This week on the Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy is sharing the secret to getting strong willed kiddos to listen better and cooperate more.
How do we know if we have a strong willed kid? Well for one, they push back…a lot (duh!). These kids are not ones to easily ‘go with the flow’ and let others be in charge. This is something that is going to serve them so well in their futures, provided we learn some important tools on how to guide and mentor their natural ability to lead, vs intimidate or punish it out of them (which often just leads to more push back and rebellion with these kids.)
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*Firm & kind strategies to navigate challenging behavior with firm kindness & connection (vs. fear, force, yelling, threats & bribery)
*Ways to build connection instead of pushing your child away w/ heavy handed “hand me down parenting tactics”
*How to work WITH your kids instead of forcing them to comply or trying to MAKE them change
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Episode Highlights:
- Strong willed kids often remind us of ourselves which often causes drama
- Strong willed kids have qualities that are praised in adults in authority and shunned in children (persistent, confident, determined, decisive, authoritative, gutsy, committed, resourceful, not conforming, valiant, and bold)
- SWKs are typically highly creative and intelligent, passionate and intense in their interests and beliefs, insatiable need to know why, learn by doing, want to test the status quo, perfection-oriented of self, need high levels of validation, test status quo, intense need to be heard, strong need for emotional safety, resistant to change, often highly sensitive, intensely focused on latest project, conscientious and highly committed to justice, and intensely independent
- Because they learn by doing, they benefit from natural consequences to teach them (vs. punishments when they mess up)
- Giving power kids more power actually helps fill their need to feel powerful and both prevents + resolves power struggles naturally
Resources Mentioned:
Jesus the Gentle Parent by LR Knost
IG Reel on giving kids more power
Quick Start Learning Bundle on Raising Strong Willed Kids
Lean in by Cheryl Sandberg
Not able to listen or want to read along with us?
Here is the episode transcript!
Stella:
Well, hey there, I’m Stella. Welcome to my mom and dad’s podcast, the Fresh Start Family Show. We’re so happy you’re here. We’re inspired by the ocean, Jesus, and rock and roll and believe deeply in the true power of love and kindness. Together we hope to inspire you to expand your heart, learn new tools and strengthen your family. Enjoy the show.
Wendy:
Well, hey there families and welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. I’m your host, Wendy Snyder, positive parenting educator and family life coach and today we are going to be chatting about what the secret is to getting strong-willed kids to listen and cooperate. And so I am really fired up to have a conversation about this today because I have a such a passion for strong-willed kids and supporting and empowering parents like you who are raising these beautiful human beings who are incredibly challenging to raise if we’re being honest. So let’s first kind of lay the groundwork.
I want you to know right off the bat that you are not alone. If you have a wild one at home, a button pusher, a constantly getting in trouble kind of kid, a strong will about everything child or just a kiddo, that is just so difficult to get along with. You know when as I share all of this kind of my, you know what, how I see strong-willed kids and how I see the ways, the ways in which we can make our journey a lot easier, raising strong-willed kids, a lot more joyful, I want you to know that it comes from a place of personal experience. Now at this point in my career, having have had the honor to build this organization, Fresh Start Family, where we now are able to help thousands of families every year really expand their toolkit, learn new tools, strengthen their family, all the things, it’s awesome.
I see you know what I teach getting parents radical life changing results all over the world. And it’s so important for you to know that everything I teach is also from personal experience. I do not teach any strategy or tool that I have not applied in my own life with my own two kiddos, especially my very own beautiful, strong, real willed little girl, miss Stella Bella, who is the reason why I became an educator 12, almost 13 years ago now is when I first found the work of positive Parenting and really decided I needed help. I raised my hand and finally got some support because after a season of about six months or so, I had just left my corporate career to stay home full-time.
I really thought it was gonna be incredible. I had just had my second son, he had colic just like his sister did. Did anyone else out there get two colicky babies? I literally could not believe it when my second one started to get colic at like a week old. I was just like, I can’t do this again. I can’t do this. And I did it. But that season when I left my career, I really thought, okay, this is gonna be beautiful. Even though it was a stretch financially for us to be able to afford to keep me home, I just really was looking forward to like the beautiful days I would have with my kids and I, you know, I had these images of like, okay, we live two miles from the beach. I’m gonna be, you know, have my kids on the the sand every day and we’re gonna be frolicking in the Pacific Ocean and the kids are gonna take these nice long naps and I’m gonna be able to keep the house clean and exercise and just be so joyful as a mom.
And a few months into it I really kind of dipped into a pretty deep season of despair and hopelessness and anger and frustration and irritation. And really it was mostly from trying to figure out how to work with my little girl, my strong-willed amazing daughter Stella. So she was three at the time when I left my career and Terrin was born and she was just embarking on the many challenges of toddlerhood and she had been blessed with a beautiful strong will. Now back then I did not see it. I didn’t quite see it yet as beautiful. Of course I knew from a logical perspective that you know, a strong will can be a great thing and I think most parents would agree like hey, that’s something that can absolutely serve a human being when they get older and it’s a total pain in the ass when they’re young.
