A Humorous Blog About Treating Defiance

Posted by Mike Mein, M.Ed., ACMHC, NCC Therapist at Entrada on June 09, 2015

“You were really wild, you were like one of the worst students to have ever walked these halls!” This is a quote from one of my old high school teachers who said this to my youngest brother on his first day of work. My brother was hired to teach social studies at the high school we both attended. It’s important to note that he was a straight-A student, the salutatorian of his class, and a model of good behavior; a legacy much different from the one I left behind. Since we look a like, she thought she was speaking to me! When my brother tried to explain to her that she was getting us confused, she thought he was lying to her and avoiding the situation; a response that would have been typical for the person she knew 15 years ago. This awkward confrontation lasted several minutes until she finally stomped away, convinced that my brother was lying, and I was up to my same old tricks of manipulation and defiance. When I heard this story I started laughing hysterically at the thought that I could still rattle her cage and mess with her even when I was thousands of miles away, completely removed from the situation. It warmed my big defiant heart!

This humorous story highlights some of the common aspects found in many of our traditional approaches and responses to defiance. Expectations, assumptions, arguments, judgments, confrontation, frustration, personalization, blame, anger, power-struggles, back-turns, deafness, blindness, guilt, and shame are classic characteristics of the communication exchange related to situations of defiance. My personal experience as a defiant child, adolescent, and adult, combined with my professional experience as a counselor, field instructor, and therapist, has led me to believe that many of the typical reactionary strategies connected to the characteristics listed above don’t work! The crazy thing is, when we know they don’t work, because we’ve tried them and things stay the same or get worse, we still do them anyway. The crazier thing is, when we know they don’t work, because we’ve tried them and things stay the same or get worse, and we do them anyway; but we ramp up the intensity. I think it’s important to know that I’m not writing this from my ivory tower looking down at all you peasants with disgust and abhorrence. I think we’ve all done this in some way, shape, or form; I know I definitely have. What really tickles my funny bone is that I do these things knowing that they don’t work, and even worse, knowing how much I hate them when they’re done to me!

I’ve learned through the years that treating defiance is about tracing, honoring, and detaching. Defiance is a signal telling us something about the person, oftentimes something important. If we can trace the behavior we will have a better understanding and appreciation of the person and his or her needs and wants. In order to trace the behavior we have to listen. In most cases, yelling, arguing, judging, and emotional reactivity are counterproductive to the process. When we can trace the behavior, we can respect and honor the person, their feelings, and their behavior because we can better understand what they’re about, where they’re coming from, and why they’re doing the things they are doing. If we can get to this point of understanding, yelling and arguing will seem ridiculous.

Detachment from outcomes related to boundaries is key when working with defiant behaviors. When we set a boundary in the field we don’t try to convince the students to stay within the boundary. We don’t argue with students about the boundary. We set a boundary and allow students the space to decide if they want to accept it or not. If a student breaks a boundary they are given a consequence. We don’t argue with them about the consequence and we sure don’t try to convince them to do it. This type of detachment helps avoid the power struggles, arguments, manipulation, coercion, and reactivity that destroy connection and relationships. Choosing a consequence is another important part of the process. During our Milan group this week (a group where the student’s week is discussed while both the incoming staff and outgoing staff are present), my most defiant student’s report for the week suggested that he was avoiding process related assignments and activities, and focusing on hard-skill tasks like making spoons, rings, bracelets, etc. The student turned to me with a big smile and said, “I know exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to put me on hard-skills ban until I do my other assignments.” I replied, “Why would I take away the one aspect of the program that you actually like? When you are ready to do those assignments, you’ll do them” ☺.

Ten years ago I worked at a state funded wilderness program for juvenile offenders who were sent to the wilderness for about a year and half in place of jail. I lived alone with 11-13 students ages 11-17; most of my students were carrying several felony charges and a list of psychological issues a mile long. Needless to say, I was exposed to a fair amount of defiance in my two years at the program. Of all the defiant behaviors I witnessed, my favorite was when students would climb trees and refuse to come down. One day I was called into a group to deal with a student who had been in a tree for 20 hours. When I got there the staff were yelling at the student to come down, threatening the student with a variety of consequences, withholding food, and acting like the world was about to end. Without saying a word, I calmly grabbed a bag of food, climbed the tree, and told the student that I would not ask him to come down from the tree or bring up the subject at any point, before I sat with him in silence as he ate his food. As I looked down at the group of people pacing around, yelling, and throwing their hands in the air in dramatic fashion, the ridiculousness of the situation was clear and I had a much better idea of where this student was than I did a few minutes before when I was on the ground. I looked at him and smiled. It was a powerful moment of connection and understanding. We talked for a while in the tree, and then we talked some more on the ground. I didn’t initiate the conversation, direct it in any way, or mention anything to do with him climbing the tree. Afterwards, when one of the staff on the ground asked me why I climbed the tree and how I knew what to do, I jokingly said “It seemed more fun than being down here with you all.” This was not the entire truth. In fact, I said this because I was trying to be clever. The truth was that I had been the asshole on the ground screaming and yelling plenty of times until one day I got pissed off enough to disregard the program’s policies and procedures and climb the trees with the rest of the group. Not only did I get to be defiant and have fun, I learned a lot about being a counselor that day.

It makes me smile knowing that oftentimes the best approach is to treat defiance with defiance. We have to fight against the external control psychology we learned from our parents or society so we can maintain the relationships with the people we care about. In the long run what’s more important? The kid climbing down from the tree or the kid having someone with whom he can talk. Here’s a hint: there’s more than one way to climb a tree!