Andy Hall wrote:

On 2007-10-08 11:52:43 +0100, (Steve Firth) said:

Andy Hall wrote:

On 2007-10-08 10:42:47 +0100, Stuart Noble
said:


IME if teenagers behave like 5 year olds it's because at 5 they weren't
allowed to behave like teenagers.

That's profound....

Indeed and very true. My wife's a psychologist, and as she says when we
see some teenager having a strop with their parents "Oh look, another
badly behaved parent." Parents mostly blame other people, usually the
child, but mostly it's the parent at fault when things break down.

I think that there is some truth in that. The question is then in
what way do (or more likely did) the parents misbehave?

Well, again, according to the mighty SWMBO, mostly it comes down to
inconsistency and weakness on the part of the parents. She counts
"thrashing" or even slapping of children as signs of weakness or
inadequacy. Most kids learn that if the parent talks tough or dishes out
physical punishment, such punishment is of short duration, applied
inconsistently and unfairly and usually means absolutely nothing other
than as a way of relieving the frustrations of the parent. The same
applied to the shouting and hysteria of parents when faced with a child
who refuses to obey.

The most serious punishment that can be applied to a child is to ignore
them. We had a whole day of stepping over one (ie. our) child who threw
a tantrum. After about 8 hours it was obvious that no one would pay the
slightest attention to that tactic and when normality resumed *then* we
gave the fuss and the care wanted. I cant recall it being tried more
than once.

If it was *did*, then the question becomes what, if anything can be
done about it - i.e. does raiding the museum help?

Like all things it's easiest to avoid the problem early on, remedial
action takes huge amounts of time and effort.