And a lot of times it creates such strong emotions and triggers, such big fears of incompetency in us of like what is happening? Like all of a sudden you, you know, for a lot of people with strong-willed kids, you know you hit the toddler ears and you’re just like, what is literally happening? Like you know, back in those days with Stella, you know, if I said go right, she would go left if I said don’t pull the dog’s tail. Sure seem like she would pull the dog’s tail harder if I was like, Hey, you know, don’t touch the baby. She would shake the baby and look at me and just laugh and you know, I can joke about it now, but I really was really scared at the time. I felt very, very alone and I just thought to myself like, something’s gotta be wrong with this little girl.
Something’s gotta be wrong with me. I had always been so good with kids, so why was this challenging me so much? Like why was it such drama to just get her to put her shoes on and get in the car or get to school on time or stay in the church nurse nursery without freaking out or not tackle hug her classmates in her little toddler gymnastics class. Like everything just felt so difficult. So tell me like raise your hand. I, I know you’re just listening to this podcast but raise your hand if you can relate and I love to speak about strong-willed kids and just pour encouragement into you that you’re not alone if you’re going through this.
Because I really did at the time think that no one would understand what was happening and I also could see that Stella, yes, she was a handful in the world like her, her preschool years during the time, like we had her in a program till 2:00 PM her first year of preschool and it was about like halfway through the year that the teacher was like, yeah, I think you should pick her up at noon. I think noon is her max past then she’s, you know, getting in trouble. She’s pushing, she doesn’t do very well when she gets tired. She’s always been my very sensitive kiddo, which so many strong-willed kids are lots of sensory stuff going on at that age. But it was definitely that season where I was just like, okay, like either something’s wrong with her or something’s wrong with me because this can’t be this hard.
This was never what I imagined parenthood to be like. So we researched multiple doctors at the time. I googled everything under the sun from bipolar, multiple personality disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, ADHD I even like joke, it’s sad but it’s kind of funny. I literally googled exorcism. I was like what does it look like? Kiddo is possessed. Of course Stella wasn’t possessed, she was just the most incredibly gifted, which so many we’re gonna get mad in a second. Like what does, how does strong-willed kids show up in the world often they often show up as very gifted, but she was just this forced to be reckoned with and she was just so beautiful from day one.
She was the kid that I could really feel her strong will from birth. We had a very traumatic birth, we had an absent C-section so that means I was unconscious torn placenta emergency, C-section. Very, very scary. I think it’s a miracle we’re both alive and I do think the strong-willed God blessed Stella with is one of the reasons she survived such a rocky entrance into this world. But from the time she was a baby and you would hold her, she was muscular, she held her hi her head very firmly and high from, you know, I swear she was like two weeks old and she was already like very, you know, able to hold her head and her neck not be like the typical bobblehead babies, right?
And she just was a force. And I remember we used to go to like we, it was Christmas season and we’d dress, you know, go to parties and we’d dress her up in these cute little outfits and people would look at her and be like, oh my goodness, what a cute baby. And they’d like kind of reach out to either like tickle her belly or stroke her arm and she would just give him like a stink eye like don’t even, don’t even touch me. And she was probably like a little over a year when I think of those memories. So she just had this beautiful like voice and and tenacity about her from a very young age and I always knew that. But it wasn’t really until the toddler years hit and I left my career that her and I started butting heads so much.
The years when she was with a nanny was a lot better. I, I could tell like when I came home that things got worse, which is often the case with strong old kids. So I always kind of joke that the apple doesn’t fall far. So if you have a strong-willed kid, a lot of times you or your spouse also has a very strong will yourself and a lot of times we are hardest on our kids that are most like us. We are also the most affected and most triggered by the kids who are most like us. And a lot of it has to do with we are hardest on ourselves so the things we see as faults in ourselves, but a lot of us haven’t quite yet taken time to love those parts about ourselves.
We are hard on ourselves about those traits and so we are hard on our kids. So it’s kinda interesting. But yeah, just looking back, it was definitely a really rocky season and this is the work that saved my life when I stepped into a classroom and started learning about positive psychology and research backed tools that were built on and you know, based in relationship and connection and firm kindness instead of, you know, fear and force and intimidation and bribery and rewards like all the external tactics so to speak. Sometimes I refer to them as hand-me-down parenting tactics cuz those are the things we inherit.
Like no one needs to teach you how to put a kid in timeout. No one needs to teach you how to threaten a spanking. No one needs to teach you how to, you know, raise your voice to make a child stop like messing with the cabinet or whatever it may be. It’s just unfortunately something that kind of comes naturally to many of us because so many of us witnessed it growing up. That’s what was modeled to us. So once I started to learn a totally different way of working with my daughter, that is really when the light started to come back, I started to change the way I communicated with her, the way I disciplined her, the way I saw her just as a human being. Not someone that is constantly trying to push my buttons and is disobedient and sassy and all the things, but someone who was just trying to figure out this thing called life.
