Think before you respond

At age 11, children, especially girls, are developmentally at a stage where they start to need more autonomy from parents. So says Dr Lisa Coyne, associate professor of Clinical Child Psychology at Suffolk University, Boston, and author of The Joy Of Parenting, who is mother to Jessica, 12.

“At this age, children start to become a little rebellious. It’s all developmentally normal, but when a child comes at a parent, yelling and saying mean things, the parent might engage in that anger. It’s better to say ‘you seem really angry — if I put myself in your shoes I might be really angry too’.”

Dr Coyne acknowledges that this ‘perspective-taking’ can be difficult. “Yet, when children’s emotion is heard by parents, it can defuse it more effectively than saying ‘you need to stop that now’.”