You never thought being a parent was like this, did you ?. Fact is ,childhood disorders and disabilities create a crisis in the parent and child relationship, often affecting the quality of the attachment. But parents tend to use the same parenting techniques over and over again, even when it's clear what they're doing is not working in getting a child's behaviour to change.

Child abuse and neglect are often a result of poor parenting techniques especially where esasperated parents go overboard and the results are dramatic for all concerned. Parents are desperately trying to learn techniques which will be effective and save them an expensive trip to a child therapist.

The behaviour of parents will always be a a model for their children That means that children will rarely do what you TELL them to do especially if this is in stark contrast to what the children have seen the parents doing, time and time again.

One effective technique is to catch the child unawares by acting in a totally unexpected way. This has the added advantage of reducing anger or tension and can often result in spontaneous laughter which is always great for defusing a situation. The key is to use natural consequences for their behaviour rather than punishment. This forces the child to get out of a tight corner by thinking about what they have done.By doing this, you remove any possible comeback about unfair punishments and you just simply apply the consequences. In this way, you do not have to bother with telling the child what problems he or she has created nor do you have to think up a punishment on the spot.

The importance of involving ALL the family for setting the ground rules should not be underestimated. The parents' role will be to enforce the consequences rather than punishing. These are FAMILY rules, not rules set by the parents. The child's reaction then will not be directed at the parents as they know that the rule of law is the family.

You can surprise your child by acting in a really unexpected manner - this is sometimes called a guerrilla parenting technique. If a child is fighting, then an effective way of dealing with this is to get him to do the sibling's chores the next day. That is much more effective than sending him to his room. The fact that he now has to reflect and actually take the consequences makes a much greater impact on the misbehaving child. Belittling a child or putting her down is not part of guerrilla parenting techniques.

Sometimes children can be really snotty and negative. Just hand them a tissue and see if they can work out what it is all about! Other times, they keep on saying 'That's stupid'. A good way of reacting to this is to do something really stupid yourself and tell them 'No, this is stupid'. Again there is no need to explain it and let them work it out for themselves.

There is a site listed below which contains some great advice on parenting. It has been devised by a doctor for his own family because he had to face the exact same problems as you are facing right now. In spite of the fact that two of his children suffered from ADHD, he has been able to bring them up as happy, good children.