And a child who asks if he can have a friend over if he cleans up his
room may be proposing a straightforward and legitimate deal. But if
you’ve ever heard a parent say, “The only time my son’s ever nice is
when he wants something,” that person is probably referring to the
butter-up tactic.
- Physical Tactics: Pow! Whack! Bam!
From a parent’s perspective, this form of testing is perhaps the worst
strategy of all. Here the frustrated child may physically attack an
adult, break something, or run away. Physical methods of trying to get
one’s way are more common in smaller children who don’t have well-
developed language skills. When the use of this type of testing
continues beyond age four or five, we begin to worry. Some kids have
a long history of this kind of behavior, and the bigger the child gets,
the scarier their use of physical strategies gets.
For example, some parents who use time-outs tell us that their
children sometimes physically attack when the parent is trying to
escort the child to the time-out area. Some children become quite
ferocious—kicking, biting, scratching, pinching, and hitting while
yelling at the top of their lungs.
Other frustrated, physically oriented kids will smash or break
things—sometimes even their own possessions. One ten-year-old boy,
for instance, was sent to his room for fighting with his brother. The
door to his bedroom happened to be shut when he got to it, so he gave
it one of his best karate kicks, cracking the door down the middle.
Another boy smashed a coffee mug on the tile floor in the front hall
of the house. Unfortunately, one of the larger pieces of the mug went
flying into the glass storm door, which shattered.
Another physical testing tactic, running away, is not used a lot by
younger children. Threats to run away appear more often in kids
under seven. One seven-year-old boy used a different version of this
idea on his mother, who had just denied his request to go outside. The