Back to the basics (research): Some data and thoughts on young children's defiance

Have I told you guys what my actual area of expertise is? I don't think I've gone into any detail. I did my PhD in developmental psychology, with an emphasis on "developmental psychopathology." Which simply means that I mostly studied the factors that contribute to children developing different forms of emotional and behavioural problems (mostly problems with anger and aggression, but also with anxiety and depression). My dissertation was on the family dynamics that are associated with oppositional and aggressive behaviour in children (and also with anxiety and depression, but we'll save that part for another week). In other words, I spent a good 6 years of my training and the subsequent 8 years (eeh gad, I hate to think of how long it's been since I started...) thinking about, reading about, running studies on and working with folks who try to prevent and treat childhood behavioural problems. There's a whole lot of areas of psychology that I will easily admit to being clueless about, but this is not one of those areas. Having said that, I find it strangely difficult (BECAUSE I am so immersed in this research) to try to filter all this information into easily digestable posts that are user-friendly but still provide you with all the empirical research that you can access yourself. In other words, this is just one big ol' caveat to say that you may have to excuse me if I'm not giving you immediately the TOOLS and the STRATEGIES that you came here looking for. I'll do that. I promise (and I'll point you to some of the better resources for further educating yourself if that's what you're looking for). But first, I think it may be important to back up a bit and talk about what we know about children's oppositional, defiant, or aggressive behaviour -- where it comes from, what are some of its correlates, and the role of parents in all this. So this will be the first of two posts on those topics...

First off, as I've mentioned before, it is perfectly, absolutely NORMAL for young children to defy their parents -- to scream "NO!" at every turn, to bite, scratch, push, hit, tantrum, whine, and wail in response to a request from their parents. This is especially true of children under the age of around 4. I like to lay this out clearly from the beginning because many parents believe that somehow they have an exceptionally "bad" child, or a "difficult" kid that is so much more aggressive or defiant than other kids are. Of course there are variations in how defiant children can be -- due to a mysterious mixture of genetics and environmental factors, some kids really are mellow from birth and hardly ever defy their parents and others are extreme tyrants from the start. But the VAST majority of young kids DO test their parents regularly and act out aggressively early on.

One of the best researchers out there on the subject is Richard Tremblay at the University of Montreal. He's insanely prolific, but some of his best work has been on the prevalence of misbehaviour and aggression in early childhood. He's studied hundreds of children and families and followed them for decades and one of his most clear findings is that, IN GENERAL, most normal children are at their most aggressive and defiant between the ages of 2 and 4 years old. Here's the graph to show you what I mean -- this is from a National Survey in Canada (in other words, it's a representative sample of "regular" kids, not a "clinical" or otherwise selected sample; from Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations; click to enlarge). The same results have been replicated in many other countries. The gist is that parents report that children hit, bite or kick at the highest frequency at around mid-two years old and then those frequencies drop over the course of childhood -- for MOST kids.

One of the more interesting implications from these results is that Tremblay and many others have argued that it is actually NATURAL and NORMATIVE for young children to be defiant and aggressive in early childhood and it is the job of parents to SOCIALIZE this defiance and aggression OUT of the child. In other words, the argument is that most children come into the world with these defiant and aggressive tendencies and, without our help, these children will grow up to be defiant and aggressive adolescents and adults. They don't LEARN to be aggressive, they come that way, and we need to show them more appropriate, socially-acceptable ways of behaving in our social world. I won't get into all the philosophical background here except to say that this view contrasts with the approach of Rousseau and others who thought that children come into the world as "pure" beings, fundamentally "good" and untainted by the "badness" of the world we live in.

This all may seem too abstract, at least this last part but, for me, thinking about how we understand and interpret our children's misbehaviour can have an impact on how we RESPOND to it. If you think that children come into the world as essentially perfect beings, with "natural" ways of behaving, and natural impulses that shouldn't be quashed, you may be less likely to respond to angry outbursts, mean words or tantrums (or you might not respond by attempting to stop them; rather, you may allow your child the freedom to express himself). But if you think that kids are basically primitive little beings who are naturally going to act out, defy you and other authority figures, and lash out verbally and physically if provided the opportunity, you may consider it your job, your DUTY, to socialize these little beings so that they can function in our society as productively (and peacefully) as possible.

OF COURSE I'm presenting the sides as a tad too extreme. And most of us may agree that we want to let our children feel free to express emotions, to some degree, and perhaps curb other expressions (or behaviours). What do you think of these data? Do you have implicit or explicit beliefs about children's "natural" tendencies? Do you see any part of your job as a parent expressed in this post?

 

Comments

[Andrea]

I'm still waiting for Frances to have a temper tantrum. She's six. And every day I thank whatever powers there may be that I happened to get the most easy going child who was ever born.

(Which isn't to say that I never have to worry about discipline issues, only that aggression and defiance are not part of them. So I'm looking forward to this week.)

[anon]

What a great post. I find the philosophical end of the question very interesting. I agree that children come into the world with aggressive tendencies (the reason people are so throughly ensconced at the top of the food chain is that we're very capable of aggression.) As you said, I see it as my job to teach my kids appropriate ways to express aggression. I also think it's part of my job to teach them to deal with aggression from other people, which is much more difficult for me as someone who hates conflict and doesn't have good skills in that area. While I don't think they're born pure, I think it takes tons of patience and acceptance to get them through to a point where they can regulate their own behavior, and I don't expect them to get it right every time.

