DEEP DIVE: When Kids Fight You on Everything

20:49Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So let me give you the definition for that. Oppositional defiant disorder is defiant behavior that persists for a prolonged period of time and interferes with a child's performance at school and with family and with friends. So Dr. Riley, who wrote The Defiant Child, he said that the behaviors occur at a rate and intensity far beyond the usual, and at such magnitude that they create difficulties in functioning. If that's your kid, then that's okay, but you should talk to your pediatrician because that's something that's beyond the scope of you talking in a different kind of voice, right?

21:28That's something that you're probably going to need some extra help with.

21:30Amy Wilson:Yeah. And this also occurs on a huge spectrum. And I think oppositional defiant disorder is one end of the spectrum. But I had in high school, my relationship with my mother completely blew apart. It just, we did not like each other. And we, everything she was, I said no to. And she just got to a point where she was, I think, really over it and sort of like, I'm not playing anymore. I'm taking my ball and going home, you know, and I mean, it's writ large, it wasn't, you know, it not exactly what happened. But I do think that this doesn't have to be, I did not have autism, ADHD, I did not have, I just was a kid who felt very trapped in a role that I wasn't happy with.

22:24Amy Wilson:I had very high achieving siblings. And I felt like, you know, the also ran and that I was being constantly measured by yardsticks that didn't fit for me. And I got real mad. And I got real jerky about being so mad. And, you know, it was really tough. And this was a time when you were like functioning, you were playing a sport, you're going to school. I mean, you weren't like, setting fire to people's lockers, or were you? Because that would be something about you. I didn't know. I was not setting fire to people's lockers. I was no, it was definitely a home dynamic. I was functional at school.

23:06Amy Wilson:But I was sort of, I don't know, I feel like I kind of got into a role at some point of being like, right, the bad kid. And I went to like a square school. And I mean, believe me, we should all have such rebellious kids as me. I wasn't exactly, you know, swinging from the chandeliers. But I just, the dynamic got very bad. And that's what I mean by cumulative. Like it just, the dynamic started to go off, maybe, you know, my second year of high school. And then it's like we just could not find a path. And we just went on separate paths for a while. And then in college, I kind of found my own B tribe.

23:49Amy Wilson:And my mom and I ended up having a fantastic relationship for the rest of our lives. But man, that high school was rough. I'm honestly curious, how did that sort of re-approach happen? Was it like you came home from college for breaks and your mom didn't seem so annoying anymore? Like, how did it happen? Yeah, I think it was just too much time together. Like I until you my mom passed away when I was in my 40s, like, I still would come home with like red streaks in my hair. And she'd be like, really? And instead of me be like, yes, because I'm not a close minded square like you. I'm my own person.

24:25Amy Wilson:I would instead be like, really? What's for dinner? Like, I think the pressure of not feeling like once the interdependency came out of our relationship, we got along really, really well. And she always was sort of like, you're a weirdo. And I was always sort of like, you're a square. But we came to a very separate piece once I got out of the house. But when I was in the house, it was like 25 times a day. Everything I did annoyed her and everything she did annoyed me. It's helpful to hear that it's a season that can be overcome, but at least I'm imagining being your mom in this circumstance. At least she probably clung to like, all right, well, she's doing fine at school.

25:01So let's see what happens.

25:03Amy Wilson:Yeah, yeah, I try to think with my own kids. Let's just see what happens, you know, like, and I struggle with this. I'm a warrior and a catastrophizer. And but if this then, and we've talked about it before the like, proverb that is, you know, the guy that it's maybe is his answer to everything, you know, like the crops die, and they're like, this is a disaster. Well, maybe. But then something turns out good because a new crop grows, you know, and then the son breaks his leg. Oh, no, this is the worst thing that ever happened. He says, maybe. And because the son now can't help with the farm. But then the soldiers come to recruit new soldiers and that he can't go because his leg is broken.

25:47Amy Wilson:Like, I have tried so hard to adopt an attitude of like, is this good? Is this bad? Maybe. And I think with seasons. Right. Like developmentally appropriate seasons. Yeah. And with seasons where kids are not, where you're not connected with your kids, it's like, this is okay too. We're not best friends. We're not each other's other person. We're mom and child. And there may be times where that person needs to kind of separate from me a little bit. Right. And they can ask for that separation in the most abrupt and unpleasant of ways. Oh, they're going to get that separation. They're going to get it.