And so together we really became emotionally literate together, we learned these concepts and now she’s a teenager, she’s almost 16 years old, she’s thriving in life, you know, we are thriving in our relationship. We have such strong fluent skillsets to be able to work out challenges with respect when they come our way. We feel just really confident as parents that when there are mistakes that are made, we have the tools and the, you know, the compassionate discipline methods that we can teach our kids important life skills in a way that actually builds them up and brings us closer instead of, you know, punitive disconnecting tactics that are designed just to make a kid feel bad.
So that’s kind of where we sit now. But again back to the idea that as I go into the way we see strong-willed kids normally as a society, I just want you to remember that I speak to this because I’ve been through it. I speak to this because this is something that I live with. I have the honor of raising a strong-willed child and so do you. So I wanna ask you this, have you ever described your wild one as demanding, insistent, stubborn, bossy, cocky, difficult, challenging, fixated, rebellious, defiant, sassy or a pain in the ass?
I say that last one because I remember when I was in corporate America and I had a colleague who was just, you know, a few years older than me, she kind of taught me the term PIA, P-I-A. And I remember for months when I was in that position, she would come in my office and just be like, how you doing? How was your little PIA this weekend? And we would just laugh and like that was how I referred to my little girl. I don’t say that cuz I’m proud of it. It’s just the way I was seeing Stella at the time. So yeah, if you’ve ever used those terms and that’s like kind of the ways you might describe your kiddo, then yes you have a strong-willed kid. Now as you’re listening to this, it’s important to remember that there are strong-willed kiddos and then there are also power surge stages of life.
So some kiddos might be kind of easygoing, you know, maybe they were easy babies, easy young toddlers and then all of a sudden they hit a phase where they’re saying no more often they’re pushing back, they’re challenging their rules and boundaries like that is, remember that’s very normal and healthy when it comes to child development between the ages of two and six and then again in the tween and teen years, you want to see a child who is developing their autonomy and their independence. Like we, that is good news for us as educators or anyone in the field when it comes to child development like that is healthy.
And then on top of that, some of you have strong-willed kids where when those seasons hit, so not only do you have a child who kind of always has this beautiful strong will about them, which essentially just means they have a very big need to feel powerful. We’ll kind of touch on that in a little bit. That’s the psychology under what I teach here at Fresh Start Family. And actually you guys, let me go ahead and riff on it right now cause I don’t wanna forget to tell you later about this. In case you’re new to positive parenting firm and kind connected relationship based parenting, I wanna make sure you do understand a bit more about the psychology underneath of this. So when it comes to understanding human beings, so all human beings, that’s our kids, that’s us.
So like our spouse, our spouses, our friends, our colleagues. But in this realm, our children and especially our children’s, our strong-willed children, it’s important to understand like what makes them tick. Like what causes great behavior and what causes misbehavior. And really underneath of all human humanness, let’s call it human behaviors, human misbehaviors are needs. So this was really kind of explained very, very well through the work of Dr. Rudolph Dreikurs, who was a renowned mid-century child psychologist who studied for years and years child development, child behavior and really proved and developed the psychology around helping us as parents understand what is causing children to cooperate and live life within the rules and boundaries for example, and what is causing them to misbehave and to rebel and to push back and to have trouble.
And also his work was so beautiful because it helped us understand that we absolutely have the ability to influence small humans, kids without relying on external controls. So fear, force intimidation, threats, yelling kind of the autocratic style of parenting ways which are very natural to so many of us. It’s be, and that’s because so many of us grew up with that, right? So we saw it modeled to us for 18 years, parents who didn’t know what else to do. So they use the autocratic model. So where that was like, hey, my way or the highway, you do what I say, if you don’t do what I say, there’s gonna be a price to pay.
And that usually came in the area of pain, shame, humiliation and emotional or physical hurt. And then often the goal was to make a child feel scared of either a consequence or scared of a parent being disappointed in them. And so that was the classic model, right? And so Rudolph Dreikurs came around, came along and his work was just beautiful to help us learn a different way. And he proved to us that it is possible to do it a different way to influence human beings with integrity and dignity and firm kindness. And then, and then also he just helped us understand why humans do what they do. So when it comes to needs, there’s four different categories that are kind of the biggest, the biggest ones, the need to belong, the need to feel powerful, which is the biggest one for strong-willed kids often, although belonging I think is a close second, the need to feel valuable, feel like they’re part of the team, like they’re heard, like they’re understood.
And then the last one is the need to feel unconditionally loved and there’s many, many more needs that he teaches about. But those are the four that I kind of look at at a consistent basis. And often when a child is lacking in the needs department in any one of those areas, and then again for strong-willed kids especially that need to feel powerful bucket, then there will be misbehavior, there will be pushback, there will be defiance, there will be rebellion, and there will be strife within families, there will be disconnection in relationships. So what happens with strong-willed kids is a lot of times, and we’ll we’ll talk about this in greater detail in a little bit, but the patterns that we get into as parents, were actually tipping these kids buckets all day long with the strategies that we use to influence them.
