My Misbehavior Experiences III

When a child enters the magical age of teen-hood, does their ability to think rationally automatically switch off? Any time my 14 year-old daughter and I disagree, I realize how bullies behave. She is abusive, defines her life by the event at hand, and must have her way regardless of the cost. I would characterize her frame of mind as a blind rage. As I read Ruby Payne's book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, and several of her articles, I recognized similarities between my daughter's thinking and behaviors and hidden rules among those in poverty. I think these are common to the adolescent phase. Some kids are more demonstrative than others.
In her fit-of-rage, as I lovingly call it, she is believing and acting on three things:

1. No sense of anything else but the issue at hand: forgotten our relationship
2. No sense of the future; living in the moment: forgotten other good things in her life
3. No sense of how to solve the problem/conflict: yelling and abusive language is her only resource

So, the big questions are: How do I manage the moment? and How do I train for the future?
In the heat-of-the-moment:

1. I remind her of our relationship. I am not her enemy and I want to help her find a win-win solution. I try to help her find what she is really afraid of and how we can work towards a solution.
2. I remind her of long-term benefits and consequences. I try to help her visualize the future in a positive light and look past the conflict that fills her whole field of vision and see the hopeful things beyond it.
3. I remind her that hurting me won't get the result she wants, but the opposite. I describe another approach that could get the results she wants.

Training for the future came as the opportunity presented itself. I would talk to my daughter as we cleaned the kitchen after dinner about what I felt when she yelled at me, and how she could have approached the situation differently. I would talk to her about how I deal with the rage I feel towards others when I don't get what I want. I realize that as a parent and a teacher I have to be more proactive and intentional in equipping my kids, both at home and in the classroom, to solve problems with effective, win-win strategies.
I'm not much on role-playing, but it might fit in a lesson on conflict management skills.

1. Students can begin the lesson by writing about a conflict they have seen or been a part of.
2. I can show a video clip of a TV show or movie conflict.
3. Students can work in groups and talk about what the problem is on both sides of the conflict, how they are trying to solve the conflict, if their solution will produce the results they want, and if students can come up with a different/better strategy for both sides.
4. Then have students role-play their strategy.

In the third step, having students look at both sides helps me as a teacher see how they perceive the authority/stronger side of the argument and how I might approach the situation differently and more effectively. OMG, I need to ask my daughter if there is a better way to respond to her that would help her response. Always learning!