Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Impulse control and the strong willed child

I wanted to add that I found the following, seemingly extremely disparate books helpful:
The explosive child, by Greene (already mentioned)
The kazdin method for parenting the defiant child

The second advises an extremely rigorous and consistent reward scheme, whereas the first advises to complete ditch these schemes and rather use the collaborative problem solving approach which it then teaches.

What they have in common:
Both explain extreme challenging behaviour as a lack in specific skills which can be taught and trained but which are not the child's fault in any way. Both advise to completely abstain from punishing. Kazdins reward scheme is framed not as a mindless behaviorist approach but as a support to help the child follow through with practicing the desired behaviour - might be the same thing in the end but that is how I described it to my children and they get it. I did not use the method as prescribed (which of course you are supposed to for guaranteed results) but simply offer rewards as the occasional motivator and have found that the promises kazdin makes are true - if you start with tiny bits of time (try not to bother your sister/try not to shriek when being bothered by your brother for one minute and that is one minute iPad time) helps shape better behaviour (suddenly they are even interacting nicely for ten minutes at a time!) and you can fade out the rewards quickly, even after a one off application, because they know what to do, know how to do it, know that they can do it and know that I know that they know.
KWIM?