EDUCATION TERRIBLE CHILDREN

summing up

The terrible child is not used to tolerating frustrations, he does not know desire because everything has the characteristics of need, he does not live in expectation because what he can imagine must be immediately available and quickly consumed. He is a child whose temperament is difficult. he is confused by his parents as firmness of character while instead it is nothing more than the symptom of his vulnerability, because if the magical and omnipotent world in which he lives cracks, if everything does not go as he wants, he tends to isolate himself or, more often, to have crises of despair.
What adult will he be? With the absence of ideals that detach him from the simple material possession of things, he will tend to live in the dimension of having rather than in that of being. He will be dominated by boredom because he will lack the mental space of desire and, convinced that everything is due to him, the waiting will frequently be replaced by the concrete satisfaction of the need, no matter how and at whose expense. He will be an adult incapable of true affections because he does not tolerate the responsibility that these entail; he will have little capacity for self-criticism and little autonomy, starting many things but, at the first failure, giving up and attributing the responsibility of the never happened to himself but to the environmental circumstances and to others, towards which he will accumulate resentment and of which he will continually feel himself a victim.

Prevention

Parents must share a mental space in which to situate their child and his future, they must think together about how they want him to become, that is, to choose an educational line together. Together does not mean that one must passively accept the other's project but that both must find a compromise between two different characters. A good result does not depend on being rigid or permissive but if, once the style has been chosen, it is applied consistently with deep conviction. Furthermore, in front of the child, one of the two parents cannot be rigid and the other permissive, because in this way he would be allowed to avoid obstacles by taking refuge with the more "good" parent, nor should he be allowed something that until then it was forbidden because it feels good, or vice versa, to forbid something that until then was legitimate because one "has the moon askew". The child must never think that the permits or prohibitions are the consequence of the state of mind and of the mood of the parents, but he must think that they are laws, which they too obey. If a measure taken by one of the parents is not shared by the other, it must still be supported by the latter, because the educational discrepancy is the worst of evils.
The punishment or the reward must always follow the promise and must be adapted to what caused them; otherwise, according to the logic of the child, credibility is lost, therefore trust, which is the basis of his emotional security, is lost.
Finally, parents must actively participate in their child's life and listen to him.
Grandparents may allow themselves some differences from their parents' style, as long as it is not excessive, but they must never make the child think that the parents are wrong.

What to do if the terrible child has already established itself?

The first attitude to take is to never compete with him: whoever did it would have already lost at the start, because the child would not miss the attempt to prove his superiority, and this is a weakness. To be credible towards a child you have to be sure that you are superior to him, it is not necessary to try to prove it to him: if we do it, we do it for us, because we are not sure. From this it follows that, if he provokes us, we must always tolerate him or never tolerate him according to individual ability, but we must not tolerate him several times and then explode when he can't take it anymore, because at that moment he won. , he feels very strong, magical and omnipotent, even if he takes them. In fact, it is not uncommon for me to say: "You didn't even hurt me" without shedding a tear. It is much more productive to intervene cold, when we understand that if we continue to play the game of provocation we will end up exploding. In this case we will not run the risk of being too heavy in the punishment and the crying effect will not be due to physical pain but to the moral one of frustration, which has an educational value.
Secondly, we must know that, if we want to start changing things, paradoxically it is better to start with those in which we are less involved, because only in this way could we be consistent. It is useless to try to change the behavior of a child if the parents are the first to be convinced that they can insist and resist in their project. It is useless, for example, to try to accustom a child to sleep in his bed if he lives in an apartment building with thin walls and, shortly after the baby cries, he hears his neighbors knocking on the wall. The parent must start with less engaging, everyday things, on which he is sure he can be consistent: from the success of these tests he will understand better the way forward and will fortify itself in its role.