Is your child’s behavior baffling you? It can be difficult to understand what is motivating a child’s poor behavior. In this article, I’m continuing the discussion of Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs work on his four goals of misbehavior. He was a psychiatrist who founded and was the medical director of the Community Child Guidance Center in Chicago. Dreikurs was influenced by social psychologist Alfred Adler who believed that the central motivation of all humans is to belong and be accepted by others. He believed that all behavior was purposeful and directed toward achieving social approval. Dreikurs suggested that all misbehavior is eh result of a child’s mistaken assumption about how to find a place and gain status.

Following is an overview of the last two of Dreikurs’ four goals of misbehavior along with my own suggestions on how to deal with each one.

Goal three: Revenge

I think author Kylie Rymanowicz said it best: “Revenge is a dish best served cold and sometimes it’s served in a sippy cup.” When a child feels hurt, they may lash out and try to hurt you. That’s because they don’t yet have the maturity or the tools to deal with such difficult emotions. This kind of behavior is perhaps the most difficult to see through. When a child is exhibiting revenge-seeking behavior, it’s easy to see him as bad rather than as a hurting child. Only when we see past the behavior to the hurt can we truly help stop this kind of behavior. Resist the urge to retaliate or punish because this only adds to the pain.

To deal with and thwart this kind of behavior, it’s important to establish boundaries. Helping children to understand and stay within the boundaries we set makes them feel safe and secure – like the yellow lines on the road. Without those yellow lines, driving would be scary. Without boundaries, life is scary. Boundaries are necessary; it’s the way we enforce those boundaries that determine whether we are being positive parents. Make sure the boundaries are fair and age-appropriate, and hold them lovingly, providing empathy and understanding when children get upset about the rules. Talk about the importance of respectful communication and discuss what is appropriate and respectful and what isn’t.

Become your child’s emotion coach. Help them understand and name their emotions, and talk about ways to work through those emotions. This is both a skill and a developmental milestone. Very young children cannot be expected to control their emotions consistently because they do not yet have the cognitive resources to do so, but we can still talk about emotions to set the foundation for them to build upon as they grow.

Next, replace punishment with problem-solving to give your child the skills needed to make amends and move forward. Ask questions like “what caused you to do this,” “what could you have done differently,” and “how are you going to fix this?” It’s easy to dole out a punishment and make them “serve time,” but to really raise responsible people, we have to give them responsibility, and that includes the responsibility to correct their own mistakes.

Finally, work on strengthening your relationship with that child. A positive, healthy relationship is so important in a child’s life, and yet we so often use discipline techniques and tricks that harm the relationship and sew distrust. When you show up as a loving, positive leader, you’ll foster a trusting relationship that will help you lead your child down the right path.

Goal four: Display of inadequacy.

This type of behavior shows up when the child has given up. They may feel unworthy or inferior, and their behavior often looks like withdrawal, self-criticism, and a negative attitude. This kind of behavior is exasperating for parents who want to see our children happy, confident, and successful.

Stop all criticism. Critical words diminish the child’s sense of self and break confidence. Criticism is one of the “four horsemen” according to the work of Dr. John Gottman; these are four relationship destroyers. Criticism is especially harmful to sensitive children and children whose love language is words of affirmation. Of course, parents aren’t perfect just as our children aren’t perfect, so if you speak hurtful criticism to your child and see the light dim in their eyes a bit, simply apologize and get on with soul-building encouragement.

Be your child’s light reflector. Think about this. The people in our lives who look past our faults and see our beauty, the ones who still see the light in us during the times we feel only darkness, those are the people who save us from the depths of blackness. Those are the ones who help us see our own beauty and light again. We all need that person - someone who reflects our light back at us so we can see it, too. That's what a parent should be. That’s what it means to become light reflectors. We should always seek to see our child’s light, to hold it sacred, and to show it to them when they need a glimpse.

Finally, when you see behaviors that are a display of inadequacy, focus on and encourage your child’s positive attempts and behaviors, no matter how small. Offer encouraging words daily. Try these 50 positive affirmations for kids.

Look for part one of this series where I discuss Dr. Dreikurs’ first two goals of misbehavior, attention and power.