26:26Amy Wilson:Yep. they are definitely going to get it. I think to some degree, there was a lot of closeness in our family. And I felt a little square peggy in our family. And so a lot of that defiance was like, I don't need this, you know, because I felt I was outside of it. Soiling the nest, right? I'm getting out of here. Soiling the nest. And I think that that's a very normal phase for kids to be like, they're scared to be like, I don't need you. So they're like, I'm going to break everything. And it could just show how much I don't need you. Well, I want to keep an eye on ages and stages for this because our kids are older.

27:06So we tend to talk about older kids problems. But this is like you can have a defiant three year old too. You can have a defiant six year old, eight year old, 10 year old. And they're leaving for college soon is sometimes I think more comforting as a thing to keep in mind than you have like an eight year old who won't do anything that you ask them to do. So there's some ideas. I have and stuff that works. I've collected it from a bunch of people. So let's talk about some of it. The first one, Catherine Lee, she's a parenting writer. She wrote a great article for Very Well Family. I put the link in the show notes, effective ways to handle defiant children.

27:36And this is a lot of younger children advice. So her advice, the best advice I thought was to keep track of your child's defiance. We would call this like, you know, get curious about it, the causes and the triggers. Look for a pattern. Look for certain days of the week when they might feel hectic or hurried or rushed? Are there certain things they don't like or don't want to do, right? Are they extra cranky on Tuesday mornings because Tuesday mornings are PE and they don't like PE? Speaking for a child that was once me. If you can figure it out, it's like the iceberg thing, but getting more specific.

28:11Because if you really look, there is often, it feels like it's happening all the time. It's not happening all the time. it's happening after 6pm or after a baseball game.

28:23Amy Wilson:And that's a clue. This is a very good watch your story thought too, which is, well, my child doesn't eat anything. Well, they actually eat like 47 different foods, not three, you know, but if we eat 150 foods, it feels like they don't eat anything. And I think that like, my child is always yelling, is another story that can come up. And what you're hearing is that they're yelling more than the other kids, they're yelling more than you would like. But that's not who they are. And that I think is where things tend to get very off is when we start defining the story of our children based on bad behavior.

29:04Yeah, I mean, if we don't want them to think that every single thing that we say and do is so annoying, then we have to be aware of everything I say to this kid gets resistance of globalizing it.

29:14Amy Wilson:And then you become an evidence gatherer, right? Like if your story is like this kid is oppositional, then you're always looking for that. Whereas if you're able to say to some degree, like, well, this kid is so loving, except for when they're oppositional, it's hard. But I think that you have to watch that you're the like, prosecutor taking evidence against your kid. It's just not a good dynamic. You're right. All right. Something else from Catherine Lee was that you can try to word things positively. This is similar to some more advice I have coming later. But if you know that your kid is going to give you a hard time, the example is they don't want to eat lunch because they want to get back in the pool, right?

29:57That's the example that she uses. You know that this is fraught. It's fraught every time this comes up. You try to frame things more positively. So instead of saying, you can't go back in the pool until you eat lunch, say, as soon as you finish your sandwich, you can go back in the pool. That if you keep it positive, your kid is more likely to agree. I mean, maybe it's worth a shot, right? Kids who like to disagree with everything, it's giving them one less thing to disagree with. And it isn't like, they're not like mind Jedi's, right? Who are out to twist everything you say around, especially an eight year old who just wants to go back in the pool.

30:31So if you help them think of it, reframe it slightly, I think that would work a lot of times with younger kids. I think it's good advice. A cranky teenager, who knows? Yeah, I mean, your mileage may vary with a 16 year old. Right, right, right. All right. More advice after this.

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33:18Amy Wilson:And now, things you will hear at the school play. From the What Fresh Hell podcast. Ugh, why do I not remember my fair lady being this long? Was it always this long? Oh, of course, there's Gretchen in the lead. Again, do they even audition other kids? Wow, that is one apathetic version of the hand jive. Great, I get the seat behind the dad with the news crew video set up. Uh-oh, uh-oh, we've got someone crying in the chorus. Oh, gosh. Actually, it looks like two chorus members are actively weeping. Oh, can I get an extra program? It will be the perfect addition to my box of keepsakes my kid will have to throw away when they're 50.

33:57Is that kid supposed to be a sunflower or a lion? I can't tell. Oh, look, honey. There she is. Come on, honey. You can do it. Get those hands up and smile. Come on. A little louder. A little louder. The sun will come out. That's it. You got it. Oh, sweet Lord.

34:11Amy Wilson:Not an encore. I have to be up in like seven hours. Yes, that was my kid playing beggar number four. Isn't she amazing? I'm so proud of her. The stage really has always been her calling. This has been Things You Will Hear at the School Play from the What Fresh Health Podcast.

