Common behavior and discipline issues in children can stem from a variety of physical, psychological, sociological and environmental causes.
It's important when faced with a discipline issue to stop and ask why the child is misbehaving.
Sometimes the child is being rotten because they have been spoiled and have commonly received positive reinforcement for bad behavior.
On the other hand the child may be sick or dealing with hormonal or environmental changes and the bad behavior is simply a reflection of a different problem entirely.
Common behavior and discipline issues include: temper tantrums, destructive and physically aggressive behavior, rude and verbally aggressive language, whining, screaming, arguing, ignoring rules and requests, lying and manipulating, crying wolf and refusing to adjust to normal behaviors like eating or sitting at a desk.
When faced with common behavior and discipline issues remember that you are the adult and children learn a great deal by watching and emulating the behaviors of adults.
It's also critical that you understand your own limits and stop a child's bad behavior before you reach your limit.
All adults have different limits and definitions of good and bad behavior.
No one would allow a child to play on a busy five-lane road because this is a universally accepted limit.
Limits get a bit fuzzier when it comes to bad behaviors such as whining, arguing or refusing to eat dinner.
As the adult, you are driving the bus and you must know what your own limits are before you can possibly enforce them.
In addition, by understanding what behaviors you will or won't tolerate you can stop bad behaviors before you get angry.
Keeping your cool is critical because children will copy aggressive behavior.
It's important to stop bad behaviors before they become behavioral patterns and habits.
In order to have the backbone needed to deal with common behavior and discipline issues it's helpful to look at why good behavior is important.
Every society establishes acceptable guidelines for behavior.
If your child is 'misbehaving,' they are functioning outside of the acceptable societal norms and the rest of society- other children; classmates, teachers and later co-workers won't be kind or forgiving when it comes to bad behavior.
Bad behavior will make the life of your child harder and more stressful.
There are a variety of strategies for dealing with common behavior and discipline issues and it's important to select what works best for the child.
As mentioned above, analyzing why the child is misbehaving is the first step.
Many common behavior and discipline issues are simply caused because the child wants to do what they want to do.
There are several ways you can effectively manage misbehavior.
-Be consistent and evenhanded with your limits.
If the child sometimes gets to eat candy after not eating his dinner or sometimes gets what he wants by whining, the bad behavior will persist.
Set a limit and stick to it every time.
-It's helpful to give the child one warning for a bad behavior and then if done again, immediately enforce the consequences.
If you ask again and again the child will soon learn not to listen to you and your consequences will increasingly have less power.
-Explain to your child why the behavior is bad.
Children are smart and from a very early age they can start to self monitor their own behavior if they understand why.
-Always try to separate the bad behavior from your relationship with your child.
"I love you Bobby, but I don't like you throwing the milk on the floor," The child isn't bad- the behavior is bad.
Separating the behavior from the child empowers them while also leaving their ego and your relationship intact.
-Enforce punishments that hurt the child- not you.
For example, grounding the child might make your life miserable but taking their video games away in exchange for cleaning their room hurts them.
Make lengthy punishments- a month or a week of no video games and enforce the entire punishment without exception.
-Redirecting the child's attention away from a bad behavior is often a simple way to end the behavior without confrontation.
-Go out of your way to give positive reinforcement for good behavior.
"Thank you Bobby for bringing the dishes into the kitchen, what a helpful boy you are," Most children like to please and need praise.
-Timeouts are effective and can help your child gain control of their actions especially if they are not used necessarily as punishment.
Enforcing a timeout before a behavior escalates prevents bad behavior and gives your child an anger management tool that can be used for the rest of their life.
-Don't give up.
Dealing with bad behavior isn't easy but through patience and persistence you and your child will improve leading to a happier future for both of you.