There’s a common response I receive from younger moms, after they hear/read my no-nonsense advice about tantrums, attitudes, and arguing.

  • “I bet you haven’t actually had a strong-willed child.”
  • “I don’t think this will work; maybe my kids are more strong-willed than yours.”
  • “You have a lot of kids, but have any of them been strong-willed?”

And I get it.

Sure, I’ve got 9 kids, but maybe they’re all innately angelic, right?

I assure you they’re not.

No, we’ve had some head-scratching, hair-raising, eye-popping moments with fiercely, stubbornly, strong-willed kiddos in our almost-18 years of parenting.

And I am still in the thick of raising them! My time with aggressive, self-sure younguns is not by any means done.

So sometimes, in response, I tell stories about some of the toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball battles I’ve experienced with our children.

  • the one who was physically violent to the point of needing to be restrained in our arms, when he was 4-5 years old.
  • the one who still debates the tar out of me even though he knows he knows he knows he knows we won’t give in (but he’s convinced he’s right).
  • the one who mercilessly criticizes me every time I make a different decision with a younger sibling than I did with him,
  • the one who corrects everyone else in the house and absolutely does not see how he is wrong, even when he clearly is,
  • the dozens of times a day I’ve had to stick with disciplinary tactics, for months or years, with most of my children… and how that is normal.

And how yes… I do have this one child who seems to have a naturally compliant nature, but he is the far-outlier of my brood.

Sometimes I even make a crack about my own rotten stubbornness and how crabapples don’t fall far from trees.

But then…

after that,

I share the most helpful thought I know about strong-willed kids.

Because it’s the one every mom with strong-willed kids actually needs to take to heart. It’s one that many parents get wrong.

It’s a game-changing perspective that can help us go the distance when we’re in those battles where it feels like we can’t win and might as well just give in.

Are you ready for it?

(Lean in, cause I’m whispering, for effect.)

The kid who can master himself {his emotions, physical body, hormones, feelings, internal inclinations, intellectual abilities, surge of adrenaline, head knowledge, and words} in order to achieve or do something according to his larger values/what he knows to be right–

THAT kid has a strong will.

But the kid who rages and insists and claws and fights and pushes and criticizes and whines and manipulates and bullies and complains and digs in his heels, because of what is happening inside, feeling that he must go along with his own immediate urges,

that kid has a weak will.

Very very often- almost every time I hear the word used— when someone says their child has an incredibly “strong” will, what they actually mean is that the child has an incredibly weak will.

When a person:

  • can only see things his/her own way, or
  • can only stand for things to go the way he/she wants,
  • or else they blow up/argue/complain/dig in their heels/scream/fight/whine/accuse/criticize– somehow making everyone else “pay”

…that’s a weak will.

The child who never learns how to master himself will grow up to be a person in perpetual bondage.

When a kid can master his/her self, subduing his own flesh in the pursuit of greater things, that is a person with a strong will. The will of that person is robust!

Weak-willed (previously termed “strong-willed”) kids need parents who:

  • refuse to let them remain in bondage to their own weakness.
  • are willing to exercise wise restraint/discipline from the outside until the child is strong enough to exercise wise restraint/discipline from the inside
  • Or at least, they need parents who consistently point out to them when they are being taken hostage by their weaknesses. (This is where we land as our kids get older and older, as they display a weak-willed giving in to their flesh.)

They need parents who see their strong displays of argumentative stubbornness for what it actually is:

a weak will.

Their weak will will be a detriment to them unless they learn to master themselves.

The classically-termed “strong willed child” is a weak-willed child who needs strong parents to guard and guide him until his character grows to the degree that he stops weakly giving in to his own desires, passions, and furies.

The weak-willed child needs strong parents to stand for him and kneel in prayer for him until he grows an actually-strong will.

IN THE COMMENTS: Talk to me. Does this reflect what you see in your own family or the families around you?

If you have a child you’ve thought of as “strong-willed,” does this flipping of the words help you see the situation more clearly?