What Your “Difficult” Child Is Trying to Tell You

Dear friends, what exactly is a “difficult child”? Or better yet: is there even such a thing as a “difficult child”? That’s the question Martha Wirtenberger has spent a lot of time on. She has worked for more than 20 years as a psychosocial counselor, mentor, and author. Her focus is mental health, building resilience, and supporting adults, children, and teens, as well as the people close to them. For us, she wrote down her thoughts on “difficult children” and how we deal with them.

What We Can Learn From “Difficult” Kids

We hear it all the time, in the media but also in conversations on the bus, among friends, or from neighbors: “That kid is just so difficult!” In this article, I’d like to tell you what bothers me about that statement and how we can learn to see things in a very different way.

Whenever a child doesn’t behave the way we’d like or hoped (usually that means calm and polite, studies hard without a fuss, has lots of interests and likable friends), we can recognize that this child needs something different. Sometimes a child’s behavior points very clearly to what isn’t right. Kids notice an enormous amount and feel things deeply. They’re often very smart and sensitive, and they want to be seen for who they uniquely are.

So maybe it’s up to us adults to look at the child from a different, maybe even brand-new angle? Today I’d like to share five things, based on my experience and perspective, that we can learn and recognize:

When a child pushes you to your limits, recognize those limits

What do I mean by that? Sometimes we simply have unrealistic expectations. We want X from our child and, because of something we did, we get Y. Kids often sense exactly what goes unsaid. Maybe we can check in with ourselves about where exactly we stand. Are we building up pressure? Do we want to steer the child in a certain direction? Or do we just hold the firm conviction that “it has to be this way and no other way!” What if we kept making time to reflect on our own behavior?

“Difficult” kids often show us what’s underneath

When a child gets loud and restless, is fidgety, or digs in and refuses completely (homework is often a good example), we can look past the behavior itself and ask what is actually causing it.

Are we calm on the inside, or are we carrying around tension and nervousness that may be rubbing off on the child? Or does the child simply need to relax right now, and a little more time to settle into the situation?

Figure out what the child really needs right now

“Difficult” kids might be the ones who can’t sit still (or can’t help it), who always talk back, are sassy or disrespectful, provoke often, refuse to learn, or don’t sense their own limits.

They often have no other way to tell us something than through behavior that stands out. When we tune in to each child and build a real connection, we usually understand better what the child is trying to say.

At heart, a child always wants to learn, is curious, and can be excited about things. If that isn’t the case, maybe they need different methods, or maybe the child just doesn’t feel well. The better we know the child, the clearer it becomes whether the behavior only shows up in certain situations, comes in phases, or is getting more intense. The child wants to communicate and is showing us what they need and where their needs aren’t being met.

Question whether certain systems or structures fit

Taking point 3 a step further: some kids feel completely at home in a certain setting, while others withdraw, get “behaviorally creative,” or react in ways that can tell us a lot. School is a great example! Plenty of kids love going to traditional school and learn with joy and enthusiasm.

Just as many kids can thrive better in a different kind of school or education. To be healthy, and stay healthy, over the long run, children need an environment where they can unfold, and where their potential is seen, recognized, nurtured, and supported. What if their behavior is sometimes showing us that something simply doesn’t “fit”?

More closeness, more breaks

Some so-called “difficult” kids need a lot of physical contact, can’t really feel themselves, and are restless, sometimes even aggressive. Very often, in my experience, these kids are trying to say, “Please hold me!” They either go and get their cuddles themselves, or they send out a cry for help through their acting out, asking for more attention.

It can also be a sign that they’re completely overwhelmed and simply need some relaxed downtime. We adults can learn from this, too: to give ourselves more rest and to give ourselves some credit. The relationship, and the feeling of security and safety, is so important if we want to read the behavior correctly, understand it, and support our kids in the way they need and in the way that helps them.

It’s also important to remember that we always get to choose what we consider “difficult,” and whether we really want to look closely and understand. Becoming aware of it means, of course, that we learn and grow right along with our child. How we act and react is always up to us, and the more we open ourselves to the child’s world, the better we can understand and recognize what’s going on.