A typical issue that parents face is dealing with their children’s behaviors. Let’s say you are a parent of a five year old child that has just started school. She was a polite, considerate, and helpful young lady at home and in front of her teachers. However, her behavior has become inappropriate at home as it includes talking back, swearing, and discussing sex in general terms. She learned these behaviors from other children at her school.
You might not sure how I should teach her to make the right choices about right vs. wrong. She has already missed school at the insistence of her 5 year old friend. HOw can you help her when she is not under your watchful eye at school? How do I ensure she will make the right choice on her own?
That is a great question. First we should discuss the fundamentals regarding this issue.
Kids, like you and me, are doing their best to succeed in life. So their behaviors are their attempts to get good results for themselves, as they themselves would define them. Those “good results” might be to satisfy basic urges such as hunger and warmth, they might be to get approval and love – from their parents, or from their friends, or they might be simply to have fun and excitement.
They will demonstrate the behavior they believe will get them the need they have at that time.
Of course, not all behaviors are successful – and that is the whole learning process. Constantly through life we are experimenting with behaviors to find the ones that work best for us. In choosing what behaviors to experiment with, we take input from past experiences, from what we have been told, and from what we have seen others do (in real life and on TV) and we combine this with the skills, abilities, and personality that we have. From all of this we get a range of possible behaviors, and out of those we pick what we hope will serve us best.
Once we find behaviors that seem to pay off well for us, then we tend to stick with them. The more we repeat them, and the more often they work, the more firmly they will be entrenched as our default behavior.
Returning to your 5 year old daughter. This behavior is a sign that she is in the process of experimenting. She is in a new situation at school and this has expanded her world. She is not sure how to react and is excited and nervous at the same time. She is testing different behaviors to determine which behaviors will end in an intended result.
Many of these behaviors, once tried, will be abandoned. Some will be kept, and incorporated into her normal lifestyle. Which will they be? That depends on what outcomes she experiences. At this age the approval of parents is pretty important, so your response to them will certainly be an influence. But so too will be outside influences, such as explicit rewards or punishments, the approval of teachers and, of course, her friends.
You have a great deal of influence as her parent. When she is this young she will listen to you. Later on is another story. Your influence appears in two ways.
1. Your emotional reaction to her behaviors. Do you approve or disapprove of her behaviors?
2. Your manipulation of her environment. You have the power to choose her school, neighbors, and people she will be in contact with. You are the one who can give her punishments and rewards.
Integrating what he discussed together and looking at this logically, you need to answer the following questions:
Do you think your daughter is just experimenting with her behaviors and that it will pass? If you do, then don’t worry about it at all as she will move on to better behavior. Kids tend to do mischievous things at this age and still end up to be productive adults.
Bear in mind that if you over-react to things like her swearing that may, in itself, actually make the behavior seems MORE exciting rather than less. Generally, “chilling out” is the better way to go.
If you think that her bad behavior is escalating too much then you need to do something to thwart it.
At this point you will need to rely on your judgement of the situation. Are you doing all the things you can as a parent? Make sure that you are a positive role model. Remember, you have a significant influence on her.
Next, check out the school and your neighborhood. How have the children who grew up in this neighborhood fared when they grew up? Do they become productive adults or do most of the kids spend time in juvenile detention for most of their teenage years?
Speak with other parents and teachers. Most schools have a “culture” and it may just be that this is the culture in this school – i.e. that lots of kids go through this phase and then settle down, rather like the toilet jokes when they are 7 and 8. Or it may be that the teachers are greatly concerned.
Unfortunately, you can’t watch over every influence in your child’s life. You also can’t be 100% sure that your daughter will learn right from wrong. However, you can improve the odds of this. Your influence as a parent is great and you should be a positive role model for your child.
Parenting Tips In Don’t struggle with your children’s bad behavior issues any more. Find the proper techniques and tips to help you have a joyous, peaceful household. Parenting Tips For 4 Year Olds
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