Managing behavior involves balancing limits, connection, and understanding your child’s temperament. Guide them through self-regulation and be consistent with boundaries to encourage growth and positive behavior.
“Do the best you can do until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” - Maya Angelou
Key Concepts:
- Managing your child’s behavior is connected to temperament (who your child is), limits and boundaries (parenting style), and connection (your parent-child relationship).
- Despite our desire to sometimes want to control our children OR shield them from obstacles, our job is to help them gain increased skills in self-regulation (this includes regulating emotions, attention and impulses).
- Remember! The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until our 20s - that means that skills like self-regulation are STILL developing and difficult moments are age appropriate.
- Great behavior at school and challenging behavior at home? Yep! This means your child is using those executive function skills to work hard to regulate at school, and is comfortable in their attachment relationship with you to “fall apart” at home.
- If you’re concerned about a behavior at home, check in with teachers, other caregivers, and other adults in your child’s life to see what they’re noticing. This can help you figure out if your child consistently has these behaviors, or if they may be impacted by a certain environment or relationship dynamic.
What to Try:
- Continue to establish limits and boundaries. This is one of your most important responsibilities! This can be as simple as reasonable limits, like “no throwing” or “bedtime in our house is 7pm.” Make sure all caregivers practice the same limits.
- Keep communication between you and your child. Show curiosity in their behavior to better understand their behavior. For example, “you got very upset and I’m wondering what you may have been thinking about” which can help get to the route of their distress.
- Ask for the behavior you want and give attention to what you want more of. Try not to reinforce negative behaviors by giving these behaviors lots of attention, and think about the cause instead (see above). Notice and comment on behaviors you like - bring attention to THESE behaviors, for example “I noticed how you played that game so nicely with your brother. Thank you.”
- Use logical and natural consequences - this means the consequence is directly related to the action. In other words, the consequence “fits the crime.” For example, “You snuck in extra TV time, which means you lose the privilege of TV for the rest of the day.”