Of course, our parental dream when confronted with negative behaviors in our children is to want to eradicate them (the behaviors, not the children.) We want to fix it or at least make it go away so that we don’t have to deal with it any longer. Some behaviors, quirks, etc. seem to stick around despite our best efforts, however. Perhaps instead of settling for only getting rid of those behaviors altogether, we can strive to at least minimize them.
For example, I realized when my kids hit those tremendous teenage years that I was probably not going to keep them from ever talking back to me—it just seemed to be such a part of the stage. I did decide, however, that I was going to put parameters and expectations around it and settle for minimizing the backtalk. So, I focused on the biggest issues for me: No swearing and no disrespect. I pretty much won 100% on the disrespect but the swearing is at about 80%–sometimes one of those words gets out before they can stop it and I call them on it every time. By focusing on minimizing the behavior, I am satisfied that my children are not truly disrespectful to me and they still feel as though they can “speak their minds.” I couldn’t get the perfect little angel children I would have liked, but the problem has been minimized.
Surely there are character traits and issues that you wrestle with in regards to your own children. Can you truly ever win? Can you change them or eradicate the behavior completely? If not, will you settle for minimizing it and getting it down to a tolerable-sized issue? Sometimes, if we can just start by trying to minimize a behavioral issue, it will eventually disappear—and we don’t have to get locked in intense battles and power struggles to make that happen.