By David Bornstein — 2014
When Luke gets angry, he tries to remember to look at his bracelet. It reminds him of what he can do to calm himself: stop, take a deep breath, count to four, give yourself a hug and, if necessary, ask an adult for help.
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Maintaining your authority is important to your child’s well-being—and it’s important for your own emotional health too.
Of course we want to keep children safe. But exposure to normal stresses and strains is vital for their future wellbeing.
All kids feel anxious or stressed sometimes, like when they’re getting ready for a big test. But kids who learn and think differently may feel stress more often or more intensely. Self-soothing techniques can help them relax and regain their sense of control.
Family life can be frustrating and exhausting when you have a child who often displays challenging oppositional behaviors. But there are ways to make the situation better.
Forty percent of children with ADHD also develop oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), a condition marked by chronic aggression, frequent outbursts, and a tendency to argue, ignore requests, and engage in annoying behavior. Begin to understand severe ADHD and ODD behaviors here.
It’s normal for all kids to be defiant sometimes. But kids with oppositional defiant disorder are defiant almost all the time.
Understanding what’s behind your child’s behavior is an important part of addressing the problem.
If your child or teenager has a frequent and persistent pattern of anger, irritability, arguing, defiance or vindictiveness toward you and other authority figures, he or she may have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).
Every generation, sometimes building on and sometimes rejecting what came before, develops its own ideas about parenting. For many millennials, the clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy, a.k.a. Dr. Becky, is the person whom they trust to deliver those ideas.
Even for a psychologist who studies how kids understand racism and violence, talking to her own children about it is difficult.
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