[Kelly]

Wild. My husband and I fall into the first category--we try to gently lead 2.5 year old E through her emotional upsets without quashing her "natural" self. My brother and his wife fall into the second category--they are very strict, loving disciplinarians, and seem to feel, as you say, that it is their absolute duty to steer their three boys to the straight and narrow. Of course, we are a couple of artist-type, anarchist, atheistic creative types. And they are right-leaning, law-loving, tithe-giving evangelical Christians. Somehow my brother and I both came from the same family and upbringing. (And, for the record, we all have a great time at family gatherings and such. We basically stay out of each other's way in regards to childrearing philosophy, which keeps every thing peaceful.)

I am wondering this week, if, like the sleep training guidance, that the guiding principle for discipline and childrearing (within limits, of course) is actually consistency?

[Irene]

I think it's really interesting to contemplate the philosophical stuff - do people come into this world innately good and pure, or innately aggressive and selfish.

Personally, I think it is both; we need both aspects in order to get along with people and be loved and accepted, but to also get our own needs met and be individuals. I view the toddler defiance and clinginess as flip sides of the same coin, part of the process of learning how to be a human and live with other humans.

[Flo]

I think, as Irene has put it, it's all part of the process of learning how to be human and have our needs met.

I'm so pleased that this post emphasises the normality of agression and opposition at this age.

Skills have to be learned to help us communicate effectively with others, learn to listen to others and learn to negotiate our way through life.

Until we learn these skills, agression is the only way we have of dealing with frustration.

I'm still learning and honing these skills, so my 3-year-old and I are learning together.

I feel that I've been successful in helping him when in an angry, unhappy moment he can tell me (sobbing, screaming, whatever) WHY he is being aggressive and when he can describe with words how he feels. Then we have a chance to figure it out.

Eventually I hope he will learn better ways to deal with the sometimes unavoidable anger and sadness that are a part of life.

I'm really looking forward to hearing more about your dissertation topic and have a particular interest in the anxiety/depression part of it.

Thanks again for the great post.

Flo

[Isabela]

@Andrea: Good point that discipline doesn't always have to be about defiance and aggression. It often is in the younger ages, but not always. And at older ages, there's a whole group of concerns that I hope to get to (I guess now it will be next week).

@anon: I hear you... I'm a HUGE conflict-avoider, so I have a similar parenting challenge (luckily my partner is more direct and assertive than I am in conflicts with strangers -- I can hold my own with family and friends ;-)

@Kelly: you anticipated a whole other general post. I totally agree, a LOT has to do with consistency (with some game-plan for dealing with defiance/anger/aggression) and, I would add, a loving environment. With those two things in place, I think most kids come out ok. What's interesting to me is that I think of myself as an odd mixture of you and your brother (much more you-leaning though). I'm hyper-left, atheist (ish), socialist (ish), but I consider myself also a "disciplinarian" in that I do believe in guiding my kids towards their less "natural" tendencies to share, empathize, be generous, kind, and so on. When one boy was biting, I was VERY strict about getting rid of that behaviour (with an eye, of course, to understanding the source of his frustration and anger and teaching him more appropriate behaviours to express those emotions). When the other boy, recently, teased his brother, I was quick to point that behaviour out as "wrong" and to try to change it. I consider these things in the realm of "discipline" and I don't think they learn to stop these aggressive behaviours on their own. I also think of it as my "duty" to teach my children more peaceful, gentle, and less impulsive/"natural" reactions. But I suspect you'd agree with me, so some of this may all be about terminology as well (I never really labelled myself, for example, as a "strict dispclinarian").

@Irene: I completely agree with the "both" perspective.

@Flo: Also, totally agree. And yeah, I'll get to more of the "internalizing" issues (anxiety/depression) in later posts. I'm so glad you're interested.

[Cloud]

Interesting post.

I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I think very few, if any, kids come out truly "bad", as in with behaviors and motivations that we'd tend to identify as "evil", but that most kids also have incredibly poor impulse control and also lack the skills to come up with appropriate ways to handle their emotions. So I tend to focus on teaching my daughter skills to handle whatever emotional upset is causing the tantrum. Or that is what I try to do. Frankly, sometimes I fall far short of my ideal.

I'd be interested to know your opinion on the common technique of teaching a kid to hit a pillow or something to handle anger. I don't find that it works for me- if I hit something, I usually feel even angrier. But so many people I know use this technique, so maybe it works for others? (I do get excellent stress relief from physical exercise, and from kickboxing in particular, which I never have been able to reconcile with the effect of punching a pillow.)

[Isabela]

@Cloud: I gotta run to pick up kids, but wanted to comment before I forgot: There's good evidence (which I don't have at my figertips to link to) that, as your intuitions tell you, the hitting-the-pillow technique actually INCREASES anger and aggression, not decreases. The hypothesis that it's cathartic and therefore releases all that pent-up anger and tension has been shown in several studies to not actually hold. Remind me to post those studies...