So they end up having a real lack of the sense of power. And because these kids have such a strong desire to feel powerful, that is really where the biggest problem happens. And that usually is the biggest contributing factor to why strong-willed kids often get in trouble so much have such misbehavior are often the ones that are getting punished the most, which causes the disconnection in relationships. Like it’s just one big snowball effect. But I just wanted to touch on that psychology piece because we just really wanna make sure we understand that strong-willed kids aren’t, they’re not, you know, they’re not just being pains in the butts, they, they actually are, they’re like, their brains are trying actively every single day.
They’re, they’re, they’re looking like where can I feel powerful? Like I feel settled in my soul when I have opportunities to lead. I feel settled in my soul when I’m able to be in charge, when I’m able to, you know, have someone listen to me and follow my way and I’m I, and there’s all these different ways that you can feel powerful. We’re gonna get into that, you know, some of that inside of this episode. So it’s, you know, being feeling powerful does not just come from bossing people around. It does not just come from being the biggest and you know, biggest person in the family who can tell everyone else what to do. Like that’s not power, right? So power actually comes from a lot of different ways and that’s what we wanna lean into because that is what is underneath our strong-willed kids.
Like they are just constantly trying to get their needs met and their need to feel powerful is like the biggest one that they’re just like actively scratching every day. Like they’re looking all around where am I gonna feel powerful? Where am I gonna feel powerful? And most of them are just having these buckets that they’re just getting tipped all day long. Does that help to understand a little bit more about the psychology underneath human behavior and understand why these kids push back so much? But you know, as far as when you stack a power search season of life power, that’s a lot power surge, season of life on top of a strong will, that’s what often breaks a parent’s back.
And that’s when I see a lot of parents, it was my story and I see a lot of parents who are in my membership program called the Fresh Start experience. That’s when they finally raise their hand and say, I need freaking help. Like I’m gonna lose my mind. I can’t do this. So just know that, you know, sometimes as people are listening to me talking about strong-willed kids or I ask them like, has your kiddo always had a strong build? They’re like, eh, not really. Like he didn’t start like really having issues until he was like five or six, which you know sometimes yeah that that beautiful strong will can just come out a little bit later and sometimes it just means they’re in a power surge stage of life. And there are so many ways that you can work with your kiddo to dissolve power struggles, which I actually have a class that I teach on all about like how do you dissolve power struggles with integrity, which is essentially when you ask your kiddo to do to do something and they say no.
So put on your shoes, no, do your homework, no like buckle your seatbelt. No, sometimes they just say silently nothing. Which then they act like they don’t even hear you or acknowledge that you are actually asking them to cooperate. But yeah, just wanted to make sure I lay that out. There are strong-willed kids, some of you are like, yes, this kiddo I have felt like you could just feel their spirit is very strong. They often are just way different than their siblings and then other times they’re just in a power surge stage of life. So before we bury our heads and mourn over the next 15 to 18 years of our life is going to be horrible. I have good news for you.
As I mentioned, I really believe that having a strong-willed kid is actually such a blessing. These kiddos with these types of personalities often make incredible leaders and are usually pretty darn courageous and naturally have a strong ability to stand up for what they believe in. So one of my favorite positive parenting advocates and bestselling authors of all time, her name is LR Knost, she wrote a book called Jesus the Gentle Parent, as well as like I believe five other books now about connected firm and kind parenting. But she reminds us that the same traits that we describe so negatively in our strong-willed kids are often viewed as positive leadership traits in adults.
She states look at some of the common characteristics of adults who are world leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, innovators, world class athletes and alike, decisive, determined, persistent, authoritative, confident, valiant, gutsy, committed, resourceful, non-conforming and bold, crazy, right? So note that the characteristics are the same but the characterizations are negative when applied to a strong-willed child and positive when applied to an adult. So if, you know, I always like to think of it as kind of my favorite heroes in the world, right?
So we all have our favorite people. Mine, like my top three really, I guess I have four, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai and Jesus. Like these are people that I’m like for sure they had a strong will, they were decisive, they were determined, they were persistent, confident, committed, like all the things right? And they changed the world and thank God that they never gave up on their mission. Like God used their strong will for good, right? He used their persistence and their perseverance and all those beautiful traits to really create radical positive change.
