Today we are going to discuss your child or teen’s use of excuses.
If you have an ODD child or an ODD teenager, they are full of excuses. They can punch holes in the walls, they can call names, they can be abusive to you and rude to you and disrespect you, but they will always make it somebody else’s fault.
One of the ways you can put a stop to this is that you have to have some absolute standards.
That is the first thing – a good example would be no name calling. Another is that your child or teen must treat you with respect. Other examples would be that they cannot punch holes or cannot break things.
Those are absolute standards you set as the authority figure in your house. When your child violates that you do not ask for an explanation or a reason. If you ask for an explanation it is always going to be somebody else’s fault.
So, when Bobby smashes a hole in the wall, you do not say, “Bobby, why did you hit a hole in the wall?” He may say one of the excuses, that his sister did this to him, that you did this to him, that his teacher made him angry, or because the dog did this to him.
You do not ask for those excuses.
You should say, “Bobby, you hit a hole in the wall and you get this consequence” – whatever you have decided beforehand. Do not ask for an explanation and there will be no excuses. The only reason children give excuses are because parents ask for them.
What you want to do again is to set standards in your house. What do you think the rules are that cannot be violated? What standards should you set? Examples – no name calling, no abuse, no disrespect, no talking back, no breaking things, no breaking other people’s things. You, as the parent, must set the rules and the standards that have appropriate logical consequences for these inappropriate behaviors.
When your child oversteps these boundaries you do not care why and you do not ask why. Because when your child is older and he is speeding while driving, the police will pull him over. The officer is not going to ask your son why he is speeding. He is going to give your son a ticket. That is the way the world works. When a child or an adult violates something – they receive a consequence.
No one asks why, because no one really cares why. It is not really relevant why your child was abusive or disrespectful. The issue is he was abusive and disrespectful, so remember do not ask for explanations.
Set certain standards and make it clear that everyone understands these standards. Be quick and unemotional when there is a violation of these standards to give the appropriate consequence that was decided on beforehand. Do not get sucked into an argument or explanations.
It is not really relevant!
Point out what was done wrong, state the consequence, walk away, and detach yourself completely. This will help you take away a lot of these excuses. There really are no excuses for inappropriate behaviors.
