As a fellow parent and teacher, I’m all too familiar with the preschool power struggle. You ask your child or student to do something seemingly innocuous, and they decide this is it - they’re going all in and refusing to do what you’ve asked. Maybe you ask them to sit on the rug, or pick something up. They yell “no!” and dig in their heels. You ask nicely, you remind them that they’re almost kindergarteners, maybe you try to bribe them, but nothing is working. Now you’re in it - the mighty preschool power struggle.

We’ve all been there, and depending on how much sleep you got the night before, and how the rest of the day has gone, your patience might be wearing thin. You’re probably sighing; maybe you’re yelling. At some point I assume you closed your eyes and took a quick deep breath.

Why do they do this? Why is it that some days this child is the most helpful little angel, and some days they seem to love the thrill of the fight?

As a parent, teacher, and licensed behavior analyst, some days it really does seem like kids wake up and choose violence for no reason at all.

But, why? If you can answer this question, then you’re well on your way to solving the mystery of the power struggle.

If you can’t, here are some tips from your friendly, neighborhood BCBA:

1. Start with the essentials. Is your child getting sick? Have they eaten? Did they sleep enough last night? Are they too hot? Too cold? 
2. Next, look at what their activity level has been. Did they just spend way too much time on an iPad? Were they keeping it together all day at school and let it all out when they get home?
3. Once you’ve considered the physical, medical, and environmental variables, start trying to identify a pattern. 
• Does this behavior typically occur after school? Before dinner? In the morning?
• Does this behavior typically occur after you’ve asked your kid to do something they don’t want to do? Or told them they couldn’t do something they wanted to do?
• Does this behavior typically occur only with certain people but not with others? For example, does your kid let loose on mom but not dad? Will your student listen to the teacher but not the assistant?
4. Now look at your behavior. What is your typical response? Do you give in to avoid the fight? Do you yell and double down? Do you respond differently each time?

The “why” behind your child’s behavior, though not always immediately obvious, comes down to one simple truth: that behavior works for them! We all engage in behavior in ways that get us what we enjoy or like, help us avoid or escape things we don’t like, feel good to us, and allow us to connect with others. Behavior is repeated because the consequences are desirable. That means that the result of the power struggle is desirable to your child in some way!

Once you’ve started exploring the “why” behind your child’s need to fight with you, you can start looking at how you can prevent these power struggles from happening in the first place. No, this doesn’t mean your life will suddenly be all rainbows and butterflies, and it doesn’t mean that you need to walk on egg shells around your kid for the rest of your life. It does mean that in order to replace this behavior with something more appropriate, you need to break the pattern of reinforcing it. 

To break the pattern of reinforcement, you want to:

1. Figure out what the trigger to the behavior is. What typically sets your kid off?
2. Figure out what the heck is reinforcing this behavior in the first place. What consequence is causing this behavior to be repeated?
3. Try to avoid triggering the behavior whenever possible.
4. If you do trigger the behavior, change your response to avoid accidentally reinforcing that behavior - that means you need to be self-aware enough to control your own behavior and respond in a way that is less desirable to your child. No, that doesn’t mean “punishment” and time-outs. It means you have figured what is causing that behavior to continue (maybe it’s getting out of doing something), and ensuring that once your kid has calmed down, they still need to complete at least part of that thing they didn’t want to do.

Once you’ve started avoiding the drama and breaking your own response pattern, you can start to teach your kid replacement behaviors. These are the behaviors that are more socially acceptable than the one that usually ends in tears, yelling, and sometimes thrown desks. 

It’s important to note that we’re talking about behavior, not a magic wand, which means that this is going to take baby steps; time, patience, and consistency are key here. This is not usually a quick fix (though sometimes it is), and sometimes you’re going to find yourself too tired or overstimulated to deal with it all. And that’s ok.

