I was very active as a young child. I hear about it from cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors and other of our family friends to this day. It was recommended to my parents by the government school I attended that maybe I should be medicated to calm me down and that was before medicating kids for things like ADHD was cool. Thankfully, my pharmacist mother knew better. I know I must have been a handful, but I also know I had good intentions and have to say that my problem was more a problem of energy, talkativeness and perpetual motion than of willfulness. Still, an article titled The Transforming of My STRONG-WILLED Child by a very successful homeschool mother at a blog I follow resonated with me greatly. I am sure a lot of what she says would have worked well for me, especially the part about being a friend to your children and taking time to play with them. The article is about how she managed the raising of two strong-willed boys. I think it was just masterful. Read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:

CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY

The other thing I reflected that worked with both boys, is to be consistent in my reaction to them. It was hard not to yell, scream and curse them out (oh yeah, they can take me there), but MOST TIMES (hey, mom’s not perfect) I was consistent, non-effected outwardly, by their actions.

If I gave a punishment, I tried to think on it, make it conducive to the lesson I wanted to teach the child, and discuss with my spouse. However, for typical behavior, we had a consequence board that left no argument or debate on what the punishment was.

An example of this is when my oldest daughter yelled at her sister that ‘at school you are not my sister!’. That day, her punishment was that I took her own bedroom from her. She had to share a room with her sister until she learned ‘humility’ and kindness. Six months later, we decorated and opened up her own bedroom because she had changed greatly.