running smoothly. Sometimes, it even becomes difficult to keep your child and the people around them safe when they’re having an outburst.
But defiance is just the surface behavior. Trying to address the defiance itself won’t work and often makes it worse, just like trying to cure acne by putting make up over the sores.
To end your child’s defiance, we have to dive below the surface.
Defiance comes from anxiety and a dysregulated nervous system. Your anxious, big-feeling, strong-willed child has lost their way. Something about their life isn’t in alignment with who they are and what they need.
The misalignment makes them increasingly dysregulated. The anxiety mounts. The defiance gets worse. Your child isn’t aware of this consciously, but their body is setting off alarm bells that they don’t know how to handle.
What happens when this behavior is met with “consequences”, frustration, and disapproval from the parents they rely on?
The child starts to think “Nobody understands me.”
This is a disempowering negative belief. Humans crave connection, and children need connection with their caretaker to survive. If your child believes “Mum doesn’t get me”, they can’t connect with you. The anxiety, dysregulation, and defiance only increase.
Your child is in crisis mode. Their survival brain is running the show. Logic is nowhere in sight.
The only way to pull them out of this state is connection – and sadly, most advice on handling defiant children destroys connection.
We only hurt others when we’re hurting
Now, I’m not condoning your child’s defiant behavior. The behavior of children in this state can be truly terrible, even violent. When you’re at your wit’s end, terrified for your child’s future, and embarrassed that this is your family life, of course it’s natural to want to shut the behavior down.
But if that was going to work, it would have already worked, and you wouldn’t be here reading this.
Connecting with your child isn’t about condoning or even tolerating their behavior. It’s about resolving that behavior by addressing the root cause.
The simple truth is that people only hurt others when they’re hurting themselves.
Your child is struggling and hurting.
Likely, you may be struggling and hurting too because of the difficulty at home! And so, you may be lashing out as well, at your child, your partner, or others.
Let me repeat: You cannot logic your way out of this problem. Your child’s brain is in survival mode and cannot think logically. Frankly, your brain is likely in survival mode too.
So how do you get out?
Leading your child out of anxious defiance
Once you realize that your child’s defiance is a product of anxiety and perceived isolation, it’s time to work towards a change.
Good news: you don’t have to start by changing your child.
(Changing other people never actually works, does it?)
You can change your behavior, though, and lead your child towards cooperation.
Start here:
1. Acknowledge your child's feelings and validate their experience. This will help your child feel understood so you can rebuild connection and cooperation between you two. You do not have to condone the behavior in order to validate the emotional experience.
2. Involve your child in problem-solving. Instead of imposing solutions on your child, which will seem to them like more orders to defy, involve them in the problem solving process.
3. Listen to your child’s suggestions. Listening to your child and together coming to an agreement on how to move forward is the key to rebuilding the trust, connection, and communication channels between you two.
These 3 steps will empower your child and enable you to get to the root of their resistance. Together, you can explore a fresh approach that addresses the underlying anxiety rather than just the outward behavior.
Get out of your head and into your heart
After the AHA! moment when Sarah realised that her son was in fact scared and feeling misunderstood, Sarah started a new learning journey. She learned that Ethan had always had an anxious and sensitive temperament, and Sarah was now realising that underlying fear and anxiety was driving her son’s defiance and outbursts.
She unfollowed the parenting influencers, who had always just made her feel bad, and threw out the chore chart and rewards/punishment system her mum had recommended.
Instead, Sarah embraced the C🧠A🌟L🩵M🧘♀️ Framework and started implementing the steps.
For letter C, clarity, Sarah dove into understanding what was going on in Ethan’s brain (and her own). For letter A, alignment, Sarah worked on remembering who she really was and what she wanted her family life to look like, as well as reconnecting with who Ethan truly was and approaching him with curiosity.
The magic happened when Sarah started implementing letter L, loving connection. Without condoning Ethan’s behavior or coddling or pitying him, Sarah showed Ethan empathy and compassion. She made time to connect with him as much as possible, rediscovering their love of playing charades and reading dinosaur books together.
Gradually, when Sarah kept responding with compassion and connection, Ethan started to open up. He finally told his muom that he had been bullied at school a year ago and kept it a secret. Sarah learned that Ethan now saw himself as a “freak” alone in the world. His peers didn’t get him, and his parents constantly misunderstood or misinterpreted his emotional bids for connection and comfort.
That terrible belief growing inside Ethan increased his anxiety and defiance, which led to his parents and others reacting in ways that seemed to Ethan to be proof that no one understood him or cared about him. For a year, this vicious cycle had been turning.
When Sarah told that to her husband, they cried together. It was the first time she’d seen her husband cry since the day Ethan was born.
Sarah and her husband created a completely new home dynamic. By the time they got to letter M, mastery, they had a new mind state and were solidifying new powerful parenting skills.
