What We Should Know about Our Child’s Behavior

·                   Normal Behavior

Normal or “good” behavior in children depends on the child’s age, personality, and physical and emotional development. A child’s behavior may be a problem if it doesn’t match with the expectation of us (parents). Knowing what to expect from our child at each age will help us to decide whether his or her behavior is normal.

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                    We can change our child’s behavior

Children tend to continue a behavior when it is rewarded and stop when it is ignored. We have 3 choices when we think that our child’s behavior might be a problem:

~ Decide that the behavior is not a problem and it means appropriate to our child’s age

~ Try to stop the behavior, either by ignoring or punishing

~ Introduce a new behavior that we prefer and reinforce it by rewarding our children

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          Some Good Ways to Reward Our Child

~ Beat the Clock; ask the child to do a task, set a timer, if it is done before the timer rings, your child gets the reward.

~ Good Behavior Game; write a short lists of good behaviors on chart with a star, after our child has earned some stars then give her or him reward.

~ Developing Quite Time (often useful when you’re making supper); give a reward or a token if our child can play quietly and playing well in a good time.

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         Why shouldn’t we Use Physical Punishment?

Parents may choose to use physical punishment to stop undesirable behavior. Punishment only stops the bad behavior for a while, it doesn’t teach our child to change the behavior. Physical punishment becomes less effective with time and can cause the child to behave aggressively. It can also be carried too far into child abuse.

Sources: familydoctor.org editorial staff