Today's question is Holly from the United States. My seven-year-old manipulates by screaming and is now throwing things. It's scaring my mother, kids, and puts everyone in a bad spot. She gets rage so bad we need help. To boot, she's extremely smart and acts like only acts like this with us.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to a mini episode of the Bratbusters Parenting Podcast. I'm Lisa Bunnage. I'm a parenting coach, mom, and grandmother.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Amy Bunnage, Lisa's daughter, and I handle the marketing and planning here at Bratbusters. Let's get into the episode.
SPEAKER_01Well,
okay, that says to me she can't control herself. Because if she only does that around you, then you've you've accepted that. For some reason, she she knows that you'll put up with that. So if she's screaming and throwing things, I would put down no aggressive behavior. You cannot address the screaming, but you can address the throwing things because it's physical. So I would say, okay, on the behavior board, you put down no aggressive behavior. That means no throwing things. And then you say, and here's your consequence if you do, okay? And all the kids have to be on the board. You have to find something for everybody. Um, so yeah, start the free behavior boards at Bratbusters.com. It's sort of the training wheels with all this. It's completely free, and it's two mini courses. There's one for three and above, and then there's one for toddlers. So it'll teach you how to do this, but you can't address the screaming, you can only address the throwing things. But if she's screaming and name-calling or swearing, you can put that down the next week as another bad behavior on the board. So you can have two behavior boards then. The course, the mini uh behavior board will explain all that. Okay. So yeah, just put it on the board and then start doing the work. Every time she throws something, um, you say, okay, let's go to the board. Here's your consequence. And if she throws something at someone, I might get her to do that kid's chore the next day or something. Um, yeah. Or else that let's say she throws something at one of her siblings, because you said the other kids. So I'm assuming you have other kids. So if she throws something at the other kid, they get to play with her favorite toy um for an hour or something. That could be the consequence. Would you consider this a tantrum? It could be, but the fact that she's aggressive is the problem. I'm addressing the physicality, okay? I'm not addressing the like whether or not she's having a tantrum. That's okay. She can still have a tantrum that you ignore. But then after she's done, you say, okay, so you hit, don't say during a tantrum. You never mention the word tantrum. And you just say, okay, so let's go to the board because remember your rule is no aggressive behavior, and you hit. Don't say during
your tantrum.
SPEAKER_00What's your thought process as to why you wouldn't say the word tantrum?
SPEAKER_01Uh, it's an accelerator, and she it's arguable. I was not, I was only doing it because you, you, you, it's accusatory. So it's opening an argument, that's all. And it's also kind of critical, uh, criticizing. Um, yeah, you don't want to criticize for a tantrum. Let them have one. That's how that you've taught them how to do that at this age. You've taught her that this works, okay, guaranteed. They don't they don't keep having tantrums past the age of about three, um, unless you put up with it, unless you feed it and talk about it. And yeah, it it it must work. It must get
attention.
SPEAKER_00How do you handle this if you have, let's say you have four kids, for example, and one child is acting out and it's impacting the rest of the family? Like, how are you approaching that with the other children?
SPEAKER_01There's nothing you can do about that. They just have to watch the show. There's really nothing you can do. Just deal with the squeaky, you're oiling the squeaky wheel, right? That's all you can do. You can't oil all the other kids. They just have to watch this. It's part of being in a family, they're stuck in it too. Okay. Remember, if she's acting like that at seven, unless she has some medical condition or something, I don't know. I'm just assuming she doesn't, okay, for the purposes of this answer. So um, yeah, assuming she's got no health problems, then you just the whole family has to go through it. Remember, you always take the blame for this stuff. If she's doing that, don't get frustrated and mad at her. Get frustrated and mad at yourself. Oh, geez, we caused this. But now we're gonna fix it. You always blame yourself for their bad behavior between the ages of three and 12, especially. You always blame yourself because their behavior is like pretty much 100% just a complete reflection of their parenting, okay? So you always blame yourself because you wanna be able to win the fix, you want to be able to be the one that fixes it too. If you don't take the blame, you're not gonna, you're gonna kind of blame her. You don't want to go at it from that direction, okay? Whenever I was working with kids, they weren't even my kids. I saw them for maybe an hour a week. If they ever acted out when I was first getting to know them and they would act out around me, I thought, what am I missing here? What am I doing wrong? How do I move forward? How do I get respect? I was always working on myself with each individual child. They're all different too. Some needed different things than others did. So I had to figure that out. What are their needs? How am I going to meet them? Um, how am I going to get that connection going? Okay. So you always blame yourself. Now I always say this: you always blame yourself for their bad behavior, and then you can take credit later on for their good behavior. Okay, when I was working with teenagers, especially, because the younger kids probably wouldn't have got this, but the teenagers always laughed at this. The teacher would come over, the principal or someone would come over and say, I don't know what's going on, but your behavior is just so great these days or getting better or something. And I would say, Thank you. The teenager would laugh because they got it, but the teacher, principal didn't. They didn't get what I was talking about. But yeah, I took the credit, right? So you want to take the blame and then the credit. In other words, that's what leaders do. You're a leader. As the leader, you take the blame and then you can take the credit later on. Their bad behavior is just a reflection of your parenting and just
treat it that way.
