Hello, good day. I am Jibril, a young Nigerian father of an eighteen-month-old baby, Farhan. He is a cute little boy with some amazing characters. He is brave, cheerful, intelligent and interestingly defiant. So, I will talk about how I have learnt to cope with his defiance.
Defiance is a deliberate refusal to obey someone of higher authority. And this is not limited to adults only, as I have seen in my little boy. Farhan does what he wants, sometimes, not what you want him to do. And if he does what you want him to do, then you are lucky because you both obviously wanted the same thing at that time!
So, how have I come to appreciate this, rather than seeing it as a threat? Initially, it was tough. The restraint not to beat or get mad at him, considering he is just a kid. But I love my boy so much, and that drove my inquisitive spirit to do a self discovery about managing my emotions around his defiance, instead of trying to manage his character.
The first thing I did was to build a relationship with him. We kick the ball together, I repeat every gibberish he says with a vigour he so much enjoys, he sleeps on me, we do everything together! And that was where I built the first trust, I think. The friendship became so solid that he doesn't care spending the whole day with me!
While I built the friendship, I didn't let him know he was doing anything that makes me mad. His defiance persisted, but I turned the blind eye. I won the second battle, that I needed more patience too on my part. Then, I proceeded to the next stage. And that's to find out our common likes.
He likes games. Soccer and athletics are his favourites. I had to compromise a bit too, I had to like cartoons because he loved it. The bond between us became so strong that we literally became inseparable. Farhan's attitude began to change. He trusts me now, so when I ask him to do something, he thinks of the greater good that might come from it and he would gladly do it. The bond we had together made me realize his body languages. When he is hungry, he becomes so incoherent while hammering the words "I wan to din ata", of course he wants to drink water like he said, but he has defiantly chosen the word "water" to mean anything that goes through the mouth. He would rub his stomach and won't take the water, unless you give him food.
So, friendship and compromise has been winning the war so far against Farhan's defiance. Kids need trust and friendship, they want a relationship they can jealously call theirs. And when that is provided, we can all be sure of having kids with less defiant attitudes.
Defiance in children, if not carefully attended to or corrected, can lead to ODD. ODD means This behaviour makes little children to be unfriendly towards teachers in school, peers and even parents. Though, experts do not have a verified cause for this, but an early diagnosis of this behaviour can be very helpful. When kids become accustomed to being unnecessarily angry, moody or rather tend to question every of your decisions or try to point accusing fingers at others for every minute fault, then it becomes a real task as a parent to help such kids. A good family set up is a natural way to start the healing process. The family can help in improving the child's social skills by communication. And what way could you achieve that by first, building a true relationship with your kid, just like I did?
With love.