When dealing with children, adults can very easily fall into the battle of wills game. This is the least favorite game of parents, guardians, and teachers the world over. My brother, Rob is the champion of this game. One of the stories that is often in shared to show just how far he is willing to push this game goes something like this.
He was attending Special Needs Preschool. The teacher was working with him on pulling up his own pants after going to the bathroom. Well, Rob was not having it. One day he went potty and came to the door of the bathroom for the teacher to help him pull up his pants. His teacher told him to pull up his pants. Rob refused. The teacher refused to pull them up. He stood in the bathroom doorway until my Mom came and picked him up. I do not know how long he stood in the doorway with his pants and underwear around his ankles, but it was obviously long enough that the teacher was very frustrated. Rob on the other hand could have cared less, he was fine to just stand there and wait for someone to do their job (Rob believes that everyone in his world has specific jobs that they do to take care of him) and pull up his pants. He is still very much like this he will not want to do anything unless he wants to (we all fall into this at some point). He takes it to the next level as the previous story shows. We have learned to negotiate around the situation and hopefully (at least most days), we do not fall into the battle of wills. We are not always successful, but we have fewer instants were we both end up frustrated if we take the extra time to not turn the situation to always turn it into a battle of wills game. What do we do to help mitigate these situations, we give choices. Only choices we are willing to accept. We discuss the order of events and what the expectations are. We support each other and encourage each other to step back when a situation is moving into that battle. We have found sometimes it takes a different person asking him to do something. We have also learned that to ask him to do something then walk away. We have learned that it takes time to do these things, but the key is to always support each other. |
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Diana Atkinson, Administator:According to research done by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dealing with this level of stress can “make it harder for staff to serve as models and meet the needs of children and families” (Whitaker, 2013, p. 1). Archives |