Defiance and Aggression

 

Defiance and aggressive behaviour in children is one of the most heart-breaking behaviours for parents to have to manage. Parents dedicate so much of their time and energy to providing the best they can for their children, and to have your child refuse to comply with even simple requests, or react aggressively towards yourself, siblings or others, is truly hard to bear.  

 

All for Kids therapists help manage defiance and aggression by working with both the parents and children. Sessions with parents aim to provide support and strategies around how to best respond to this kind of behaviour to make it less and less like to re-occur. Sessions with kids teach them skills known as emotion regulation skills. This refers to teaching children to learn to recognise and manage their emotions with helpful, functional and socially desirable methods, and importantly, teaching them to do so before their emotions reach a point where they feel the need to act in a defiant or aggressive manner.