Are there difficult children?

“I am one of those mothers who run after a child on the street shouting“ Beware! ”, Burn with shame because he again did not let other children sleep during a quiet hour, explode when you have to repeat the same thing ten times and all to no avail. I am a mother without dignity,” Laura, 32, says with a laugh, but it is clear that both she and her husband are really having a hard time.

Their son, now five, has turned his parents’ lives upside down. Feelings of guilt, quarrels, constant fatigue threaten to break family harmony. Laura admits that she sometimes sees the “enemy” in her beloved child: “It begins to seem to me that he will swallow me whole.”

How many more parents feel helpless because their child seems out of control?

Someone considers himself a victim of a small domestic tyrant, someone is amazed that the methods of education that worked perfectly with the first child are completely useless with the second. Too restless, too naughty, impudent, capricious, unsociable – each couple has its own list of claims to nature, the nature of the child, to themselves …

He is not what we dreamed

When we plan to have a child and wait for him to be born, we voluntarily or involuntarily fantasize about how he will be, how we want him to be. For some, this is a clear image, spelled out to the details, down to eye color and height, for someone it is vague, unformed. Our desires and dreams are as unique as we are. But one cannot imagine that any of us dream of a difficult child.

When reality obviously does not coincide with the imagined beautiful, or even just glamorous, image, not everyone can stand it. “Many parents have an idea that a child should be calm, comfortable, grateful,” says child psychologist Elena Morozova. – Here it is necessary to disappoint the parents: very rarely what they have come up with comes true. A real, living child will not be like that anyway. But that doesn’t mean it’s worse than the one they imagined.”

After all, he is flesh from flesh, he “should” be our continuation – where does he get these alien, and even alien character traits from? How can it be – blood relative, but a stranger?

“It can be difficult for a mother or father to understand a child when they strongly disagree with him psychologically, for example, if they have completely different temperaments, when they do not match in tempo characteristics,” continues Elena Morozova. – For example, the mother is active, fast, successful, and the child is slow, slow, shy. Parents are annoyed, confusing, and the child will seem difficult to them.

Is it innate?

Since we are talking about innate characteristics, it is logical to ask ourselves: difficult children – are they by nature? “We can talk about the innate properties of the nervous system, on which the processes of excitation and inhibition depend,” explains developmental psychologist Tatyana Bednik. — There are also sensory features of perception of the surrounding world.

In addition to the well-known five senses, there is, for example, a muscular-articular feeling, the ability to feel one’s posture, to coordinate movements. If a child has it weakened, he does not sit still for a minute. He needs movement as a stimulation, just to feel his body, arms and legs.

Such a perpetuum mobile sometimes drives parents and grandmothers into a frenzy. They do not realize that the problem, most likely, can be mitigated with the help of exercise, massage. Tatyana Bednik gives other examples.

Parents are worried that the child is cowardly – but he may not yet have a very well-developed vestibular apparatus, because of this he feels insecure and is afraid of everything, you cannot force him to climb a hill, it is difficult for him to step over some object, his rocking in the car.

And a child with tactile hypersensitivity can often be capricious and angry simply because contact with clothes, which we do not even notice, irritates him greatly. He does not want to play with children, it is difficult for him to communicate with them, because he is unconsciously afraid of someone else’s touch.

They have a hard life

Mark cannot forget one episode connected with his six-year-old daughter Sabina: “We had guests that evening. She kept running around the set table, as if wound up, then caught her feet on the carpet, involuntarily grabbed the tablecloth – and threw everything that was on the table onto the floor.

Out of embarrassment in front of my friends, I lost my temper and yelled at her, although I had never done that before. She was so frightened that she began to rock back and forth, plugging her ears and humming something under her breath. Much later, after several sessions of therapy, she told me that she was very afraid of dying. I’m still mad at myself.” And this is not such a rare case.

“With his non-stop movement, he seeks to show that he is alive. Sometimes this can be explained by the fact that he was born after a stillborn child, or that there was mourning in the family. Be that as it may, when I talk to children about death and ask them if their constant running around is connected with the fear of death, everyone immediately answers: “Yes.”

But whether a “difficult” child has such a fear or not, in any case, life is not easy for him. “I often explain to parents, especially teenagers: it’s difficult for you, but understand that it’s a hundred times harder for a child,” says Elena Morozova. – He is not yet an adult, not as intelligent and stress-resistant as you, he does not have your experience to cope with his feelings. You feel like you are his victim. In fact, he himself is the victim and sufferer.

If the situation is completely out of control and the parents do not see an opportunity to fix it, it is better to turn to a psychologist “so as not to drive the children to despair, not to turn the house into a battlefield where each side fights to the last bullet.”

And what’s wrong with us?

Trying to figure out what was happening with Sabina, Mark decided that his daughter had hyperactivity.

