Managing Children’s Behaviour:

This is a very challenging but rewarding aspect of parenting. As the parent, we need to be wiser, stronger and kinder. We need to be committed to understanding what is driving the behaviour in our child; what are the emotions, intentions, beliefs and attitudes they are conveying to us and also, what are our own emotional triggers driving our response to this particular behaviour (all in a millisecond!).

If we can help our child understand their emotion that lead to an unacceptable behaviour; to name it, to own it and to move on, we will teach our child about emotional regulation and emotional resilience (wiser). Experiencing emotions is perfectly OK and part of the human genome but acting out our responses is not OK and this is the message we must teach our children (repetitively).

Dr Andrew Wake, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, writes in his book ‘The Good Enough Parent ‘about the challenge of balancing understanding and validation of feelings WITH established boundaries as to how the child can express those feelings and balancing emotional attunement and sensitivity WITH setting firm and age appropriate limits. This is not easy but as the parent we need to try to be the stronger one.

As an example: your 4 year old daughter pushes her 2 year old brother off his chair, seated at the craft table, because he scribbled on her drawing. The little boy is in tears as he hit his head on the floor. You understand why your daughter is upset, because the drawing she has been working on has been ‘ruined’ and she is angry and upset. Both of these emotions are OK and normal, but as the parent you need to teach her about other ways to express these emotions, rather than physically pushing and hurting her little brother. You can sympathise with her but you need to sympathise with your son as well. This involves acknowledging reasonable behavioural expectations for each child, dependant on their age and stage of development. It might mean that when your 4 year old is keenly engaged in art activities you set the 2 year old up with another activity, or you actively participate and monitor. Always reminding the children of your expectations about not hurting each other and damaging each others property.

Understanding what is happening inside your mind and experiencing emotions for the first time is quite overwhelming, especially in an immature brain (remembering that the adult brain does not fully mature until mid to late twenties). As a parent we need to be firm, consistent and reasonable as we support our children through this life journey (kinder). It is challenging but very rewarding. The privilege of being part of a child’s journey into adult hood is extraordinary. However, we need to be kind to ourselves and seek support as required from our loved ones and occasionally from professionals.