34:31More tips, Amy, please. More tips. I got some tips for you, Dr. Douglas Riley. He's the author of The Defiant Child. I put the link for that book in the show notes. If this is resonating with you, that's a good book to pick up. Yeah. If this is resonating with you, go get that book. Yeah. Yeah. He suggests the two free requests approach. It's sort of a one, two, three magic type thing. But he says, the first time you ask your child to do something, pick up your coat, give them two minutes to do it, to respond. Two minutes is a long time. That's longer than I would give. Okay. Two full minutes to pick up the coat.

35:03The coat's still on the floor. Then you calmly say, I'm now asking you a second time to pick up your coat. Do you understand what I'm asking you to do? And do you understand what the consequences are. If you don't, please make a smart decision. And then you give it another two minutes. And if you have to ask a third time, there's a consequence that's prearranged. You talk about it in a non-heightened time. The TV goes off, he says, which is probably a very, you know, 1997 consequence for a kid, right? You take off their Google goggles if they don't pick up their coat. There's a prearranged consequence that the kid doesn't want, whatever it is.

35:36Amy Wilson:This is something I need to get back to. I adopted this from talking to somebody on the podcast, where I would always say to the kids, hey, that bottle still on the floor, that's my second ask. Somebody get that bottle. It's my third ask, mostly just because they would start to clean like, oh, I better do it. I never had like a pre-arrange consequence at the end. But then also, if I'm like, get everyone's everything stops, go pick up nothing else happens until that bottle gets picked up. It's like, guys, I'm yelling because I've this is my fourth time asking you. And so it doesn't just become the wall of noise of like, mom's always hysterical and yelling.

36:14Amy Wilson:It's like, no, no, I asked you, you heard me ask you three times calmly. But now I'm mad. I am a little bit team like, it's okay to be mad. I don't think you should yell and scare kids. But I think that it's okay to be mad when you're asking something for the fourth time. But I think when you give it a little bit more visibility, it helps to feel like mom's just not an angry ogre who stops around all the time. And if you have a kid who's resistant, I mean, it kind of makes sense to me that you like, okay, I asked that. Okay, this is now your second ask. And you know what's going to happen. And then you walk away and then they can be like, final, you know, they can be mad about it.

36:49They can feel like they've already fought the good fight by resisting you. The first time you asked, you give them an out that doesn't involve a yelling match with you. And you don't want, I mean, I've taken the other side of this argument that you don't want to teach kids like you tell a dog to sit once and then you wait for them to sit because if you say sit sit sit sit then they get confused and they think that's the command you don't want your kid to be like i can just hang out till it's like the third ask for literally anything before she gets mad you don't want that to happen but if you're specifically right i only have to do it when she gets when she starts screaming but this isn't really advice for like all kids all the time this is advice for a kid for whom everything has become a battle between the two of you and unpleasantness over the simplest request.

37:30These are things to try when things have become charged, and you're trying to sort of diffuse that.

37:34Amy Wilson:Agree. Can I jump in with my own advice? Even though I'm not a doctor, I did not write a book. I would love it. Please do. I find that this kind of defiance, it's boundary testing. We talk a lot about boundary seeking behaviors, and that sometimes I know people, including myself, who have struggled with like holding this boundary. It is great to define this in your mind as boundary seeking behavior that like screaming and defiance is where's the heavy blanket that holds me in? Like, where's the wall? I need to feel it because if I am allowed to be completely out of control in my house, it doesn't feel safe to me.

38:15Amy Wilson:And so when bad behavior starts, I like to think to myself, This is boundary seeking behavior. I have one job. Provide the boundary. Be the wall. Stop. Hem it in. They don't want to feel like there's no boundaries. They want a boundary. And thinking of it that way. Another thing that I think tends to happen is that this behavior can be scary and frightening. And it can feel to everybody in the house that the person who is the loudest and the most out of control is in charge. And that is something that I think it's important to name out loud for yourself, for the kid who's out of control, and for the other kids in the house.

38:56Amy Wilson:Wow, that got really out of control. I sometimes will say, I think you're really scaring everybody with this yelling and out of control behavior. It's feeling scary to me. And I think it's feeling scary to everybody. Because I think that it becomes, that admission feels really scary. and I think that you feel like, well, I have to maintain this illusion of control. So therefore, I think it's important to name what's going on. And I know for my household, that has been important. And it has also become a little bit of something that we can joke about and give voice to. and we've named it ABS, Angry Bear Syndrome.

