No More Bad Behavior - How Great Would That Be?

Living with children who are constantly defiant, back chat, are aggressive, angry or violent; are stressful and difficult to live with. This in turn puts the whole family under a lot stress. Something as simple as a trip to the supermarket becomes a nightmare. There are battles between other siblings, relationships between partners become strained and in worst cases can end in marriage breakdowns. If only it is possible to turn misbehavior into great behavior overnight!

As with most parents you have probably tried all the positive parenting tips that are meant to manage child behaviour. The main ones being promoted are raising your voice, time out, star charts and punish or rewards to discipline them. Only to discover these techniques do not work and the bad behavior persists and in some cases will actually gets worse!

Like with any problem, to be able to solve it, first you need to isolate and deal with the actual cause of the problem and not the child’s reactions.

There are three main reasons that cause unacceptable behavior in children from toddlers to teens:

Stress – A build up of cortisol (a hormone) in the brain creating all sorts of emotions.
Need - Love, Comfort, Water, Food, etc.
Not Understanding – Communication Explanations.

The main cause of child behavior, both good and bad lies in their brain. If the brain is balanced and healthy and not over stimulated, then their behavior will be calm and attentive and happy. But if their brain is imbalanced, caused by chemical influences in their hormonal system, the result can be naughty or badly behaved children. So, if their nervous system is stressed by any kind of stimulation, then the brain itself will receive too much coritsol, this will cause child behavior to become irrational or naughty.

Needs and not understanding are relatively simple issues to deal with. Once established what it is that they need or don’t understand you are then able to provide it. This in most cases will be something as simple as food cuddle, rest or a little time explaining something to make it easier to understand.

Conventional methods of discipline can cause adverse reactions in child behaviour, because raising your voice, the threat of punishment or not receiving a reward will make children stressed. This emotion causes the adrenal glands to release excessive amounts of the toxic hormone coritsol into the brain causing children to display irrational behavior some of which could be anything from whining, crying, tantrums, back chat anger, aggression and violence.

Ways to greatly improve child behavior that will have them listen, respect and trust you.

Provide a healthy balanced diet and plenty of rest.

Prevent possible bad reactions by removing from sight or duplicating objects that you know are likely to cause a reaction that will be stressful.

Making children part of the family unit by using simple words that include them on how things are done within your family. For example, when asking them to do something, i.e. we always do the dishes before we go out. Lastly don’t raise your voice.