Within a few months, Ethan’s defiance and anxiety were insignificant, and he was back to the sensitive, funny, nerdy kid they had missed so much.
You can get your happy child back
Lovely, sensitive kids can get stuck in a pattern of anxiety and defiance. You can break that vicious cycle, repair the peace in your home, and get your sweet big-feeling child back.
Start by understanding what’s really going on and approaching your child with love and compassion.
Anxiety is not a life sentence. And neither is defiance.
See other posts like this one:
Monday, March 17, 2025
The ABC Method: From Tantrums to Trust
It’s 7:30 AM, and chaos reigns in your kitchen. The clock is ticking. You’re late. Your child is wailing, tears streaming down their face because their favorite cereal is gone. You didn’t even know “the dinosaur cereal” was that important until now.
Monday, March 03, 2025
A True Story of Connection in Chaos
Parenting isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a kaleidoscope of emotions - love, frustration, pride, and sometimes, helplessness. We’ve been told to default to a “calm and collected” response when a child spirals into a meltdown, believing it’s the antidote to chaos, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: it often backfires. Why? Because in those moments of emotional turmoil, your child can’t hear reason. They’re not being "difficult" but in distress.
Monday, February 17, 2025
How to Resolve Your Child’s Defiance for Good
Sarah is the mother of 9-year-old Ethan, who was struggling with defiant behavior for months. Years? Forever? Sarah couldn’t even remember anymore. She lived in a fog. Every morning, Ethan began the day by refusing to get ready for school, throwing tantrums and hiding in his room.
Sarah is the mother of 9-year-old Ethan, who was struggling with defiant behavior for months. Years? Forever? Sarah couldn’t even remember anymore. She lived in a fog.
Every morning, Ethan began the day by refusing to get ready for school, throwing tantrums and hiding in his room.
The defiance spilled over into the afternoon so much so that Sarah was beginning to feel too embarrassed to bring him anywhere. He yelled abuse at her in the grocery store. He refused to do chores at home. He soaked his nicest clothes in mud before a family holiday party.
Sarah tried everything from gentle encouragement to stern consequences, but nothing worked. Feeling like a failure, and desperate for help, Sarah took advice from anyone and everyone, trying different approaches and grasping at straws…
One afternoon, Sarah had an evening call for her part-time job. Her husband – who struggled with Ethan even more than Sarah did – planned to take Ethan to the park to get him out of the house. But when Sarah asked Ethan to please get dressed for the park quietly, Ethan started screaming.
He yelled non-stop at top volume throughout Sarah’s call. On the verge of tears, Sarah had to leave the call early. Her boss was not happy.
Sarah needed this job. The family needed the money, and it was the only job she’d found that was flexible enough for Sarah to care for Ethan.
Sarah felt panic set in.
She stormed out of the bedroom office and completely lost it at Ethan.
“Stop yelling at me!” he screamed back at her. “You’re so mean!”
“I’m not mean!” Sarah yelled. “I’m scared of losing my job! Don’t you get it? I’m scared!”
Ethan’s eyes filled with tears, and suddenly a new idea burst into Sarah’s mind.
Was Ethan scared too?
What’s really going on when children seem defiant
As a parent, dealing with a defiant child can be an immense challenge. It becomes impossible to keep your family life running smoothly. Sometimes, it even becomes difficult to keep your child and the people around them safe when they’re having an outburst.
But defiance is just the surface behavior. Trying to address the defiance itself won’t work and often makes it worse, just like trying to cure acne by putting make up over the sores.
To end your child’s defiance, we have to dive below the surface.
Defiance comes from anxiety and a dysregulated nervous system. Your anxious, big-feeling, strong-willed child has lost their way. Something about their life isn’t in alignment with who they are and what they need.
The misalignment makes them increasingly dysregulated. The anxiety mounts. The defiance gets worse. Your child isn’t aware of this consciously, but their body is setting off alarm bells that they don’t know how to handle.
What happens when this behavior is met with “consequences”, frustration, and disapproval from the parents they rely on?
The child starts to think “Nobody understands me.”
This is a disempowering negative belief. Humans crave connection, and children need connection with their caretaker to survive. If your child believes “Mum doesn’t get me”, they can’t connect with you. The anxiety, dysregulation, and defiance only increase.
Your child is in crisis mode. Their survival brain is running the show. Logic is nowhere in sight.
The only way to pull them out of this state is connection – and sadly, most advice on handling defiant children destroys connection.
We only hurt others when we’re hurting
Now, I’m not condoning your child’s defiant behavior. The behavior of children in this state can be truly terrible, even violent. When you’re at your wit’s end, terrified for your child’s future, and embarrassed that this is your family life, of course it’s natural to want to shut the behavior down.
But if that was going to work, it would have already worked, and you wouldn’t be here reading this.
Connecting with your child isn’t about condoning or even tolerating their behavior. It’s about resolving that behavior by addressing the root cause.
The simple truth is that people only hurt others when they’re hurting themselves.
