Discipline Problems

What do you do with a strong-willed child?  When she knows she's right and the world is wrong and she will not take no for an answer. It's a long, hard road trying to teach a child how to be compliant without breaking her spirit.

I want my daughter to be strong willed as a child.  It means she's going to be a strong willed woman, and no one will be able to walk all over her.  But I want her to learn the importance of being respectful as well.  She needs to understand that being disobedient and disrespectful is never okay.

But what do you do when it affects your personal life.  For example, yesterday I had to miss class because my daughter threw a temper fit in front of her elementary school.  She did NOT want to go to school.  I gave in.  That was where I went wrong.

The key, I think (and the one thing where I fail miserably) is CONSISTENCY.  If only I had done my part as a parent, I believe that the incident yesterday would never have happened.  It wasn't something that just happened, either.  There had been an entire morning building up to that moment.  From refusing to find shoes, to refusing to get into the car, refusing to comply was the theme of the day.  I will not make excuses for her behavior, because regardless of what I did wrong, what she did was ABSOLUTELY inexcusable.  But just knowing that if I had done one thing differently the entire course of the day might have gone differently really makes me think.

I'm reading a book entitled "Your Defiant Child".  I'm hoping it might give me some more insight on Emily's behavior issues and what to do about them. I am also hoping that Ronnie is on board with some of the very interesting changes the book says to do.  I'm not sure about them, but if it works, it may be worth it.

Wish me luck.