Sources:

The Social Discipline Model of Rudolf Dreikurs

Four Goals of Misbehavior Chart

We know that after-school restraint collapse is a real thing. After a long day of school, it can be hard for kids to hold it together. They may melt down or have an emotional outburst, and sometimes—especially with very young children who attend daycare or preschool—there's one particular emotion they're blasting at mom and dad: Anger.

Sometimes, the child who was happy (and happy to see us) when we fetched them from their classroom can seem downright mad at us by the time we've made it home.

For mamas who have been missing their little one all day, being pushed away can sting a bit, but according to Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, R.Psych., this especially frustrating and personal form of after-school restraint collapse is totally normal and actually a sign that your child really does love you a lot.

"I call it defensive detachment," Lapointe, the author of Discipline without Damage: How to Get Your Kids to Behave Without Messing Them Up, tells Motherly.

"It's a subconscious thing. They don't even know they're doing it but it's very real," says Dr. Lapointe.

Any parent who has been through it knows how real it feels. As Lapointe explains, it can be trying.

"They defensively detach from you by being angry at you, and shoving you away, and may call you names," she says, adding that while it's often loud, intense, and inconvenient, parents should try looking at these displays of defensive detachment as a gift. Our children don't have the words to tell us what they're thinking and feeling, but this behavior can help us figure out what they need.

According to Lapointe, parents might want to think about how they feel after temporarily losing sight of their child in a public space, like a grocery store. When a parent is reunited with their child after a separation they were not in control of, they often hug them, kiss them, hold them, but then, that relief can turn into frustration and anger.

When your child is having defensive detachment meltdowns after daycare or school, that's how they're feeling: Relieved to see you, but frustrated at having been separated and over their lack of control. Lapointe says asking a child to suppress those feelings is as pointless as trying to hold a beach ball underwater: "It's going to come back up."

Instead of suppressing a display of defensive detachment, Lapointe recommends ways parents can soften the intensity of the separation, and give kids room to be loud and intense when they need to be.

Fill up their emotional cup before the separation

Lapointe's advice to parents dealing with meltdowns in the afternoon or evening is to start your defense against defensive detachment meltdowns in the morning.

"Try and set your alarm, for maybe 15 minutes earlier every day, so that you have a bit of time to actually connect with your child and really fill up their connection cup before you send them out the door to school," she explains.

Spending this extra time together in the morning can help ease the child into the separation of the school day while feeling more strongly attached to their parent.

Let them know you are connected even when you are not together

Lapointe often recommends the children's book The Kissing Hand (about a young raccoon leaving his mother to start school in the forrest) and The Invisible String (about a mother who tells her children they are connected by an invisible string) to parents whose children are having a hard time with separations.

"They're both stories about how, even when we're not together, parent and child, we're still together through our hearts, and that you can never break that connection," says Lapointe, who recommends parents incorporate some of the lessons from these popular books into their morning routines and rituals.

A child may feel more connected if they have their own "kissing hand" or "invisible string" at school with them.

Send a piece of you with them to school

An invisible string is great, but sometimes kids need something even more tangible to remind them of mom and dad, says Lapointe, who recommends simple notes in the lunch bag, or a small picture of the family that the child can carry with them.

"I had one little boy whose parents laminated a photo of them loving on him, and then they attached it to a lanyard spritzed with his Daddy's cologne and he wore it under his shirt," Lapointe recalls. "When he needed to he could just peek under his shirt at the picture, and that's how he held them close."

Lapointe and her son had their own similar ritual with heart-shaped keychains. "And I carried the little kid heart around with me, and my son carried the mama heart around with him to school and in his backpack," she explains.

Let them let it out

Sometimes, all the quality time in the morning and all the loving reminders from home can't totally prevent a child's day away from you from being hard. If you sense a defensive detachment meltdown is coming on after pick up, Lapointe says it's best to take control of it by inviting it.

"You step in front of the meltdown by saying things like, 'You're having a really hard go today, Bud. I get that. And if you've got some shouts in you, now's the time to let em' out.' And so you kind of just will it into existence, so much so that your child actually, on a subconscious level, believes that you're in control of the meltdown."

According to Lapointe, a child who is on the edge of losing control themselves is relieved when they realize someone else is in control. By taking a proactive approach and literally asking for the meltdown to happen, parents can speak to their children while their child can still understand them. If we wait until they're freaking out to take control, we can't, says Lapointe.

