Raising a high maintenance child
Do you have a high maintenance child?
“Thank God my second child wasn’t born first. I would have stopped at one boy if it was my first,” a mother said at a recent parenting seminar.
Many parents can identify with this feeling. Nature has a way of evening the score for parents. If you have an easy firstborn, hold on to your hat because the second, third, or fourth child is likely to bring you back to reality.
Most families have one child who takes up more of the parent’s time, energy, and mental space than others. These high-maintenance kids engage in all kinds of misbehavior to keep their parents busy or in their service. They may whine or whine to get their way. You may be interrupted just as you have started a conversation or settled down to chat on the phone. They may even embarrass you in front of your friends or start pulling the cat’s tail just as you decide to nurse a younger sibling. They can be whiners, self-indulgent, argumentative, bossy, and just plain stubborn.
And what’s worse, they are often just high-maintenance kids to their parents. Take them to daycare, preschool or school and the demands for attention are drastically reduced. “How was she today?” you ask when you pick up your child at the end of the day. You feel downcast when the adult in charge replies, “No problem. She was great!” But what’s worse, you know that when you get home the demands on your time and attention will begin and won’t stop until she (or you) falls asleep.
High maintenance kids are demanding, infuriating, and exhausting. They also occupy your time and energy that you would like to devote to your other children. You would love to spend more time with Perfect Pete, but Turbo Terry, Argumentative Aaron or Whining Willemina are still doing the things they do so well.
So what is the solution? What is the cure? That is hard. There is no magic pill for parents. Yes, some children diagnosed with ADHD are regularly given a pill in the form of ritolin. These little pills have become very popular over the last decade as the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has increased dramatically. Only recently, as a community, have we begun to question the wisdom of keeping a supply of this medication for children. None of my children have had ADHD, so I wouldn’t dare point the finger at any parent who must live with a child with full blown Grade A ADHD. Hats off to his dedication and persistence as he must develop this if he wants to live with such a child.
But most high-maintenance kids don’t fall into this category. Many just need to be removed from the care of their parents. We become so adept at responding to these children’s misbehavior that attending to them becomes habitual. So try to break the habit of paying attention when they misbehave. That is hard. When they want your attention, do something completely different. But be prepared for his attention-seeking stuff to escalate. it always does. Ignore the whining and it will increase in volume. Ignore a child’s constant interruptions while on the phone and prepare for a deafening scream to deal with or even a mess to clean up. It is the parents who usually experience the consequences of a high-maintenance child’s behavior. That’s the way of high maintenance kids.
But you have to change your own way of reacting so that your child doesn’t enjoy keeping you busy with him or her. Most parents never do this because the reactionary habit is ingrained and the behavior will escalate, so we will give up in the face of increasing misbehavior. Bad behavior will usually get worse before it gets better. It’s the norm when it comes to high-maintenance kids. This is why they are so difficult to breed. Alternatively, you can continue to give them a ton of B-grade attention when they’re less than perfect and I have a hunch they’ll still grow up to be well-adjusted adults. It is only you as a parent who is struggling in the meantime.
