Flip the switch on your response to childish behaviors

Let’s face it oppositional defiant behaviors aren’t fun. For many, thoughts of walking through a pit of rattle snakes seems more attractive.

Compounding behaviors with friendly advice received from well-meaning neighborhood experts can add insult to injury; leaving you headed to the garage for the snake-bite kit. But running to the pits isn’t always possible. Besides there’s hope for those facing challenging behavior issues.

What if how we engage, think about and respond to defiant behaviors changed?

Engage means purposely becoming involved in conflicts you willingly enter. What if we reserved the right not to enter particular behavioral battles? What if there are epiphanies capable of creating paradigm shifts in rationales surrounding oppositional behaviors?

A functional paradigm shift radically changes ideas and embedded beliefs making room for new possibilities.

Responses are verbal and behavioral actions displayed as direct results of environmental factors, thus altering the power external stimulus are able to exert over us.

What if behavior really is communication? What if we expound this by stating most defiant behaviors are attention seeking in nature, wearing oppositional disguises? What if knowledge really is power?

We could respond methodically to behaviors instead of overreacting, empowering ownership of behaviors, demonstrating there’s hope for positive changes.

Something recently happened at my house starting me thinking, “If we’re not careful, we allow others’ behaviors to control us like a light switch.”

My wife was gone on a deserved respite. I was home alone with our boys. Josh, the middle child, decides to act testy while mom’s gone. I admit he won some battles, but let me tell you about the revelation that allowed me to win the war.

It was a school morning and Josh was difficult, refusing to wear any shirt besides a Louisville Cardinal shirt. I instructed his brother to go to school, so he would not be late and I would figure out the dilemma.

Suddenly. Josh emerges from the laundry room wearing his sacred Cards shirt and his finger going over each letter saying, “L-O-U-I-S-V-I-L-L-E.”

In the intensity of the moment, I decided to ignore the behavior. After they leave for school together, I’m feeling good about my choices.

A few hours later, going about the morning, it happens. I look up from my desk realizing something’s wrong with my fish tank. The lights on, but filters aren’t running, heaters aren’t on and there’s not the usual stream of bubbles rising upward. It dawns on me someone’s turned off the light switch controlling most of the aquarium’s devices.

Now, I’m mad. Wonder who would run the risk of killing my fish? Josh the equalizer of course!

Thoughts flood my mind of how to properly respond and not lose the earlier momentum. But how do you continue ignoring a passive aggressive behavior and protect my fish investment? Before I start getting angry I decide to imagine appropriate responses.

Slowly walking to the aquarium, to think, I had an “aha” moment. All the aquarium accessories were on a surge protector, except the light in the top outlet. Guess what controlled the outlet with all the aquarium accessories on it — the light switch.

So I simply switched the light and all the accessories from the bottom to the top. Now, whenever “the equalizer,” attempting to provoke me, turns off the aquarium accessories he will be only turning the light off. Problem solved. And I never said another word about the aquarium issue.

I discovered putting the lights out was an attention-seeking behavior. The fact that turning the switch off no longer provokes my emotional attention reshapes behavior. Kind of like how I changed what was plugged into the outlets; thus, controlling what the switch was able to turn on and off.

Take control of your responses and you’ll do more than turn aquarium lights on and off — you’ll empower children in your world to measurably change their behavior.Lights out to the fish aquarium problem and more power to everyone choosing to take the control out of out-of-control behaviors.