Strong-Willed

Rona Lyn M. Santos

Each year, we teachers come to face with different kinds of learners: some are sweet, some are nice, some are naughty, some are passive, and some are disrespectful. But thinking about it, are these children outright disrespectful? Or are they being misunderstood for speaking up their minds? In their book Parenting the Strong-Willed Child, Forehand and Long (2011) defined being strong-willed as having a strong sense of independence that could often mean being assertive, confident, determined, and persistent. And more often than not, strong sense of independence translates into being stubborn, argumentative, and defiant. Maybe this is the reason that we are having a hard time dealing with some students.

According to the authors, there are both positive and negative attributes to being strong-willed. The best thing to do is to reinforce the positive points and minimize the negative ones. But how? There are some ways identified in the book that I think are also effective in dealing with strong-willed learners. After all, we act as their parents whenever they are under our care. These tips are integrated in a five week program: (week 1) attending- this means identifying the appropriate behaviors of the child; (week 2) rewarding- this means letting the child know that we approve of their positive attributes; (week 3) ignoring- this would aid in decreasing the occurrence of inappropriate behaviors; (week 4) giving instructions- this means improving our instruction- giving skills to increase compliance; and (week 5) using time-outs- showing consistency in our responses to the child's non-compliance.

I believe this method will be effective in setting the classroom climate at the beginning of the school year. If given appropriate attention, we may even have a good relationhip with these strong-willed children if they see that we care enough to consistently try and help manage this strong will they have.

--oOo-

The author is Teacher I at Pampanga High School