WHAT IS A STRONG-WILLED CHILD? What is a strong-willed child? How did he or she come to be that way? How can parents nurture the positive aspects of their child’s strong will, moderate the negative aspects, and not act and react in ways that make a challenging situation worse? These are some of the questions this book answers. Every child has willful moments. A child may feel injured, scared, or otherwise upset by something that has happened and go on strike against parental instruction. "I can’t! I won’t! Leave me alone!" screams the child, who becomes lost in the emotion of the moment. Because the child’s feelings have overwhelmed his thinking, parents must help him calm him down before they can expect him to follow directions. Although all children can be strong-willed on some occasions, some children are much more intensely so, and more often so, than others. Strong-willed children are not different in kind from other children; they differ only in the degree to which need for self-determination rules their life. But degree makes an enormous difference. Toxicologists will tell you that, in most cases, the poison is not in the substance; it’s in the dose. A tiny amount of arsenic in your drinking water does you no harm, but a significant amount can be lethal. The same is true with willfulness. For most parents, occasional willfulness is tolerable, but continual willfulness can create a problem as it quickly gathers shaping power of its own. The more often a willful act achieves its objective, the more powerful willfulness becomes. Now is later. If a child repeatedly acts strong-willed now and gets what he wants, then through habit he learns to be even more strong-willed later on. Practice makes powerful. What this girl or boy must be taught is how to manage a strong will growing up so that it works for—and not against—them in adult life. Strong-willed children become strong-willed adults. Remember that how your child learns to act now affects how he will act as an adult. Parents can (and should) continually ask themselves the preparation question, "Is the way our willful child acts in the present how we want him to behave as a future adult?" If not, then teach him now how to manage his willfulness so that it will benefit and not harm him later on. A strong-willed child is hard to handle but is easily managed. He is hard to handle because his wants are so strongly felt and delay or denial of wants creates so much frustration. But he is easily managed because parents control so much of what the child wants and so learn to bargain accordingly: "For you to get what you want, you must do what we want first." There are some times when most children are strong-willed, and there are some children who are strong-willed most of the time. This book offers advice for parents of both categories of children.