If your child or teen is defiant, here are five powerful strategies to lower his or her defiant behavior: 1. Realize that understanding your defiant child is just as important as loving him. No adult complains about being too understood as a child. 2. Avoid yelling at your child. Yelling only fans the flames of defiance. 3. Resist power struggles. Defiant children believe they are equal in authority to adults. This makes it futile to try to beat them in the power struggle game. 4. Learn the art of being calm, firm, and non-controlling. 5. Reinforce your child's compliant behaviors. The more positive attention he gets for being compliant, the less negative attention he'll look for by being defiant.