So it helps me to think of that. And I know we all know this, right? Like I know you know irrational in our rational brain we’re like, of course Wendy like yes we know that these skillsets in my kid are gonna be used for good later in life and how do I get through these toddler years or these young adult years or teenager years, wherever, whatever season of life you may be in right now. And it’s a journey and I really do, I, I think at this point we’re five years in for, for from me founding fresh start family and again having the honor to serve and support families all over the world. And it really has become something that I feel like I specialize in now because I just believe that when these kids have the, you know, the right support and the right mentorship in their life, then there is beautiful things that can happen in our world when these kids don’t have great mentorship, when they are taught with pain, shame, humiliation, when there is like physical and emotional harm that gets inflicted on them when they make mistakes, when they go for what they want, when they use their voice in an unhealthy way as they are learning life skills, they really can create some pretty intense havoc on our world and within our family units when that happens.
So I just am such an advocate for parents who raise their hand and say, yep, I’ve got one of these kiddos and I’m gonna commit to learning how to work with them instead of trying to make them change. So let’s keep, keep going for a little bit here about other characteristics of stronghold kids that coincide with characteristics of adult leaders. So, and this is absolutely accurate when I look at these descriptions like when it comes to my daughter, these are a hundred percent of these are directly in line with who my amazing Stella is. So number one, they’re typically highly creative and intelligent.
They’re usually passionate and intense in their interest and beliefs. They often have an insatiable need to know why. They typically learn by doing, they tend to have an intense need to test the status quo. They’re typically highly perfection oriented but often that is focused on their expectations of themselves instead of others. They tend to need high levels of validation. They usually have an intense need to be heard. They often have a strong need for emotional safety. They tend to be resistant to change unless they feel like they have some control over the change.
They are often highly sensitive and they are typically intensely focused on their latest project or interest. They tend to be very conscientious and highly committed. I always say strong-willed kids have huge justice buttons. Like they care so much about equality, they are usually intensely independent. So as you’re thinking of your strong-willed kid right now, whether they’re 3, 7, 8, 16, does some of that ring a bell to you? Like when I look at Stella, I’m like, dang man. Even from a very, very young age, she was so creative and intelligent, she always had like a very strong entrepreneurial bug.
She would sell anything from rocks in the front yard. There was times she wanted to sell rocks and it was like a Monday morning and I’m like, kid, you’re crazy. Like you’re not gonna sell rocks. And she made six bucks one Monday morning when some grandma was walking by and wanted to buy these little rocks that Stella had painted or these little gems that she had gotten that summer. And she just always was creating these businesses and just was really outside the box, you know, so always so passionate and about and intense in her interest and beliefs. Like when she wanted to do something she really went for it. I remember there was a a time in kindergarten where they were tasked with making Valentine’s Day boxes.
Like you were supposed to make Valentine’s and then Valentine’s boxes like these little Valentine’s and then boxes with a hole cut in it and then everyone would go around and give each other Valentine’s. Well that day she, that week we had that homework assignment, she was in this phase where she would rip out these huge pieces of paper and put like a little heart and a medium heart inside the big paper and that’s what she wanted to do as her Valentine. And I was like honey, but it’s never, it’s never gonna fit in the box. Like you know, see that little little hole like you, you wanna make these really small to hand out to your 20 classmates because it’s never gonna fit in the box. And she just went back and forth with me and she was like, no, this is gonna be big.
I don’t care, I want them big. And then she said to me essentially in like her little five year old word, she almost said this verbatim. She said, mom, when are you gonna understand that I’m never gonna fit in the box? And it was such a pivotal moment for me and she didn’t mean it like that, right? She wasn’t this profound like mother I am never gonna fit in the box. Like I’m unique, I’m different, right? But she was referring to like, Hey this what I’m doing is not gonna fit in the box mom, just let it go essentially. But it was very like very pivotal for me cuz I was like, dang, you’re right. Like I need to stop trying to make you fit in. Like what is that saying? Like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and instead just support you for who you are.
Like that’s the season when I started to learn about how to support her as a future leader instead of like try to make her stop trying to lead. If you’ve ever heard of the book Lean In by Cheryl Sandberg, she was like the CEO of Facebook for a long time. But she said at one point she has a quote that something to this extent, she says that every young girl at the age of five or six who was told she was bossy instead was taught to lead the world would be a different place. And so at that point I started to work with Stella like, hey, when you’re on the playground and these kids think you’re bossy, like here’s some different ways you can try to lead the play game that you wanna do.
Like instead of giving commands, try to ask questions, right? Like just lots of stuff, different stuff we started doing at that age. They typically learn by doing strong-willed kids. And this is for sure Stella, they because they have such a strong opinion and natural consequences. I teach about this in our like all of the different lessons we have about discipline, but natural consequences really work well for strong-willed kids because you can tell ’em 50 times to put their their shoe on because they’re gonna stub their toe riding their scooter and many of them until they freaking stub their toe, they don’t really take it in, right?
And not advocating that, you know, I teach about this in discipline, it’s like natural consequences are really beautiful and of course we’re not going around like always just allowing our kids to like ding themselves up. But it’s just a great example of like, they make a lot of mistakes, which is why compassionate discipline is so important. Because if you’re constantly nailing these kids with like stop it, you know, now you’re gonna pay the price because you messed up equating bad with mistakes, using shame, fear, force intimidation, physical and emotional harm, threats, spanking all the thing. Like they’re just constantly in this cycle of getting in trouble.
