Why Is Parenting So Hard? Understanding Your Child’s Behavior, Your Own Reactions, & What to Do Differently

Why does my child’s behavior affect me so much?

Whether or not your child's behavior is in the range of normal development, we know that challenging behavior can have a real impact on your emotional well-being.

 

When you're constantly managing tantrums, whining, arguing, refusing, or other difficult behaviors, you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, anxious, angry, or completely exhausted. You might start dreading certain times of day because you know they're going to be difficult. You might feel like you're constantly correcting, redirecting, or disciplining your child and rarely getting to simply enjoy them.

 

And difficult interactions can bring up some painful thoughts, like “Why can't I handle this?”, “I'm a terrible mom.”, “Other kids don't act like this.”, “What am I doing wrong?”, or “I can't keep doing this every day.”. These thoughts can create even more stress, which can make it harder to respond calmly the next time your child has a difficult moment.

 

Over time, these tough interactions with your child can become a cycle. The cycle often starts with a child doing something difficult or refusing to do something you've asked. You respond by repeating the direction, raising your voice, giving another warning, or trying a different consequence. Your child may escalate their behavior, and you may escalate your response. Eventually, the conflict ends in one of two ways: 

• Your child escalates until you give in: Your child may learn that escalating their behavior can eventually make the demand go away. You may learn that giving in is the fastest way to end the conflict. 
• You escalate until your child gives in: Your child may learn that yelling or threats are an effective way to get someone to do what they want. You may learn that the only way to get your child to listen to you is to yell or threaten them. 

In both cases, the immediate problem may be over, but both of you have learned something from the interaction that’s not ideal. The next time the same situation happens, you're both more likely to fall into the same frustrating pattern. 

 

Please know, this doesn't mean your child is manipulating you or that you're doing something wrong. This cycle happens constantly and is an understandable pattern that can develop when two people are both trying to get through a difficult moment. The good news is we can totally change this cycle. 

 

How do I break this cycle? 

There are two important pieces to breaking this cycle: (1) how you manage your own emotions when you get frustrated and (2) how you respond to your child. 

 

First, you can learn to manage what is happening inside of you.

When your child is screaming, refusing, or pushing every button you have, your own emotions can quickly take over. You may become angry, anxious, or overwhelmed, and those emotions can make it much harder to respond thoughtfully.

 

This is where the foundational emotion regulation tools from Prospera can help. Learning to recognize and reframe unhelpful thoughts, manage anxiety, and diffuse anger and frustration can help you stay more in control during difficult parenting moments and model healthy coping strategies for your child.

 

Of course you will still get upset, irritable, and frustrated. But having an emotion regulation toolbox will help you create enough space between what your child does and how you respond that you can feel more in control of how you parent. 

 

Second, you can change how you respond to your child's behavior.

Once you're able to stay a little more regulated, you can start changing the interaction itself. Prospera teaches evidence-based parenting strategies for responding to your child's behavior in ways that make the behaviors you want to see more likely and the behaviors you don’t want to see less likely.

 

There are three skills we start with: Special Time, Planned Attention, and Consequences.

 

Special Time: One of the most important things you can do to change your child's behavior is actually to give them more positive attention. Children naturally seek attention from their parents. Whining, arguing, refusing, or acting out can accidentally become a very reliable way to get your attention (yes, even negative attention counts here).

 

Special Time is a way to change that pattern. During Special Time, you set aside a short period of time to focus completely on one child and let them lead the activity. You follow their interests, notice what they're doing, and give them positive attention without using the time to teach, correct, direct, or ask lots of questions.

 

For example, if your child is building with blocks, you might sit down next to them and say: “You made that tower really tall!” “You picked the blue block next.” “I love playing blocks with you!”

 

The goal of Special Time is positive connection. That’s it! When children regularly get positive attention for playing, cooperating, communicating, and engaging with you, they have less reason to rely on difficult behaviors to get that same attention.

 

Special Time can also change something for you. When you're spending much of your day correcting, redirecting, and managing behavior, it's easy to start feeling like your job as a parent is primarily about dealing with negative behaviors. Creating regular time to simply enjoy your child can help rebuild the positive side of your relationship.

