Parents are often frustrated with their children’s behavior. Yet their parents are where children inherit good and bad traits, and they have been in the family long enough to know what gets attention and reaction.
As humans evolve, children adapt to get as much attention and tangible rewards as possible from parents trying to help their children survive and thrive.
Why Do Kids Misbehave?
The four things- known as functions kids get out of bad behavior are:
- Attention: Whether it’s from a parent or siblings, attention-seeking can be subtle or negative, for example, a snort, a giggle, or a sigh to keep a child engaged in what they’re doing.
- Escape: Testing the limits on getting out of something they don’t want to do, children sometimes make annoying noises until you send them to their room- which means they escaped from whatever they were doing at the time.
- Sensory stimulation: If a child is doing something that feels good, they want to continue doing it.
- Other rewards: Parents often trade off one lousy behavior with another. Frustration over a behavior frequently results in some type of reward to get them to stop, and they soon learn to behave badly to get that reward.
How Should You Handle Difficult Behavior With Children?
The function of the behavior will dictate how to manage it. The best strategy is to ignore the behavior when a child does something to get attention or is seeking a reward by trying to escape from what they are doing.
It will go away after a while if you don’t give in and don’t give them the attention or reward they are seeking, but be mindful that when you ignore a behavior, it sometimes gets worse before it gets better, as kids can dig in their heels to try harder to get a reaction.
But when kids are doing something because it feels good, they aren’t seeking your reaction, so a better strategy would be to give them some rules or guidelines for certain behavior or an alternative, less frustrating activity that delivers the same good feeling.
For the most part, children grow out of things quickly, and their behavior changes on its own. When ignoring a behavior or giving alternatives isn’t working, systematically reinforcing or punishing the behavior can be effective. This can include things like sticker charts, allowances with money lost for negative behaviors, or time-outs.
Parents who are struggling despite their best efforts can consider child psychologists and child therapists who help develop family systems to address behavior problems in the home.
Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is a particular type of behavior family therapy that helps address behavior problems in young children and involves parent coaching with daily home practice.
This gives parents the opportunity to learn and practice skills to improve the parent-child relationship, which in turn improves the discipline in the household. Being evidence-based, PCIT is generally very effective with many children.
