Few Good Feelings

Q:

Our ten-year-old daughter is bright, sweet, and respectful — in school. She’s adored by teachers and peers alike. When she gets home, it’s an entirely different story. She becomes self-centered and (I hate to say this, but I just need to paint the picture accurately) obnoxious. She whines and pouts in a way that is totally not age-appropriate. She becomes very possessive, and she fights over space, food, and toys with her siblings (even with the little ones). When small things don’t go her way she flies off the handle and talks back to us with chutzpah. We have read your advice that the majority of our interactions with our children should be what you call “good-feeling” communications, but with this daughter we find this exceedingly difficult to deliver. She’s generally unpleasant and difficult to get along with, and she provokes many more opportunities for negative interactions than positive ones. We’re completely at a loss as to what to do about it.

A:

The fact that your daughter behaves so nicely at school is encouraging. It may mean that whatever her issue is, it’s not purely genetic. Kids who behave badly no matter what environment they’re in are more likely to be dealing with inborn issues that may require intensive intervention. When a child behaves poorly in only one environment, it’s often the case that the environment simply needs to be adjusted.

As you correctly mentioned, I advise parents to aim for 80 percent good-feeling communication, because this ratio tends to (among other things) dramatically decrease misbehavior. The remaining 20 percent consists primarily of instructions (“time to have your bath,” “time to do your homework,” etc.) and corrections.

It’s very hard to give a poorly behaved child a lot of good-feeling attention. Instead, we fall into a common problematic parenting cycle: The more a child misbehaves, the more we correct her, which causes the child to misbehave even more.

So how do you offer eight out of ten good-feeling communications to a child who does nothing but misbehave?