Coaching practices for Executive Function Children Defiance

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Executive Function Children Defiance, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My kid blows up over the same things again and again, and I keep calling it defiance or attitude
• Every time I put my foot down and insist, my kid blows up worse
• My child reacts to everything on pure impulse and never seems to stop and think how the other kid feels, and I want to actually build that thinking-and-considering muscle during our good calm moments, not just keep firefighting once they’ve already lost it.
• I lay down a rule and my kids ignore it because it’s "my" rule they had no say in
• All day my kid keeps coming to show me things and I keep saying "in a minute" because I’m busy, and then the moment I need them to cooperate they dig in

Practices that may help

1. Identify the lagging skill behind the behavior
   Name the cognitive skill the child is missing, not the behavior you want to stop.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
2. Recognize when Plan A (unilateral imposition) makes things worse
   Adult-imposed solutions can win the battle and lose the war — notice when enforcement is escalating rather than solving.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
3. Engage the upstairs brain through curiosity and play
   Ask questions that require the child to think, imagine, or consider another perspective.
   The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson)
4. Use family meetings to solve problems together
   When children help solve the problem, they own the solution — and solutions they own, they actually follow.
   Positive Discipline (Jane Nelsen)
5. Say yes to bids for connection before enforcing limits
   A child’s capacity to accept limits depends on how connected they feel to the person setting them.
   Authoritative Parenting (Diana Baumrind)
6. Identify the mistaken goal behind the misbehavior
   Dreikurs argued that misbehavior is always purposeful — the child is pursuing belonging or significance through a mistaken strategy.
   Natural and Logical Consequences (Rudolf Dreikurs)
7. Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
   Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
8. Connect emotionally before you redirect or teach
   The downstairs brain has to be acknowledged before the upstairs brain can hear anything.
   The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson)
9. Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
   Ross Greene’s Collaborative Problem Solving model holds that kids with explosive behavior lack the cognitive skills to handle frustration and inflexibility — not the motivation. The approach replaces punitive consequences with structured adult–child conversations that build lagging skills over time. Randomized trials in clinical settings show significant reductions in explosive behavior, though most real-world evidence is clinical and observational.
10. Explain the reason behind rules
    Children who understand why a rule exists are more likely to internalize it — and more likely to generalize it to new situations.
    Authoritative Parenting (Diana Baumrind)

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