The secret sauce to teaching your child more appropriate replacement behaviors is as follows:

1. The most important thing to do is to make it fun! Make the learning into a fun game that your child will enjoy. 
2. If your kid is upset, they are not ready to learn. Make sure teaching time happens when your child is happy, relaxed, and engaged.
3. No lectures. Keep it short and sweet. One tried and true method is to break down the skill into smaller steps, and review those steps with your child. For example, if you want to teach your kid to join into play with peers, how would you break that down for them? Here’s how I would do it:
1. Approach peer
2. Ask what they’re playing
3. Ask how to play or how to win
4. Say what role you want to play or say you’ll play the winner during the next round (I like to avoid asking for permission to play when teaching social skills to kids who struggle socially, kids can be mean and will often say no)
5. Stay and play

Once you’ve reviewed the steps, and maybe added little pictures to go along with each step, you can role play. First, you demonstrate for your child so that they can tell you if you followed all of the steps correctly or if you missed something. I like to purposefully mess up so the child can correct me, and also see how silly it looks when important steps are missed. Then switch roles, so that your child can practice the steps, and you can tell them what steps they may have missed.

4. When you catch your child using these skills in the natural environment, outside of direct teaching time, praise your child! Make a big deal out of it! Make sure they know how proud you are of them!

Obviously, joining into play is not a super relevant example when you’re dealing with power struggles, but it is an easy one to outline the steps for. To replace refusals, you’re going to want to teach your child to negotiate, and then to tolerate being told no. Now, this can of course get complex depending on your child’s skill level and severity of response to being told no (that’s where coaching or ABA therapy can help). Here is a quick and dirty example of how to teach your child to negotiate. Now remember, you’re going to want to teach them something that you yourself are able to tolerate. If your child’s appropriate attempt at negotiating with you is going to set YOU off on a power struggle, well, then you’re going to hit a wall.

If you are the type of person who is willing to teach your child to negotiate, read on.

1. Teach them how to ask appropriately not to do something. For example, if you want them to pick something up when asked, rather than their typical response of screaming “NO!” Or melting down, or whatever their messy response is, teach them to ask for more time. If they are still playing with the toy that you want them to put away, teach them how to ask for 2 more minutes. If it’s something that they left out but they’re now engaged in some other activity, teach them how to ask for 2 more minutes (or whatever amount of minutes - that part isn’t important - though I would say no more than 5 so that they don’t forget). Remember, we’re following the “make it fun” rules from above.
2. Agree to their negotiation, and set a timer so no one loses track of time. Once the timer goes off, follow through. Help them get started with the clean up, and praise them for having their listening ears on.
3. Keep going with this step until your child reliably responds this way outside of teaching sessions, when you actually ask them to clean up.
4. Once your child is consistently negotiating appropriately (this shouldn’t take long as they will quickly realize you are going to say “yes” when they ask for more time), you’re going to shake it up:
1. Teach your child how to respond when you say “no.” Again, make it fun. When they ask for more time, you say “no,” teach them that they should say “ok,” and then you are immediately going to change your mind and say something to the effect of, “oh never mind you can have 2 more minutes.” Do this sparingly, you do not want to say no every time. 
2. As your chid begins to tolerate being told “no,” you can begin to increase the amount of time between when they say “ok” and when you change your mind. Maybe they actually do say “ok” and clean up, you can then make a big deal out of what a good helper they were, and offer them more time to play if they choose.
3. Be mindful not to say no every time. If you want your kid to be flexible, you also need to be flexible. Two more minutes of play time probably won’t kill you, just start the clean up process earlier if you have somewhere to be on time.

Remember, this isn’t always going to be easy. Give yourself some grace and know that behavior can be tricky. If you'd like to learn more about how you can get your kid to listen to you the first time (without yelling), download the free Stop Repeating Yourself Guide.

If after all this reading, you still feel like you would benefit from additional support, sign up for parent coaching from The Behavior Place. Let's be real, this stuff can be tough, and we love to make it easier for you.