So learning how to teach them to learn from every mistake that they make and make a different choice tomorrow because they’ve learned from the mistake is just one of the tickets to really helping strong-willed kids. And we’re still gonna get into this secret, you guys, I haven’t forgotten about our title of this podcast episode, which is the secret to getting strong-willed kids to listen. So after we, we kind of go over all of these typical character traits of strong-willed kids, I will hop right into the secret, but the need to have this intense need and test the status quo Stella again like has always been really good at just challenging the system, so to speak.
And a lot of strong-willed kids are the ones who have the courage to step up on stages, to use their vice voice for good. They often are the organizers of the peaceful protests. They’re the ones who as some amazing leaders have said it, get into good trouble in order to advocate for change, all these types of things. They are typically highly perfection oriented. I can definitely say that this is something that I’ve seen in Stella as a very high level volleyball athlete and also like a very high level drummer. She’s competitive for sure, but she’s very focused on expectations of herself. So usually when I pick her up from volleyball practice, even though she’s in like the highest level of club volleyball here in San Diego, she usually will say that she’s unhappy with the, the way she played that day or if she is like playing, you know, for many years she was in a band, they’re just really hard on themselves.
And the perfection orientation, which actually is like a really interesting conversation. Perfectionism is often related with shame, but it’s, it’s just this drive that strong-willed kids have strong-willed kids are actually very susceptible to high levels of shame, which again is another reason why it’s so important to like learn this work, to teach them with integrity and empowerment instead of like the classic came downed stuff and then this intense need to be heard. I’ve definitely seen this in Stella over the years. It now has turned into like a healthy, very healthy she’ll often say to me, especially if we’re having a disagreement like, Hey mom, you know, do you just understand where I’m coming from?
And that’s something that I’m all like, now that I’ve been doing this for a long time, 99.9% of the time I’m able to say to her, absolutely and I still need a minute or I’m still really upset or I’m still like working through my own emotions about this and you know, I’ll talk to you in a little bit after I, I take a bath or a shower, whatever it is. But they definitely, they, they have this intense need to be heard. They often have this strong need for emotional safety because as I said, they are very susceptible to shame. And as one podcast guest, I forget who it was one time, but as they said so beautifully strong old kids actually seem to be allergic to shame.
Like shame penetrates them so deeply and affects their life so deeply that it just can really toxify their day-to-day like just existence on this planet. So, which is just another reason we wanna, we really wanna stay away from using any type of shame tactics as we parent them. And then holy smokes, are they resistant to change unless they feel like they have some control over the change? Or I will say if it’s their idea, if, which is why it’s so important to teach kids when you’re setting firm boundaries and rules and limits, which we talk about inside of our firm and kind parenting blueprint.
But you really wanna make sure that you’re explaining why you have such strong rules and boundaries in your home. Because otherwise you’ll lose the strong-willed kid if you can help them understand why that rule about them wearing the helmet or going to bed by 9:00 PM or eating vegetables at the dinner table is actually good for them. They are so much more likely to comply and cooperate and listen. They’re often highly sensitive. Stella definitely back, especially when she was really young, she would get so upset if like she was too hot. There was a season where, gosh, it feels like it was like three years where she could only wear stretchy pants, she would not touch anything.
I hear this all the time from strong-willed kids that I, parents of strong-willed kids that I coach inside of my programs. I mean certain underwear tags, like so many times strong-willed kids have sensitivity or sensory issues too. And then they’re just very focused, as I said, on their latest project or interest. There was so many times Stella went like knee deep. There was a season where she was so committed to making slime and selling slime that every single birthday, every single Christmas, she would take all of her money from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and she would only buy slime ingredients and then she would spend all of her time making videos and like it was just adorable and maddening.
If you’ve ever had slime in your house and then conscientious and highly committed Stella and all strong-willed kids, as I mentioned, this justice button is a very big deal for them. So this is why so many of them have a lot of trouble with sibling drama, sibling conflict, sibling rivalry because they will sniff out if there is any unfairness. And so this can be really frustrating as a parent because I always, I always tell my kids like, life isn’t fair, right? Like there’s a lot of times where there’s just inequality as far as like a day-to-day lifestyle. And I always tell Stella, and I want you all to tell your kids too, I am so grateful that you have such a huge justice button.
I have a good friend who’s a lawyer in New York City and she is just a beast when it comes to fighting for the rights of people who have been severely harmed by big pharmaceutical companies. And she’s just incredible. But you better believe Rupel has an incredibly high justice button. You can see like it just gets under her skin to know that anybody is not receiving fair treatment or has been harmed but not like compensated or no one’s like made an effort to make amends with them. So it really drives her work in this most beautiful way. And then again, independent Stella has always been very independent, even to the point of where the night she came home from the hospital.
