I know that we have wondered about that as parents on many occasions.

Rest assured that if you have ever wanted to change your kid’s behavior, you are not alone.

The questions surrounding child behavior modification and control have circulated for as long as there have been parents and children.

Even though many parents have wondered how to answer this question for so long, many miss a key concept at the heart of parenting and leadership that hinders their ability to teach their children appropriate behaviors and self-control skills.

Here’s the concept that many parents, including us, often miss in the heat of the moment with kids:

No one can change another person’s behavior. Every person chooses their own behaviors

As we work with our own children and with business clients across the country, we strive to remember this concept. And still, we sometimes forget the implications of it.

We cannot change another person’s behavior. Only they can change their behavior. We might work with them, communicate with them, and counsel them during the behavior change. We can even learn communication and conflict resolution skills that help us to create a favorable environment for behavior change.

Ultimately, the choice is there’s to make. If they don’t want to change, they won’t.

In the realm of parenting, this concept leads to a parenting secret that many people miss:

You do not change your kids behavior. They do.

While this observation might initially seem negative, it is actually liberating.

As parents, we all want to teach our children to behave appropriately and to develop self-control. We want our children to eliminate undesirable behaviors and to replace them with desirable ones.

Our kids are now teenagers. They are well on their way to adulthood, and our parenting issues are a little different from someone with younger kids. And still, we work every day to exert a positive influence on them as they begin to make more and more decisions for themselves.

In working with them, we have learned that this observation about behavioral change actually helped us in our efforts to teach them rather than hindered us. Recognizing that they make the choice to change has taken a burden off of our shoulders. We can feel more comfortable allowing them to learn by experiencing the natural consequences, both good and bad, of their choices.

When we began to really embrace the idea that we could not change their behavior, we actually started asking ourselves different questions.

Rather than think “How do I change my kids behavior?,” we began to ask ourselves “How do I work with them so that they want to change their behavior?”

This one adjustment to our thinking has made a huge difference in our parenting effectiveness and in the frustration we feel as parents.

When we began to ask the “how do we create an environment where they want to change” rather than “how do we get control of them” question, we began to choose influence approaches rather than overt control tactics. And, we have found them to be more effective at accomplishing both changed behavior and a good relationship.

In general, we notice that most people can tell when you want to control them, and they don’t like it. Since they don’t like it, any effort to control them triggers a natural desire to resist your control. This desire to resist control seems to be in all of us by nature – both children and adults.

When we use influence principle rather than control tactics, we communicate that we see them as distinct and autonomous individuals. This simple recognition of their uniqueness seems to create a better environment where people can relax and receive the message rather than resist and ignore it.

Since these general observations apply to all people – child or adult, they apply to both our kids and yours.

If you want to change your kid’s behavior, start by working to understand them and their perspective. Then you can communicate effectively with them and attempt to create situations where they learn from their own mistakes. When they have the opportunity to experience both success and failure and to make behavior modifications on their own, most kids will learn to change their behaviors from unacceptable to acceptable.

It sounds like a paradox, and still it seems to work. The secret to changing your kid’s behavior is not to try to try to change it at all.

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