Your child is struggling and hurting.
Likely, you may be struggling and hurting too because of the difficulty at home! And so, you may be lashing out as well, at your child, your partner, or others.
Let me repeat: You cannot logic your way out of this problem. Your child’s brain is in survival mode and cannot think logically. Frankly, your brain is likely in survival mode too.
So how do you get out?
Leading your child out of anxious defiance
Once you realize that your child’s defiance is a product of anxiety and perceived isolation, it’s time to work towards a change.
Good news: you don’t have to start by changing your child.
(Changing other people never actually works, does it?)
You can change your behavior, though, and lead your child towards cooperation.
Start here:
1. Acknowledge your child's feelings and validate their experience. This will help your child feel understood so you can rebuild connection and cooperation between you two. You do not have to condone the behavior in order to validate the emotional experience.
2. Involve your child in problem-solving. Instead of imposing solutions on your child, which will seem to them like more orders to defy, involve them in the problem solving process.
3. Listen to your child’s suggestions. Listening to your child and together coming to an agreement on how to move forward is the key to rebuilding the trust, connection, and communication channels between you two.
These 3 steps will empower your child and enable you to get to the root of their resistance. Together, you can explore a fresh approach that addresses the underlying anxiety rather than just the outward behavior.
Get out of your head and into your heart
After the AHA! moment when Sarah realised that her son was in fact scared and feeling misunderstood, Sarah started a new learning journey. She learned that Ethan had always had an anxious and sensitive temperament, and Sarah was now realising that underlying fear and anxiety was driving her son’s defiance and outbursts.
She unfollowed the parenting influencers, who had always just made her feel bad, and threw out the chore chart and rewards/punishment system her mum had recommended.
Instead, Sarah embraced the C🧠A🌟L🩵M🧘♀️ Framework and started implementing the steps.
For letter C, clarity, Sarah dove into understanding what was going on in Ethan’s brain (and her own). For letter A, alignment, Sarah worked on remembering who she really was and what she wanted her family life to look like, as well as reconnecting with who Ethan truly was and approaching him with curiosity.
The magic happened when Sarah started implementing letter L, loving connection. Without condoning Ethan’s behavior or coddling or pitying him, Sarah showed Ethan empathy and compassion. She made time to connect with him as much as possible, rediscovering their love of playing charades and reading dinosaur books together.
Gradually, when Sarah kept responding with compassion and connection, Ethan started to open up. He finally told his muom that he had been bullied at school a year ago and kept it a secret. Sarah learned that Ethan now saw himself as a “freak” alone in the world. His peers didn’t get him, and his parents constantly misunderstood or misinterpreted his emotional bids for connection and comfort.
That terrible belief growing inside Ethan increased his anxiety and defiance, which led to his parents and others reacting in ways that seemed to Ethan to be proof that no one understood him or cared about him. For a year, this vicious cycle had been turning.
When Sarah told that to her husband, they cried together. It was the first time she’d seen her husband cry since the day Ethan was born.
Sarah and her husband created a completely new home dynamic. By the time they got to letter M, mastery, they had a new mind state and were solidifying new powerful parenting skills.
Within a few months, Ethan’s defiance and anxiety were insignificant, and he was back to the sensitive, funny, nerdy kid they had missed so much.
You can get your happy child back
Lovely, sensitive kids can get stuck in a pattern of anxiety and defiance. You can break that vicious cycle, repair the peace in your home, and get your sweet big-feeling child back.
Start by understanding what’s really going on and approaching your child with love and compassion.
Anxiety is not a life sentence. And neither is defiance.
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Save Your Seat For This FREE Class - Tuesday, March 25th
Discover the exact formula that stops anxiety ruling your child’s life in 90 minutes!
Discover the exact formula that stops anxiety ruling your child’s life in 90 minutes!
Recent blogs:
The ABC Method: From Tantrums to Trust
Monday, March 17, 2025
It’s 7:30 AM, and chaos reigns in your kitchen. The clock is ticking. You’re late. Your child is wailing, tears streaming down their face because their favorite cereal is gone. You didn’t even know “the dinosaur cereal” was that important until now.
A True Story of Connection in Chaos
Monday, March 03, 2025
Parenting isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a kaleidoscope of emotions - love, frustration, pride, and sometimes, helplessness. We’ve been told to default to a “calm and collected” response when a child spirals into a meltdown, believing it’s the antidote to chaos, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: it often backfires. Why? Because in those moments of emotional turmoil, your child can’t hear reason. They’re not being "difficult" but in distress.
How to Resolve Your Child’s Defiance for Good
Monday, February 17, 2025
Sarah is the mother of 9-year-old Ethan, who was struggling with defiant behavior for months. Years? Forever? Sarah couldn’t even remember anymore. She lived in a fog. Every morning, Ethan began the day by refusing to get ready for school, throwing tantrums and hiding in his room.
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