Most parents would agree that ignoring an obnoxious child is the best choice, but it's not always so easy. Learn how to ignore obnoxious children in this parenting video.
Don't reinforce tantrum
Speak in calm voice
Reinforce positive behavior
Dr. Ferrara has worked with children and adult survivors of abuse for over twenty years in CT, NY and FL. She is currently in private practice in Tampa, FL and affiliated with the University of South Florida as adjunct associate professor.
DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA, PhD: Hello, my name is Dr. Felicia, the parent coach and I'm here to speak to you today on how to ignore an obnoxious child. Now an obnoxious child is really, really difficult to ignore but they didn't get that way overnight. Usually children learn behavior patterns. What happens in the initial, say tantrum that the child might have in being obnoxious, you let it ride and what happens you give in to the child and you give him whatever toy or food or activity they wanted in the first place. As soon as you reinforce that tantrum, they're going to become more and more obnoxious as they grow older. The problem is bad enough when they're say 5 and 6 and under but by the time they get to school and socialize, that obnoxious behavior is going to carry over into school then you're going to have a problem with the teachers and with their friends, etcetera and they'll be getting into fights. So what you want to do to ignore that behavior is you'd never reinforce the behavior. You put them in their room until they calm down and talk reasonably. You want to make sure that they're in a room where they're safe and they don't have things they can throw if they're having a tantrum and things that are going to hurt themselves. You want to make sure they're in a safe place when you give them that time out. But also that obnoxious behavior, you can refuse to talk to them just simply do not respond and then you only respond when their voice calms down. That's a very effective method. It's worked in many cases. I've worked it with my own children and my own niece and nephews. When someone is obnoxious you want to ignore it. You certainly don't want to respond in the same way and start a shouting match back and forth because that becomes ridiculous. There's nothing positive that comes out of that. So you want to make sure that you calm your voice and then the child has to calm down to listen to your words so in the end you will have--I've had this happen myself with a niece who is obnoxious and I refuse to respond to her and it went on for several minutes and then finally I guess she realized she was getting nowhere, calm down and she ended up apologizing to me saying, "I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened. I just lost it." Now that's easy when they're older. When they're younger, you must model the behavior of soft tones and talking nicely. With that in mind, I hope you can ignore your child's obnoxiousness. Again, ignore it, give them a quiet place to get into a better frame of mind and then when they are in a better frame of mind, give them a hug and reinforce that good behavior. Good luck. That's a hard one.
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