So after the emergency C-section, we were in the hospital for a very long time, we were there for like five, six days and we got home and she cried the entire first night. I thought I was gonna lose my mind. And finally at 5:00 PM Terry was like, honey, I’m just gonna at 5:00 AM did I say PM 5:00 AM he carried her into her room because you know, like most parents, we had like the little side side of the bed thing and we were gonna kind of teach her or have her sleep next to us like most people do for the first three or four months with their tiny babies, their newborns. But Stella was like, no. So he carried her in her room and he put her in her crib and she went instantly to bed.
And from that night on, Stella slept in her own crib from the night she came home at the hospital. Now that’s rare, right? Like, and I think it just speaks so loudly to the fact that this is how a lot of strong-willed kids are. Like they’re just intensely independent to this day. Like I always joke that at 15 Stella could move away and probably get a scholar college scholarship to play beach volleyball at UCLA and totally be fine. Like yes, of course she still needs her mama, she’s still a kid, but she could probably totally be fine like moving away and like thriving in college already, right? She will be my kid who probably goes halfway across the nation or the world to go to college just like her mama did.
I grew up in Maryland and ended up, you know, going to the other side of the country to go to, to go to college at San Diego State University. So anyways, you guys get the idea, okay? So by now I’ve painted the picture of the strong-willed kid. So many of you who are listening are like, oh, okay, I do have one of these kids now Wendy, tell me the secret to getting them to listen more. And it’s very simple and it’s also easier said than done. And that is give them more power. Okay? I have a, I have a reel about this and I’m gonna make sure I put in the show notes page. And also you guys, by the way, all of what I’m speaking to today, I’ve designed in a written downloadable format that also comes with worksheets and a planning guide and some beautiful principles to help you apply some of the, the strategies that I teach in order to empower these strong-willed kids in order to get, you know, more cooperation and better listening from these kiddos in the world.
And you can grab that at freshstartfamilyonline.com/free. Okay? That free learning guide also comes with an invitation to a class that I teach about. It’s called basically What to Do I Say When my Kid says, no I Won’t and You Can’t Make Me: five positive parenting strategies to dissolve power struggles with integrity. And you’ll get an invite to that workshop and then you’ll also get that downloadable guide, that learning guide that is yours to keep and instantly accessible once you go check it out. Okay? Freshstartfamilyonline.com. But the reason why I say empowerment is the, is the answer is the secret is because so many people are pulling out their hair thinking that with strong lulled kids, if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.
And this is exactly how I used to thank you guys. So back when Stella was little, I had an incredible mentor and positive parenting teacher at the time and she would say to me, Wendy, like, when are you gonna learn to stop telling Stella what to do? This is one of the strategies I teach, which is kind of to switch compliance statements into empowering questions. Not open-ended questions because open-ended questions often leave parents in permissive bill, but really empowerment based questions. But I remember when she said to me like, Wendy, what are you gonna learn to stop telling Stella what to do? She hates it. Like, you actually need to give her more power. I just remember thinking Susie, if this girl, if I give her more power, she’s gonna think that the world revolves around her.
Like she actually needs to be put in her place, she needs to listen, she needs to cooperate because I said so. And Susie would just laugh at me and she’s like, good luck with that. It’s not gonna happen. And thank God I listened because giving Stella more power in every season of her life was the answer. I remember when she was in kindergarten and thank God we watched the documentary, the Race to Nowhere. If you haven’t seen that, I highly recommend it. But she would challenge us about homework and she’d be like, there was tears, there was drama. And we watched that documentary and we realized like, oh my goodness, okay, this is actually not something we need to push.
This is something that we probably would rather lean into getting Stella time in nature, healthy meals, early bedtime. Again, she was always so sleep sensitive, she was, she if she got hangry, oh my goodness, lookout world, because she needed to be like, if you were 30 minutes late on a meal, Stella would be like melting down. But all these other things that we decided we were gonna focus on and we from a very young age gave her a choice with the homework and we said, Hey look, this feels like you’re going, going to school all day, you’re doing a great job. And then you come home and you’re expected to sit down and memorize sight words and do more like, do you want to do this tonight?
Or would you rather us just focus on reading and we’ll let your teacher know that we had you climbing trees and that you got to bed at a decent hour? And that we chose to make learning fun and enjoyable through reading. Then focus on just the, the projects being home. And she many times, nine outta 10 times would choose like, Hey, I’ll do a little bit, but I’m not gonna do the whole thing. So like in that scenario, we just started working with her from a very young age. As she got a little bit older, it turned into basically like listening to her when she had some ideas, right? Like the, the morning she wanted to sell rocks out front is a great example where I think before this work I’d be like, no, we’re not going and sitting out front and selling rocks like I’m an adult.
