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  1. Hi, and thanks for this great article! I wonder if you could explain a bit more about the things you wrote in #6. I understand what you mean by the statement in bold, but I’m having trouble understanding how the text below relates to that statement.


  2. Hi Karen,

    Parents can look to their own behavior to determine if they may have inadvertently contributed to conditions that result in an angry outburst from the child. The author gives two examples of this, the first being the parent not providing plenty of advance notice of transitions from one activity to another. In the second example, parents at times may give in to a child’s demands just to quiet him in the moment. Doing this may result in the child using the same kind of demands to get what he wants in the future. A consistent approach by the parent may help reduce outbursts from the child.

    – The Attached Family

  3. Item number 6 in my article urges parents to spend more time in “proactive parenting” rather than in “reactive parenting.” A child’s resistance or use of hurtful words is a symptom of something else. If we put more emphasis on determining and fixing the root cause of the challenging behavior, it is less likely to happen and may even stop. I am always asking parents to examine what it was that caused the child to scream the hurtful words. It is often a direct result of a parent using demands, commands, and orders with little or no advance warnings. Children do not like sudden change and neither do we adults. Because children get easily “lost in the moment” of what they are doing, a tantrum, meltdown, or even an outburst of hurtful words can occur. But if the parent learns to ease children into transition, these outbursts are less likely to occur. Thank you ATTACHED FAMILY for the explanation. Thank you everyone for reading my article.

  4. Near the end of the article it mentions how our parents lived in a different world, time. What this article fails to mention is they still need to be treated like any other child, with discipline. Now I’m not saying beat them, the choice of punishment is up to the parent, but there should be consequences to their actions, not just the parent blaming themselves for the child’s behavior. I have GOOD control of my two autistic children, because I treat them like any other child would get treated.

  5. Hi Scott, thank you for reading the article. When I wrote that we were raised in a different time, what meant was that autocratic parenting was the normal style of parenting, which allowed for punishment, control and spanking as common tools. Today we know that all three of those tools are ineffective in raising resilient children. And I agree with you that consequences should be used instead of punishment, but the logical consequences should be respectful, reasonable, directly related to the infraction, AND teach a child responsibility. I also like to encourage parents to avoid controlling their children and instead, use methods that teach children self-control. Thanks for taking time to comment.

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