Wholistic Learning Therapies

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Behavior Management: Power Struggles

The most important thing to keep in mind is to avoid getting into a power struggle. Kids are very good at luring adults into power struggles. Remember, as long as they can keep the discussion or argument going, no consequence is happening! Nobody wins a power struggle-- everybody loses. If you get pulled into one, stop as soon as you realize it.

There are 3 main ways kids pull adults into power struggles:

Challenge our authority-- "You can't make me!"
Push our emotional buttons-- "You're mean!" or "You hate me!" or "You're not fair!"
Cloud the issue-- they go off on tangents to shift the focus away from their behavior. ("Well, maybe I did hit my sister, but last week she...")

We fall into the power struggle trap when we respond in these three ways:

Defend our authority, as in "You can't talk to me that way, young man!"
Allow the focus to shift away from their behavior by getting caught up in a discussion of something irrelevant.
Give unreasonable or unenforceable consequences. "You're grounded for a year!"

What to do instead? See BATS: 4 Steps to Stopping Batty Behavior.

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