SPEAKER_00Now, let's say hypothetically, it wasn't specifically in this question, but I'm sure it's hard to keep calm as a parent. Let's say that you are going through this, your child's screaming at you. What would you do if you happen to react and you yell at them?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so here's what you say. So you say, I'll tell you what, you yelled, so you should get a consequence. Or you yelled, you can you hit. Sorry, you hit, so you should get a consequence. But I yelled at you. I messed up. I shouldn't have done that. So what we're gonna do is you're not even gonna get a consequence because I messed up, and that's way worse than you messing up. You're just a kid, right? I'm an adult, I'm your leader, I should know better than that. So I get a consequence for yelling at you. So you remove their consequence because you yelled at them when they did the bad behavior. You they won't even get one now, but you do. That's gonna throw them off. But now all of a sudden, you're a leader and they're gonna start figuring this out. They're gonna go, wow. A lot of kids are really confused by this, but I've never met a kid and like talk to parents in coaching who hasn't said, kids love that. Because all of a sudden you're accountable. So you don't give them a consequence because you yelled at them, but you get one instead. There's even an even bigger lesson in that, okay, than there is if they just got a consequence. Huge, huge lesson in that. What is the lesson? I knew you were gonna ask that. The lesson is we're all accountable here, and it's not horrible to do something rotten, okay? It you know, I hit and that was really bad, but all of a sudden it's not the end of the world. My parents' yelling was so much worse than me hitting. And wow, do they ever respect me? Wow. And when they start to feel good, they do good. There's the biggest lesson. You're making them feel good when you do that, okay? That's the ultimate respect. When they feel good, they do good. When they feel bad, they do bad. If all you're talking about is their bad behavior, you're dragging them down, okay? All of a sudden you've just erased it. You've just completely erased it. Now you're getting consequence for your bad behavior. Makes them feel like a million bucks. Remember, I always say that uh my goal when I was working with kids was always that they feel good about themselves. That's a perfect example of how to make a kid feel good about themselves. They will feel so respected by you when you do that.
SPEAKER_00Is it the idea of like I mean enough to my parents?
SPEAKER_01I matter.
SPEAKER_00I matter, right?
SPEAKER_01They're probably used to being yelled at all the time, right? If you do yell you, chances are it's not your first time. So all of a sudden, you're owning it. It makes them feel valued. It makes, you know, people talk a lot about um, you know, uh validating all their emotions. Talk, this is what I'm talking about. This is validating them. That you don't discuss it. You just do it, take action. Say this is validating. You don't say, by the way, I'm validating your emotions. I hate all that crap. It's just all that, you know, mini therapy session talk. It's for you, it's not for your kids. This is what makes them feel validated. This is what makes them feel worthwhile. This is what makes them feel good about themselves. Remember, when they feel good, they do good. When they feel bad, they do bad. Parents are too busy trying to make them feel bad for the bad things they do. I do not do that at all. At all. And even when I own it, because I yelled, I don't even want to look like I feel bad. I would say, oh, geez, I messed up. Frustrates me. Anyway, because of that, you're not even gonna get a consequence because I should have known better. I'm gonna get a consequence. Make it something fun that you do with them. Turn it into a positive.
SPEAKER_00I really like that because I do think that they're, I mean, there's so many different approaches online, but I like that you are building them up, but it's not specifically in a way of like, I am building you up right now, like telling them.
SPEAKER_01And I know that it's just kind of a cheap way of doing it. There's discussions around it. Oh, I'm validating you are sp you know, they don't care about praise, by the way. It goes along with this kind of thing. Like you say to that five, it's an old example I use all the time. You say to a five-year-old little boy, you're wonderful, you're special. I validate you, all your feelings are great, all that. You know, all this mini therapy talk, right? You're giving all this praise. You look at his face, he could care less. You say to that same five-year-old little boy, hey, what are you doing? Can I play too? Watch him light up. Nothing validates them more than connecting with them, playing with them. Play fun is their love language, laughter is their love language. Play with them, make them feel good. Take your own medicine. If you mess up and you yell at them, you get a consequence. You have to play with them, do something that they love, can be even taking them out for ice cream, do something for them. Talk about validating someone. Holy crap. They feel like a million bucks. That was always my goal. You know, when I worked with teenagers, I had one of them even said to me, I didn't like, I didn't like myself till I met you, Lisa. That was like one of the biggest compliments I ever got. That means I'm doing it right. Okay, I'm a leader. I made that kid feel good about himself, right? And now, when they feel good, now when you make them feel good about themselves, how are they gonna treat you? Also, it it transfers everywhere. When you're a really calm, good leader that you play with them, you make them feel great about themselves, they will carry that umbrella everywhere they go. You will start to see the difference in how they treat other people too, because all of a sudden they have higher self-esteem, more self-respect. They value themselves more because you do. Okay. I feel like that's a great place to end. Oh, okay. Anyway, thanks. I get really heated in these discussions, and then I just have to wrap it up. Okay, thanks so much for joining us. Back again soon, talking about another parenting topic. Happy parenting.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for tuning in. If you're ready to dive deeper, check out Bratbusters.com to learn more about the behavior board, parenting courses, and private one-on-one coaching with Lisa. If you've enjoyed the show so far, we'd love it if you could take a moment to follow, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more parents just like you. The information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Lisa is a parenting coach, mum, and grandmother. She is not a licensed psychologist or counselor. Her services do not replace the care of psychologists or other healthcare professionals. For a full disclaimer, please visit breathbusters.com forward slash disclaimer.