That’s never gonna work, right? But instead we would like lean into her crazy ideas and be like, you know what, sure, what’s it gonna hurt? We’ll go sell rocks. Or the day that she wanted to have a drive through in the neighborhood, she called it, she called it Hot Grills. It was so funny. And she made a poster and she had daddy bring out like the portable grill out front and she, we like allowed her to be the boss that day. And she had her little brother who was like in charge of pouring lemonade and I was in charge of marketing and daddy was in the main cook and she just got to like essentially like tell us what to do all day. And the neighbors ended up loving it. They like drove by and was just laughing and she made them come in a car like you couldn’t walk up to hot grills.
And then that turned into like, okay, well how are we gonna work things out when there’s a conflict, right? When you’re having this behavior, when discipline needs to happen? Which of course is all the stuff I teach within my programs here at Fresh Start Family. But all of that stuff started to really lean into the empowerment of like, hey, it’s not just gonna be me controlling you through fear, right? Threats. If you don’t listen, I’ll take away your iPhone. If you don’t listen, you’re going in timeout. Like do that again and you’ll get a spanking. Like that’s all the external stuff that I was trying before I found positive parenting and holy smokes, did it not work with her?
That’s the cool thing about strong-willed kids is they often raise their hands and say, hell no. Like those of you who have strong-willed kids, you’ve probably seen the difference when you try to put them in time out versus when you try to put your other kid in time out who’s like a little bit more easygoing, strong-willed kids, revolt or you know, like if you lay a hand on them, like thank God they raise their hand and scream bloody murder because it’s just not okay. It’s not the way we were designed to influence other human beings, but all of that stuff like compassionate discipline, the way we communicated, the way I started to empower her, right? Like you have choices instead of like, another quick example just to give you one is like, I started changing the way like, you know, I remember giving like warnings when we left the park.
Like, okay, five minute warning, well five minute warning, never worked with Stella. Like when it was time to leave, no, it was always like a nightmare and it it, before this work I would always have to move to a threat like get in the car or else you’re not gonna have Paw Patrol when you get home or whatever it may be. So like one simple shift that was so easy back then I remember it worked like freaking magic, but it was based in empowerment was, Hey, do you wanna leave now or do you wanna leave in five minutes? And even though she may not, and she always chose five minutes, and even though she wasn’t always super pumped to leave in five minutes, it made such a difference because she was the one who had decided she was gonna leave in five minutes.
So all of it is just based in empowerment and still to this day, like, you know, she’s a normal teenager, there are times when she makes mistakes or it’s just normal, right? Like, I don’t want anyone to think that positive parenting leads to perfection in homes. It just leads to healthy, thriving relationships where your kids learn to have intrinsic self-control, they learn to learn from their mistakes, they learn to take responsibility when they’ve been outta line and not defend, deny blame, justify, lie, hide, cheat, steal, like it’s just beautiful.
But now at 16, you know, there’s different things that we do to empower her and it’s all the same. Like, so empowerment really is the secret you guys to getting strong-willed kids to listen. And you know, when you head on over to freshstartfamilyonline.com/free, you’re gonna see that I have a full worksheet and really an extensive learning guide where I’m also gonna teach you a step by step way that I have where you can change your paradigm. You can start asking questions versus giving demands. You can start practice setting limits and sticking to them with compassion and consistency versus threats that’ll make a big deal with your kids.
That is basically a four step program or four step, what do you call it? Like a, a step-by-step way of setting limits and following through with consistency that is life changing within itself. So you’ll learn all about that and together, that’s just gonna give you a really great start. Like a quick start, I call it. It’s called a Quick Start Learning Bundle, where you’re just gonna be able to feel a little bit more empowered and you’re gonna feel a lot more hopeful, a, that you’re not alone in raising these powerhouses of human beings. And B, there is so much that you can do to change the way that you’re seeing them, the way that you’re working with them, the way that you’re communicating with them and the way that you’re disciplining them, that is gonna cause you to have a massive increase in peace, joy, connection, and cooperation in your home with your own little, beautiful, strong-willed kid.
So that’s what I got for you today, you guys, thank you for being part of this conversation. I really do see and admire every single one of you who is raising a strong-willed child. I know that it is a much higher level and degree of difficulty than just your standard kid and you’re doing a great job, okay? It’s tough some days and on the days you lose it, I want you to find a Fresh Start Family Show episode to just push play and listen to remember every afternoon, every evening, every new morning is an opportunity to fresh start, to start fresh.
And what I have to teach you is going to change your life, but you just gotta get started. Okay? Listening to this podcast is a great first step, but I really want you to go grab that free Quick Start Learning Bundle so you can download that extensive learning guide right away. How to raise Strong Load Kids with Integrity without losing your mind. And then also receive that invitation to attend my Free Power Struggles Workshop where you can just hop right in to a workshop style learning environment with me that is going to change everything. All right, you guys. Well, thanks for listening today and I will see you soon inside of your Quick Start Learning Bundle and also inside the next episode.
Thanks for being here.
For links and more info about everything we talked about in today’s episode, head to freshstartfamilyonline.com/170.
Stella:
For more information, go to freshstartfamilyonline.com. Thanks for listening, families, have a great day.
