When all else fails in motivating your child to behave...

...have a go at having a conversation with them.

I have a 12 year old nephew who has mastered the art of getting into trouble with every authority figure going. He is the archetypal Dennis the Menace. His teachers are tearing their hair out trying to manage him. His parents are going stir crazy wondering how come he's turned out the way he has.

Unfortunately, by getting himself into so much trouble, he seems to get very little affection from anybody. Nonetheless, he is still a child. I still believe he needs to be shown loving and to be treated like he is intelligent.

Earlier this evening, I sat him down with my two younger sons and started talking to them about the way the cardiovascular system and the nervous system operate. I also told them about how stress affects both those systems. Would you believe the 12 year old boy along with my 7 and 9 year old sons all understood? Hell yeah! When you give a child the chance to be intelligent, they become that.

Then we went onto to discuss the universal law of reflection. This means what characeristics you see in others, you already possess. In other words, you see the world as you are. Through the discussion, we highlighted the positives and some areas for development. Two things came out of the conversation:

1. My nephew, a.k.a. Dennis, realised that although he finds everything he does as funny, he is usually the only one in the class to be laughing. He also got that others were laughing at him - not with him.

2. In order to help him relax more, my nephew agreed to spend 10 minutes a day, everyday, just doing some simple meditation. His grandmother (my mum) agreed to remind him everyday.

I'll keep you posted on the results.

Harun Rabbani