Understanding and Addressing Bad Attitudes

Bad attitudes are a common problem in family life. The pouting, stomping, and resistance often come when a child doesn’t get what he or she wants or is asked to do something that seems inconvenient. Sometimes parents ignore bad attitudes, thinking that the child will grow out of them. Unfortunately, many children grow into their bad attitudes, and they just get worse.

The book Good and Angry, Exchanging Frustration for Character in You and Your Kids goes into more detail about attitude issues. You’ll learn specific strategies for dealing with the behavior seen with a bad attitude but more importantly, you’ll learn to get down to deeper issues of the heart. An attitude is a window into a child’s heart and learning how to respond to challenges in life with a good attitude requires training.

We also have a Training Manual and CD focusing specifically on this problem, Attitude: A Window into a Child’s Heart. That workbook and CD can be purchased separately or as part of the 8-lesson kit entitled, Heart Work Training Manuals and CDs. The Treasure Hunters Children’s Curriculum, session #7 helps you teach your children the value of good attitude. Using Bible stories, crafts, and other activities it helps children understand their emotions and how to respond to them.

A completely different approach to addressing bad attitudes is found in the book Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids. This book uses the concept of honor to give kids a positive vision for life. Children learn that honor means treating people as special, doing more than what’s expected, and having a good attitude. God has hidden within honor the secret ingredients that will help them be successful in relationships, both now and in the future. But now is the time to learn it.

Honor adds energy to family life. A bad attitude often drains energy out of the family dynamics. In this book children of any age are taught ways that they can add energy to family life. The CD series, Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids contains recordings of eight live seminars taught by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN, speaking about honor. You might want to play these in the car with your children present. The CDs don’t contain secrets that you need to keep from your kids. They contain a way of relating that you want everyone in your household to embrace.

The children’s curriculum called The Kids Honor Club is for children ages 3-12. It contains Bible stories, crafts, games, and activities focused on the concept of honor. The goal with this curriculum is to help you focus on honor for several weeks, teaching your children what it is and how to live it out in your home. Bad attitudes are a symptom of dishonor and become more clearly out of place as you develop honor in your family.

One of the classes in Biblical Parenting University focus on emotions and a whole hour is centered on bad attitudes. In the whole class you'll learn about parental anger, a plan for children's anger and you'll have access to the four hour class and five hours of webinar content focused on this subject. You'll find many solutions that you'll be able to apply to your family.