39:41Amy Wilson:It's like, uh-oh, we've got some ABS going on. And it takes the power out of it a little bit for everybody, I think. I think for the person who's out of control and for the people in the house who feel frightened by the person who's out of control, that like, oh, we know what this is. Uh-oh, we've got red brain going on. Let's just shut everything down. You tell us how to help you calm down or you go somewhere else to calm down. But we know this is red brain. We're not scared of it. It's not frightening us all. We're not going to cower from it. We're not going to be taken over by it. But we know what this is.

40:18Amy Wilson:Oh, it's ABS. Oh, it's morning red brain, whatever that title is. Now, will the person in red brain sometimes be like, I don't like it when you I have a they're not going to be like, Oh, my gosh, you're right. It is red brain and I should really calm down. That's not what's going to happen. But I do think conveying to an out of control child, I'm not afraid of this. I can handle it. I think it's work that we have to do for ourselves, too. Because I do think, especially for women, and especially for some women who have been in tough, abusive households as children, or relationships as young people or adults, this behavior can be very triggering and can cause you to shut down.

41:04Amy Wilson:And then sometimes it gets worse. And so I think really preparing for like, how are we going to respond as a family when this disturbing and scary behavior begins? And it's okay to call it scary and disturbing behavior, even though it's your child. It is scary and disturbing. It might help you stay calmer, which is also right. Instead of you stop that right now that that we know that doesn't work, but it's naming it is helping you feel better in the moment. And so much of this is tied to kids who are oppositional and defiant to a point where like, I really need some help with this are often also anxious, they go together.

41:41And I used to think that they were two separate things. No, they're not. They're like a, they're a swirl. It's like a chocolate vanilla soft ice cream cone. It's all mixed together. And you can't really tell where one ends and the other begins. But it makes a lot of sense to me that even if they can't hear you, really, there's some world in which they do want to just be told these are the walls and you're safe within these walls that they're seeking. These are the walls.

42:03Amy Wilson:Or I think this is another like Dr. Becky good inside moment too. You're a great kid. You're having a real hard time. You're in red brain syndrome, right? You're in angry bear mode right now. And I know this isn't you. You're such a great kid. You're having a tear like they want to be acknowledged. They're kind of testing to be like, I'm bad. I have these bad feelings. I'm going to make everybody mad at me and prove that I really am bad in the way that I think. And I do think getting under that and taking the fear and anxiety out of it as much as possible for everybody involved is super crucial.

42:39The other side of the net is the angry bear syndrome, right? And even the kid who's currently evincing it, right, is on the same side of the net with you. Like, this is the problem we have to deal with. Because I can also say that something that can happen is that when the oppositional person is in full red brain, as you were saying, kind of yelling, the other people start to blame one another, right? Yes. Why did you say that to him? You know he doesn't like ketchup on his hamburger. Why did you ask me if he wanted to tell me that you start to get mad at your spouse or the other kid who looked at them?

43:11Like, it's nobody else's fault. But if you can blame somebody else, then then, you know, you're not left holding the bag. And that's another sort of thing you want to watch out for and push back against.

43:23Amy Wilson:Yeah. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that like, this happens in lots of families. And it's something that it can be kind of like scary and shameful for people to feel like, well, I don't even have control in my own house. A better parent wouldn't have this happening. Right. Not true. Right. Yeah, it's very common. I've dealt with it in my own ways, in my own house with lots of with different children. And I think it's the kind of thing that work on responses in advance. But if you're struggling with it, get help with this one, too, because it is cumulative. And I think the more that we hide from it and pretend it's not happening, it's getting worse, not better.

44:06Amy Wilson:and it's worth like really staring it down and being like, what are the books I need? What's the help I need? How can we all get on the same side against this difficult behavior, including my beloved kid? It's worth doing the work. So there's good books and links. I'll put those in the show notes. So you can check those out if you feel like you need more support around this. For sure. This was a good reminder for me. I need to check back into some of these things myself, let's just say. Good news, everybody. We are now on YouTube Music. I'm going to put the link for that in the show notes, too, so you can actually listen and or watch.

44:44You can see us. You can listen. I don't know how it works on a phone, but I guess the same way. If you just want to see our faces, you can do both. Where do we go for this, Amy? You're telling me about this. YouTube Music. Go to YouTube Music. Yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes, and you have to... You can use your laptop and just use the link, and I'll take you right to it, or you download the YouTube music app, which is new-ish. They're rolling out like a sort of a Spotify alternative based in YouTube. And yeah, you can find us there.

45:12Amy Wilson:Love, love, love it. Even more ways to hear us. Who doesn't love it? And with that, thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next time. So long.

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