Why You Keep Arguing With Your Kids and How to Stop

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

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Mandy Grass (0:30)

This episode is brought to you by IXL. September means we are officially back in school, and this is usually where I start to see where each of my kids might need a little bit extra support. With the kids in our home ranging from kindergarten to junior and high school, that obviously looks a little bit different for everyone. That is one of the reasons I love IXL. It's personalized, so instead of guessing what they should be practicing, I can give them a targeted skill based on where they are. As a former teacher, I also love that the kids get immediate feedback, that they're actually learning as they go, instead of just finding out later if something was wrong. And IXL covers math, language, art, science, social science, Spanish, from pre-K through 12th grade. So it basically works for everyone in our home. Make an impact in your child's learning and get IXL now. And The Behavior Blueprint podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com/behavior.

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Okay, we've all been there. Your kid asks you something, you say no, they ask why. You explain, then argue, you explain again. It's getting loud or now you're annoyed. They accuse you of not letting them do anything. You start to defend yourself. Ten minutes later, you're arguing about something that barely resembles the original problem. The original function might have been like access to something, but at some point it switches and it's not about the thing anymore.

That's what we're talking about today. We're talking about power struggles, our behavior, and your kid's behavior has a function and so does yours. If you are sick of being in the cycle and you find yourself sucked into it regularly, we are going to go through some tips and tricks to get out of these power struggles. So this is The Behavior Blueprint podcast. I am Mandy Grass. I'm a behavior analyst and a parent coach, and today we're talking all things power struggles. Hi, I'm Mandy Grass, the family behaviorist, and these are three of my favorite little humans. Hi. Hi, mom's podcast. Let's do this. Let's do this. This is the Behavior Blueprint where we can figure out why kids do what they do.

SPEAKER_1 (2:23)

Is that why parents yell sometimes?

Mandy Grass (2:25)

Sometimes because parenthood is messy, behavior is complex, but with the right blueprint, we can figure it out together.

Okay. I've heard two analogies when it comes to power struggles. One is tennis and one is tug of war, but the premise remains, put your racket down. You can't play tennis with one person. I guess you can't against a wall. You definitely can't do a tug of war with only one person. So in order for a power struggle to exist, there has to be two people engaging in this power struggle. And so we can't exactly control the behavior of our kids, but we can control ours. Funny story, when I wanted to name my business, I was talking to my boss about what I should name it. And she was like, you should name it, it's you, not them. And I was like, I don't think it's a really good idea to insult parents off the bat, and that it's insulting to just you because it's me as well. Like I get sucked into power struggles regularly. I joke that I don't realize it until I'm four exchanges in. But here's the thing, we can change our child's behavior by adapting how we are responding, and our response is based on the function. So we are really going to get into like the why this is happening and what to do instead. So when we're doing this power struggle, when we're doing this tug of war, somebody keeps pulling the rope. Why are we doing this?

You know, pull, because I already told you so. You're pulling back the other way. Well, that's not fair. Pull. You know what's not fair? The fact that every time I tell you, like now we are like fully in this tug of war, we need to put our rope down. We need to take a breath and put our rope down.