The article addresses some very important issues. If one more person preaches behavior modification to me with difficult child, I'm going to scream. It may work very well for some, but not for all, and certainly not for my difficult child. As with any type of parenting ideas, they have to be molded to the individual child. With my difficult child, I tend to focus less on the behavior and more on the issues fueling the behavior. The behavior, in her case, is a symptom not the problem. It seems a lot of people forget that. Sometimes it can be easy for me to forget that when all you witness is the behavior and I often have to remind myself.
My children are as different as night and day. easy child has always been very empathic. He was born that way. Whereas, difficult child has always been extremely egocentric. Therefore, I've had to make a conscious effort to teach difficult child empathy and to help her to see how her actions affect others. easy child has always been very sure of himself. I've never worried about peer pressure with that kid. From the time he was little, if his friends were doing something he didn't like, he would just come home. When his friends were done doing that thing, he would go back out to play. No fuss. difficult child is the exact opposite. easy child hates anything to do with learning and difficult child loves it. difficult child needs very little prompting in that department. I live it everyday and really don't think too much of the differences in how I parent my kids because I was never told from the beginning that "this is how it's done". I guess I learned on the job that parenting requires that the needs of the individual child be addressed.