“I began to search for information on the Internet and found the Connors questionnaire, which is used to diagnose attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Brought results to a child psychiatrist, but he convinced me that I was wrong. We started family therapy, and the relationship in the family became calmer.”

Mark is not alone in his delusions. Our experts confirm that many parents, having come to a dead end, come to them with the question of whether their child is sick. “I remember one educator mother desperately seeking a diagnosis: autism, schizophrenia, Asperger’s syndrome, whatever! Elena Morozova says. “In fact, she could not come to terms with the fact that she could work with other people’s children, but she could not find a common language with her three-year-old, perfectly healthy child.”

Another stumbling block is the unjustified expectations of parents.

“For example, they bring a child to me: do something with him, during classes with a speech therapist, he cannot sit at the table! – Tatyana Bednik recalls. “I wish he could, because he’s only two years old!” Can we call this an adequate perception? Parents often do not even have an idea about the age characteristics of children.

From this series and the stereotypical idea that a good child is an obedient child. “In fact, there is little good here,” says Tatyana Bednik. “Either he is already crushed, or from early childhood he tries to please adults.”

But after all, it is vital for a child to go through the stages of negativism in order to declare himself as a person, learn to defend himself, his point of view, position.

For those who find their child difficult, it often seems that he does something to spite them. But, as Yelena Morozova emphasizes, children rarely do things to harm their parents or themselves—unless their relationship is already completely distorted. Most likely, the child still does not know how to control himself, his actions and deeds or cope with his temperament.

In a word, what parents of difficult children usually lack is understanding. Ideal images, myths, cliches, ready-made schemes often obscure the real child – unique and complex.

“Unfortunately, I often see that parents are not very interested in a child as it is,” says Elena Morozova. “Many people don’t really talk to children at all. This worries me a lot. After all, a child needs to be taught to talk about his feelings, to analyze what is happening to him, to predict his actions. Then in the future he will choose smarter strategies.”

Difficult means interesting

A difficult child especially needs boundaries and rules. But it is becoming increasingly difficult for parents to establish them.

The place of the child in the family has changed. A few decades ago, few people thought to be interested in what he thinks about the school he will go to, when he will have dinner today and what exactly he wants to eat. Life and life were harsh, and in the family there was most often a strict hierarchy. The parent said: “As I said, so be it.”

Now the child is in charge. Parents do their best to get away from the authoritarian parenting style that they remember from childhood, and to be as democratic as possible. At the same time, the pendulum swung the other way. Often we cannot make a decision without asking the child’s opinion, without clearly explaining to him what, how and why.

“The child is sometimes given the opportunity to choose even in matters that do not require discussion,” exclaims Tatyana Bednik. – For example, he has something in pain, but he does not want to go to the doctor. And the parents agree, “respecting his choice.” But it is they who are responsible for his life, health, safety, education!

Of course, he feels lost, he will be anxious and uncomfortable, he does not have boundaries that give a sense of security.

Sometimes parents and adults in general confuse authoritarianism and authority, the latter implies firmness and consistency. “A parent should have a clear set of rules that, from his point of view, are necessary,” Elena Morozova reflects. – Let them be few – five, ten – but they must be carried out strictly.

For little ones, it may be a rule not to touch the sockets, for a teenager – to come home at a certain hour, and if for some reason it is delayed, call and warn. And everything beyond this can already be solved more flexibly.”

Then the child receives a certain freedom, and, on the other hand, the boundaries that ensure his safety.

A difficult child is an interesting child, according to our experts. At least it’s non-standard. In addition, such children are often very meaningful, creatively gifted. Their upbringing is a truly creative task. Solving it, we develop special qualities in ourselves: sensitivity, flexibility, willingness to experiment, the ability to notice successes and understand how they were achieved.

Educate playfully

We have a truly magical tool to influence the child and conduct a dialogue with him – this is a game.

Age psychologist Tatyana Bednik recommends using it everywhere and at any time: “With the help of the game, you can overcome almost all the difficulties that a child has: he can learn to control his behavior, cope with shyness and such unpleasant feelings as anger and fear, treat with respect to peers and adults, to maintain friendly and warm relationships.

For the ability to control oneself, any outdoor games with a change in the pace of movements or with a sudden stop on a signal are good.

To overcome impulsiveness, it is useful to play “Yes and no, don’t say, don’t take black and white.”

Any plot games will help the child to play his feelings and cope with aggression – provided that all actions are allowed in the game at the symbolic level: characters can be devoured, destroyed …

Games like “The Sea Worries Once” are suitable for the development of motor skills, “Jungle Speed” – for the development of auditory and visual attention. In addition, Tatyana Bednik recalls that playing together with children and adolescents can improve mutual understanding between the child and parents.