How to Build Rappo with ‘Di icult’ Kids

While I mainly work with adults, I have also worked with “at risk” kids. These are kids who display behavioural problems, like lashing-out at school, and often (but not always) come from difficult backgrounds. At heart, they’re usually great kids.

As a young fella, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I was an “at risk” kid myself. I can certainly attest to the fact that it’s difficult to concentrate on school when you don’t have food in your belly, or when you didn’t get much sleep due to the fights in your household.

But even children who aren’t “at risk” can exhibit behaviours that are really difficult to deal with. Some of the ways we can build rapport with challenging kids while still keeping strong boundaries are as follows:

1. Seeing the child as an individual. Kids aren’t a blank canvas for us to paint on: they’re unique individuals with their own interests, and inner worlds just as vivid as our own. Paying attention to individual traits and interests makes children feel seen for the individuals they are.

2. Creating a safe space. Our job isn’t to determine if our kids’ problems are big enough to matter, our job is to listen without judgement and provide a safe space for the child to share how they’re feeling. They can be experiencing challenges that to us seem completely insignificant from our perspective, but it’s important to remember that they are real to them. Raging hormones and a prefrontal cortex (the decision-making part of our brain) that isn’t fully matured also play a part.

3. Teaching kids that their feelings don’t have to determine their behaviours. This is something we all have to learn eventually, and something I still remind myself of quite often. You can feel a certain way, and allow that feeling to be (i.e. observe it as though it’s “interesting”, because it doesn’t hold any power), and then choose how you will respond. The part of our brain that feels emotion is completely separate to the part that drives behaviour.

4. Building psychological safety. There are plenty of ways you can build psychological safety, but one of the easiest ways is by encouraging kids to ask questions and share ideas, and by being consistently approachable and calm when they do. I will never forget in Year 3 or 4 of school when a teacher asked the classroom: “What are some other names for police officers?” I put my hand up and enthusiastically replied, “Cops!” She responded that I was disrespectful and that she hoped one day I’d need the police and they wouldn’t come. (I think she might have been expecting answers like Sergeant, Constable, etc… who knows?). For the rest of that year, I avoided answering any questions.

5. Being consistent and fair with rules. This means not having rules for the sake of it (which makes your life harder, too), and ensuring that the rules apply equally to all, and they apply at all times. It also means being careful with promises and consequences: don’t make a promise you can’t keep, and don’t threaten a consequence if you won’t follow through. In a heated moment, I once told my daughter that I’d throw her iPad over the fence if she didn’t stop doing whatever it was she was doing. Let’s just say that didn’t end well for me.

6. Don’t let a child’s ‘flip-out’ lead to you ‘flipping out’. This is related to Point 3 and is a constant challenge for me personally and for many of my clients, as old habits die hard. I am constantly practising observing how I feel, allowing that feeling to be, then choosing how I act. I don’t always get it right. It’s important to be willing to work on ourselves rather than assume all problems lie solely with our kids.

7. Praise qualities they can continue to grow Constantly praising a child for innate qualities such as telling them they are “pretty” or “smart”, can lead to a lack of focus on the skills they can actually build and rely upon their whole lives –like effort, determination, courage, honesty, and kindness. If a child is constantly told they are “smart”, what happens when they fail an exam, or when another kid does better than them? Often, they decide they are actually not smart at all, so they lose confidence and sometimes give up completely. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with complimenting a child for innate qualities. If you’ve done this, don’t fret, but it’s really healthy for kids to focus on the qualities that they have some level of control over.

8. Model gratitude. Instead of questions such as, “How was school?” to which kids always mutter an unenthusiastic one-word response like, “Good”, teach them to reframe their day. Once your child has had some time to settle, ask them a question over dinner like: “What was something fun that happened today?” It’s a simple exercise that helps them look for the positive in each day, and avoid rumination. By asking these kinds of questions I’ve learned things about my kids that they’d probably never have thought to tell me otherwise. Who knows, it might just become the highlight of your day.