Every parent wants their children to be perfect little angels but the reality is that most children are anything but perfect. In fact, more and more children are becoming very difficult to raise. A difficult child can place stress on the parent-child bond and it can also place stress on the marriage itself. Unfortunately most parents don’t have any idea what to do to make things easier on themselves and the child. Here is the perfect way to raise a difficult child. 

The first thing you want to do is think about five, ten or even fifteen years down the road. While the years when a child is 4-9 years old may be hard, they are nothing compared to the difficulty you will face if your child becomes a teen who is rebellious and lacks respect for laws and rules. Obviously the desired outcome is to have a young adult who is a positive member of society and doesn’t get in any trouble. The best way to do that is to create a child who wants to do good for the sake of it being the right thing to do. The best way is to create a strong and lasting bond with your child. 

This isn’t accomplished through physical, emotional, or mental punishment. It is accomplished through making a child feel good about themselves and feel good about you too. 

So the perfect way to raise a difficult child is by using plenty of praise. Tell the child “good job for saying thank you”, “awesome job staying quiet while I was on the phone”, and “I really love the way you’re sitting so still and being so quiet”. Be specific with your praise and be generous with it too. 

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t discipline your child at all. Of course you’ll still need to do so. But instead of yelling and flying off the handle, calmly and firmly tell the child that their behavior is unacceptable and then impose an immediate consequence (sitting for 5 minutes, going to their room, etc.). Then look for the first possible opportunity to start back in with the praise. 

So if you need to discipline a child, if they are sitting quietly for a minute, let them know that is very good and encourage them to keep up the good work. 

At the outset you may need to praise a difficult child every two or three minutes. But eventually you’d like to be able to scale that back to maybe once or twice an hour. And eventually, once the child is a teenager, you’d like to be able to take it back to maybe three or four times a day. However, you should always try to praise the child four times to every one time you have to discipline them (and even saying something like “don’t do that” is a form of discipline). 

And that really is the perfect way to raise a difficult child. Give them lots of praise. Then when you withdraw that praise the child will feel badly and will want to earn back that praise. And that wanting will stick with them for the rest of their life and make them into great teenagers and great adults.