A Simple Cure For Bad Behavior

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of the main questions that mothers of children of different ages ask me is "Why is my child behaving badly?" Someone fights, someone bites, someone shouts, someone does not obey … One and the same child is able to reproduce the entire palette of undesirable behavior in a day

This gives every parent a lot of trouble and eats away such valuable and irreplaceable nerve cells.

Any behavior is informative and it is usually designed to convey some information to the parents. The smaller the child, the less sophisticated his arsenal - screaming, expression of discontent on the face, facial expressions, physical actions - bites, pinches, attempts to hit. With age, the arsenal, of course, expands and speech is added to all of the above, and with it refusal to cooperate, protests, doing in spite of someone else's will, hysteria. And finally, the socially acquired skills of ignoring, refusing to communicate, isolating in your room or in yours.

In all cases, the golden rule applies - when the question of WHY the child behaves this way becomes clear, an understanding of HOW to correct it arises.

WHY does a child use heavy artillery when interacting with adults?

Because it’s the most effective way of behaving, with quick results. When screams, tantrums, disobedience and other forms of influence on the parent begin, the reaction is usually immediate. The behavior is fixed in both the younger and the older member of the family: a terrorist act is a violent reaction. Here is the long-awaited attention! And it doesn't matter which way it was obtained, there is a result. Mom or dad, not at all flushed with good feelings for their child, give him a large and concentrated dose of attention, the only pity is that it is negatively colored. But in the case of a child, any result is already something.

If you rewind and turn on the logic, then the conclusion suggests itself that if a child uses heavy artillery, then the light one has malfunctioned somewhere and did not work many times.

To confirm or refute my hypothesis, I behave very curiously during consultations and ask many questions about mom, dad, child, daily routine, rituals, and the specifics of their interaction. This usually helps to restore the picture of what is happening.

Sometimes one very simple question is enough - how much QUALITATIVE attention do you pay to your child?

By QUALITATIVE attention I mean the following: communication, play, drawing, modeling, any other types of activity, where the mother is an ACTIVE participant, and not a passive present object.

Let me explain what I mean. Once playing with my son, I thought about my everyday problems and lost the thread of our interaction. I went into myself so deeply that I did not even notice that my son stopped talking, stopped playing and was looking at me intently. He bent down and looked into my face with a question - "Mommy, what are you thinking about?" I flinched in surprise. I was with him, but I was not with him. My thoughts were somewhere far away.

Many mothers describe their time together as follows - I spend the whole day with my child. I understand them, I am also a mother. But the day can be spent in different ways: get up, automatically feed, take for a walk, talking on the phone or with a friend on the playground, return home, feed, put to bed, turn on cartoons after sleep, feed again and put to bed again. There is no time for close communication and interaction in this chain. This is not to say that mother and child are not together, but it cannot be said that they are TOGETHER, because there is no direct interaction here. It's another matter if a mother puts off all her very important affairs and devotes at least an entire hour of her time only to the child - communication, hugs, games, reading. Any activities that will be interesting and useful to both.

The main psychological food that ALL CHILDREN needs like air is parental attention. Sincere, genuine and belonging only to them for at least some time.

There are many questions and processes behind the impossibility of offering such attention, but they are not the purpose of my article.

I want to draw the attention of working and non-working mothers who spend the lion's share of time with their children to the fact that small children are not complicated, they have simple and quite feasible needs: a kind word, an affectionate look, attentiveness to their desires, observation, sensitivity to their sorrows and sorrows, the ability to notice little things and connect the events of a child's life with each other.

Attention Is an invaluable contribution to the boundless world of the child. This is an attempt to understand him, get to know him better, improve relations with him and make them deeper and more trusting.

I offer you a very simple, effective preventive measure, the so-called vaccination against bad behavior - ACTIVE AND PURPOSE ATTENTION in any form available to the parent at the moment.