Our Experience with Parenting The Strong Willed Child!

Parenting the strong willed child is an experience that my wife and I wished we could have avoided, at least in the beginning! You see our son who came into our home at only three months old spent the first months of his life withdrawing from a cocaine addiction that his biological mother cursed him with. His mother was taking cocaine, meth, and drinking alcohol all the way through her pregnancy. Great start for our son!

That first three months of his life he went through the hell of cocaine withdrawals! Even adults can’t handle the pain staking process of coming down from cocaine addiction. Yes, his poor excuse of a mother gave him one of the only things she ever gave him, and that was an addiction to cocaine. But thanks to GOD the strong willed child struggled through this and survived!

Quitting is not in my vocabulary!

Perseverance is something you must have if you’re parenting the strong willed child! I have a lot of experience with perseverance since I spent twelve years in the United States Marine Corps. Quitting is not in my vocabulary! The strong willed child within me had to show my father that I could not only make it through Marine Corps Boot Camp but graduate in the top 10% of my platoon! So I know a little about the strong willed child.

The first few years as our son was growing up it appeared that everything was pretty much normal. At least in the beginning! But hind sight is always 20 20 when you look back in time. After raising four children, my wife and I now know there were a lot of differences between the strong willed child and our other three. The word “NO” did not register for him at all. It always took a physical effort to stop him from whatever his mind was set on.

I had never even heard of ADHD until that very moment!

We got our first glimpse of how much more difficult life would be for him and us when he was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of six. I know I had never even heard of ADHD until that very moment in time, and to be quite honest I was glad to know that there was a reason for his behavior. When I found out that he could take medicine to keep it under control I was even more excited at the possibilities. So he first began what would be a lifetime of prescription medication to control his behavior. Although it didn’t help remove the strong willed child from him, it did make him calm down.

The fact was that we needed real help, and not just a medication to dumb down the problem! We didn’t care where or what the help was, we just needed it, and needed it fast to keep our home sane! My wife and I were at our wits end and had what we believed to be nowhere to turn. We were embarrassed that two well educated mature adults were not able to figure out our child’s behavioral problems. GOD gave us a gift, but we were beginning to wonder if it wasn’t a curse.

And that only made us feel guilty!

We began to desperately look for help anywhere and we didn’t care where! We searched the Internet and read what we could! We sought out child psychologists for answers. We found out that he was a very gifted child which we already knew, and that only made us feel guilty. We finally got help and one place I strongly encourage you to look is this great program!

The strong willed child really can test your patience and I truly believe that it takes a special parent to raise one! I know that my wife and I on more than one occasion thought about running away from home and changing our names, but we were not quitters. Anyone is able to throw in the towel and give up, but the Marine Corps in me would not allow that to happen! We needed to begin to model good behavior instead of thinking that the louder we get his behavior would improve! Not very smart on our part right!

Don’t fail your strong willed child. Seek out the help you need and the longer you put it off the harder it will become. There are great programs out there that are very effective, and trust me we have looked into a great deal of them. You can end up spending thousands of dollars trying to find a solution but keep in mind there are some very reasonably priced programs that can be purchased right on the Internet that work.

Thank you and God Bless You!