Eric WaltersIn many families, children can insist on being the center of attention and securing their position with behavior designed to attract the attention of parents over and over again. The child who sees how his parents pay attention to him when he behaves badly thanks to negative reinforcement, will behave again because he will have learned that in that way his parents pay attention to him, even if it is not how he really would like it.
When negative reinforcement occurs, a child will use threats, disappointments, fights, yelling, or tantrums to make parents realize that they need to be understood. This ‘bad behavior’ can be triggered by the most trivial. If you think your child is misbehaving, have you ever stopped to find out what exactly is wrong?
Your Son Doesn’t Want To Be Difficult
Your child does not want to be a difficult child. He does NOT want to anger you … he has only learned to build this type of inappropriate communication. He wants to be happy and for everyone to be happy with him also in the family. But when a child’s emotional center is activated, a strong alarm signal is sent to the brain because at that moment, the little one feels that he is afraid, that he is alone and that he needs help to be able to calm down again.
A child who is not able to relax without directly drawing your attention is because he is stuck in ‘danger mode’ and does not know how to get out of it. You have likely learned this for a long time. It is difficult to understand and satisfy human emotional needs … People have been trained to see intense emotions as a sign that things are not going well. Many parents believe that they should immediately calm their children as soon as they flare up, without needing to understand what is behind these overflowing emotions. But if a child stops crying without understanding his emotions and without the adult making an attempt to understand him … it will leave a feeling of emotional disturbance within the child.
Understand What Is Happening Behind The Behavior
Ignoring a tantrum and pretending it doesn’t exist is not the solution at all. A child needs his parents or reference adults to be by his side, to understand him and to be able to connect with him emotionally. For this, you need to accept that your child is suffering and that he needs to express what it is that has led him to behave that way and feel that way.
Accept his feelings, keep in mind that he is learning and that he is creating his world, he is learning to relate and face things … that is why it is so necessary that you respect his feelings and that you help him to understand himself, to put words to his emotions. But if your child gets angry because of a request, then if we consider that it should not be satisfied, it is explained to him even if it is not clear to you if he has understood it completely.
Thus, the message you give him is: ‘I understand and attend to your pain, because I am by your side and you can trust me, what you ask for I am not going to grant for logical reasons – it is not an imposition, it is a decision. But I’m here to help you manage your emotional frustration about not getting what you want. ‘ With this message and little by little, you will recognize your emotions and manage them effectively.