 

You can use the Plan Child Special Time tool to make a plan that works for you and your Prospera coach is here to help you solve any problems along the way. 

 

Planned Attention: Planned Attention means learning to actively notice and call out the behaviors you want to see more often, while paying less attention to the behaviors you want to see less of.

 

Think about how often you might notice your child doing something wrong compared with how often you notice them doing something right. You may immediately respond when your child whines, argues, or refuses to clean up but barely notice when they share a toy, follow a direction, or ask for something appropriately.

 

Planned attention flips that pattern. Sometimes, minor annoying child behaviors (like whining, complaining, or arguing) actually seem to get worse or happen more often when we pay attention to them. When this happens, you can use active ignoring: stay calm and neutral, avoid engaging with the behavior, and look for the first opportunity to give your child positive attention when they pause the behavior or switch to something more appropriate. Active ignoring is not used for dangerous, aggressive, or unsafe behavior. Those behaviors require a calm but immediate response to keep everyone safe and quickly end the behavior. 

 

For example, if your child is whining while you're making dinner, you would avoid arguing or repeatedly telling them to stop. The moment they stop whining or engage in any neutral behavior, you could say: “I love how you’re waiting/playing/sitting while I finish dinner.”  

 

With planned attention, the goal is to avoid accidentally giving extra attention to a behavior you want to see less of while simultaneously looking for lots of opportunities to give attention to behaviors you want to see more of. For example, you might notice:

• “You came when I asked you the first time. That's great listening!”
• “I noticed you shared that toy with your sister.”
• “You were really patient while I finished talking.”

The more specific you can be, the better. Rather than simply saying “Good job,” tell your child exactly what they did that you liked.

 

At Prospera, the Shift My Parenting Attention tool walks you through how to use planned attention for a specific negative behavior and situation you are facing with your child. Together with your coach, you can practice identifying which behaviors to pay less attention to, what positive behaviors to look for instead, and how to respond in the moment.

 

Consequences: Many frustrating child behaviors are best handled with the planned attention approach above, however some behaviors (particularly when a behavior is unsafe, or when your child needs to follow an important direction) require a more direct response. This is where consequences come in. The goal of a consequence is to make the connection between a behavior and an outcome clear and predictable. For example, if your child throws a toy after you've asked them to stop, you might calmly put the toy away for a specific period of time. A few principles are especially important to make consequences most effective:

• Connect the behavior to the consequence. Whenever possible, use a natural or logical consequence that directly follows from what happened. If they draw on the wall, they lose the marker and help clean up. Consequences also work best when they happen soon after the behavior, while the connection is still clear.
• Keep consequences contained and predictable. They don't need to be severe to be effective, especially with young children. Choose a consequence that you can calmly follow through on. When parents repeatedly warn, negotiate, threaten, or change the consequence in the middle of a conflict, children may learn that continuing to argue or escalate can eventually change the outcome. Physical punishment, including spanking, is not necessary for effective behavior change and can be harmful to children.
• Follow through, then move on. Try not to turn consequences into a long discussion or battle. Discussing the misbehavior at length can actually accidentally reinforce it by giving it lots of attention! Instead, give the consequence calmly and consistently, and then look for opportunities to give your child positive attention when they get back on track. 

Consequences are only one part of effective parenting. The goal is to create a predictable environment where your child understands what is expected, experiences the results of their choices, and gets plenty of positive attention for doing things well.

 

Putting these skills together (and knowing you’ll still make plenty of mistakes!)

These strategies are most powerful when you use them together. Building your own emotion regulation tools will allow you to try some of these new approaches even when your child is pushing every button you have. And every time you interrupt the old pattern and respond differently, you're giving your child a different experience and giving both of you an opportunity to build a new pattern.

 

And when you don't get it right? Repair matters. You won't do this perfectly because no parent does. Every parent loses their patience, yells, or handles a situation differently than they wish they had. Coming back to your child afterward, acknowledging what happened, apologizing when needed, and reconnecting will both strengthen your relationship with your child and teach your child an incredible lesson that relationships can recover after difficult moments.