Managing the Defiant Child Transcript of Speaker PERSONALITIES Now, I'm going to in a little while give you a little more specifics on how to deal with certain situations such as homework, peer pressure, arguing, and other items like that. But before I do, I'd like to switch gears a little bit and bring Sharon back, because one of the things that makes this program a little bit different from others is that we have a personality survey that we include in this program. And the theory is this: that we all have different personalities. For example, if you have more than one child, you know that they all respond differently to different consequences and different rules. So you really need to know the personality of your child to really customize the discipline program that you want to set forth for them. I myself have three children, and I remember that my oldest son, Carlo, whenever I said something to him, when he was small and he was a child and when he was a teenager, he would always agree. "Mow the lawn." "Yes, I will dad." "Do your homework." "No problem, dad, I'll do it. As a matter of fact, I did it already." My son Michael, sometimes he agreed, sometimes he didn't; and I had to be a little more forceful with him. And my daughter didn't listen to anything I said. So she was and I think because we were the same personalities we were always at odds with each other. So I had to make adjustments accordingly. So the idea is is that every child is different, and there is no one single program that says one 1
shoe fits all. And that seems to be the problem with most programs. We've taken this program a step further, and we've devised a personality survey. And you can click on the personality survey and take the survey as if you were your child. And you would figure out what kind of personality that your child has. And then you could look at the personality profile and find out what they do and what's best for them their desires, their motivations. PERSONALITY SURVEY So, I'd like Sharon to come up and get a little more specific with incidents. And she'll explain the personality survey and the different personalities that we've found that are for each child. SHARON McCARTHY Thanks, Tony. I know you already know your children real well, and you really don't need us to tell you that all your children are different. But we're going to go over briefly right now and, again, Tony said when you go online you can do this certainly at your leisure, certainly more in depth. But the four main personality types The first one is what we call the director, and you may recognize this in some of your children. They're restless; they are daring; they like to take risks; they tend to be argumentative; and they tend to be demanding. If you have a child in your home like that now, the first thing I would say is don't yell at this child, because they're first reaction when they get stressed out is to yell. So if you yell at this child and stress them out, 2
they'll yell right back at you. And you're going to get in a screaming match, and you won't get anywhere. Also, don't attack their character. They're very, I would say, sensitive about how people look at them; and it's very important to them to be looked at properly. So, if you attack their character, you'll go a long way in dissembling the relationship you have with them. Also, directors are the type of children that really need that sense of control; they really need that sense of power. So the language patterns that Tony referred to before about the illusion of choice in the questions, that's the great pattern to use with directors. Another kind of child that you may have in your home is what we call an influencer. You know your influencer because they talk all the time. When they come home from school and you ask them what they did today, you get what they did today, who they did it with, who was there. They're very social. They're very optimistic. And they tend to be very impulsive. They are very sensitive. You don't want to reject. If you recognize this style in one of your children at home, you never want to reject them, and you don't want to isolate them. They thrive on people contact. However, a good motivation consequence for them is grounding. Where some children you don't want to ground because they love being by themselves, this would really blow an influencer away to be isolated by themselves. So it may be something that you can use to motivate them to get them to do what you want them to do. A third personality profile is the stabilizer. You know this child. They're very consistent. They're very loyal. They're very into their family. They like talking about their aunts and their grandmothers. They like looking at family pictures. They're also 3
very predictable. You can kind of because they like to do things the same way each time. So you can most often predict what they're going to do next. They need time to change. So, for instance, Tony said before about when it's dinnertime and some of your children are watching TV, and you go out and you say, "Okay, time for dinner, let's go." And no one moves, and you say it louder. A good thing to do with all children but stabilizers more explicitly is give them a warning when you're going to change something. "Okay, dinner's going to be ready in 5 minutes. We'll be turning off the TV then. Okay, three minutes until dinner." And then when it comes time to do the change, they know it's coming, and they're ready for it. And you'll have a much more agreeable child with you. The fourth style that we talk about is called the perfectionist, and what we call them says it all. They're very analytical. They love details. They love information. When you're telling them a story, they're going to ask why, why, why, why all the time. Perfectionists tend to be very critical, and one thing they're critical of is themselves. So, if you have a perfectionist, a little perfectionist child at home, don't criticize them. They already when they've done something wrong, they beat themselves up inside so much about that that they don't need to hear it from you. They've already done that job. So, again, you can go online to get this more in-depth and, you know, look at what personality type you think your child will be. And there's a lot more information on there about it. And here's Tony back to give you more specifics. 4
So we think that it's important to know the type of personality that your child is and to sort of customize the discipline according to how they react to you. And this is an important piece. And if you need more information, you could go to the website or you could email me personally, and there will be information that's going back and forth, and we could help you out, particularly if there's something personal that you'd like to email. We will treat each thing with confidentiality and give you an answer as soon as we can. 5