I have two sons. One who is easy going, happy and was fairly easy to raise and the other who was born angry. I remember him screaming every two hours for food from day one. If my second son had been born first he may have been an only child. Techniques that worked for my oldest son did not work at all for my youngest son. If you are raising an angry child, I want to start by saying don't loose hope and don't be lazy! I pushed, dug in my heels, studied, cried, supervised, prayed and was exhausted often. My recovered angry child is a now great dad, a successful business man and a great son.
My girlfriend has raised a similar child but she let him get away with angry attitudes. She felt he was just not a morning person. He is now in and out of jail and she is raising her grandchildren and the battle continues. My wise mom told me to pay now or pay later and boy, was she was right! Don't loose heart! You are raising a leader who will do amazing things given the right direction.
On a typical day during Elementary school years, I could expect a scowl as a response to my cheerful "Good morning" greeting. No matter how I responded, I could expect defiance attitude to any request he did not agree with, irregardless of how cleverly I approached the issue. I personally hate conflict and it would be easy to let this go but I decided that creating a respectful attitude began at home and with family. I wanted to have a peaceful home!
My son and I began facial expression training. Yes, we stood in front of the mirror and made faces. "Show me what a mean face looks like. Show me what a crazy face looks like. Show me what a sad face looks like. Show me what a happy face looks like. Show me what a silly face looks like". This was a 15-20 minute project. We were both laughing hysterically and went into our day with a much better frame of mind. The next day we were back in front of the mirror making faces. This went on for a week.
The next week I decided it was time to add association training part 1. Make a happy face. This is the face I expect to see when you come out of your room in the morning. If you do not have this face
your assignment is to stand in front of the mirror until you are able to produce this face. I greeted my son with "Good morning to my happy face son." If he did not have a happy face he was either sent or accompanied to the bathroom to look in the mirror and produce the happy face. "Which face would you say this is?" "Show me the crazy face and now the happy face". The goal was to be able to give the direct instructions of "I expect to see the Happy face" without a fight! .
My son was extremely stubborn and I remember holding his face so he could see in the mirror until I saw a change. I talked him in the afternoons about how I was training him to be a leader and the first person he had to lead was himself. Leading yourself is the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. If you can get good at it, you can do anything you want.
When my son and I approached the mirror over the following weeks, I talked about how he was going to be my great leader. I also talked about how strong he was because he could lead himself and there were grown ups that couldn't even do that. I read books to him about leadership and introduced him to great leaders at church and in the community. Leaders have the ability to change the world.
We did the training for 6 months to a year without missing a morning. This attitude change I was attempting to instill was too important. Remember when I told you about my girlfriend? She did the training with me, however, she skipped the fun week and went right into the change your face week. There was a huge power struggle and she gave up the fight on week 2. Needless to say her grown son still greets her with a scowl and rude comments.
I also did ton of voice training in a similar fashion which I can write about in a different blog.
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