"You can't be in charge of a child, or be in control of a child, who is no longer in control of themselves," she explains, adding that once they've lost control and are operating strictly from the emotional part of their brain, "they're not able to think or problem-solve. If we're gonna say things to them like, 'remember to use your words,' we just sound like foreign aliens, that doesn't make any sense in that moment."

So before your child loses the ability to hear you, let them know that you hear them. You hear that they need to release their emotions in a loud, intense and inconvenient way, and you're okay with it. Pull the car over or clear a space in the living room and just let those loud, flailing emotions come out.

"There would be no shaming, no blaming, no consequences, no punishing of any kind," Lapointe explains.

Remember that your baby really does love you, mama

Taking a page out of Lapointe's parenting playbook can reduce the impact of defensive detachment meltdowns after school, but when your child lashes out at you, it still hurts.

If you're dealing with defensive detachment meltdowns right now, remember that even if your child isn't showing it, they do love you, mama. More than they can say.

source: Heather Marcoux

When is the last time your child’s behavior completely baffled you? What causes children to misbehave when, in your view, they clearly should know better? It can be hard to understand what is motivating your child to behave, but understanding what drives behavior is a key component of positive parenting. When we seek to understand that is motivating our children, we are better able to address the cause of the behavior rather than reacting to the behavior itself. That is where real change takes place – at the root. If we don’t address it there, it will just keep cropping up again and again.

I recently discovered the work of Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs. He was a psychiatrist who founded and was the medical director of the Community Child Guidance Center in Chicago. Dreikurs was influenced by social psychologist Alfred Adler who believed that the central motivation of all humans is to belong and be accepted by others. He believed that all behavior was purposeful and directed toward achieving social approval. Dreikurs suggested that all misbehavior is eh result of a child’s mistaken assumption about how to find a place and gain status. He did not believe in using punishment, rewards, or praise to change behavior, but rather that natural consequences and encouragement were the most useful techniques for preventing misbehavior.

Following is an overview of the first two of Dreikurs’ four goals of misbehavior along with my own suggestions on how to deal with each one.

Goal one: Attention

One of the common motivators of misbehavior, according to Dreikurs, is to get attention. This is driven by the belief that they do not matter (belong) unless they are being noticed or served. Children who are seeking attention with negative behaviors feel insignificant. Parents are often told to ignore children when they appear to be seeking attention because it is a popular opinion that giving children the attention they seek will reward or reinforce negative behaviors. Relating to this advice, Dr. Gordon Neufeld of the Neufeld Institute says this: “What else is there to want? And if we see a child who wants attention, why wouldn’t we give it to them? Why wouldn’t we meet these basic needs of affection, attention, of mattering and significance?”

From a Positive Parenting standpoint, behavior is always communication. When children seek attention in negative ways, this is a cry for help. By ignoring the child, we are ignoring their plea. When children are clingy and needy and we ignore this need, we are rejecting them. If children are seeking attention and attachment, they are in need of attention and attachment, so we can at least begin to understand their behavior and formulate a response from this place rather than from an idea that they are needlessly seeking attention and should be ignored. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you necessarily give in to demands or rearrange your plans. It simply means that you first seek to understand what is driving the behavior. When children are exhibiting troubling behavior that appears to be attention-seeking, you can set a limit on that behavior while still providing the attention and love needed by following the 3 steps to positive discipline discussed in full detail here.

Goal two: Power

It’s no wonder children feel so powerless. They have very little control in their lives, and of course they shouldn’t have too much power yet because they haven’t matured enough to make knowledgeable, wise decisions, but seeking control isn’t a bad thing. Think of the anxiety you feel when you don’t have control! Though the behaviors that children use to gain control are frustrating, we can take a step back and look at what is motivating them.

Our tendency is to feel that our authority is being threatened and anger is a common response to this threat, so our first reaction is often to posture ourselves for a fight. It’s a natural reaction when we feel threatened, so one of the things we practice in Positive Parenting is softening and responding. Children won’t hear us until they feel heard themselves, so when we try to shut down their feelings or their voices, they naturally push back, and we find ourselves locked in a power struggle that no one really wins. However, by meeting our child with empathy, we can reset the tone of the interaction. It may be something as simple as, “I hear you” or “I understand.” When spoken genuinely, empathy is a powerful diffuser of power struggles because it communicates “I understand you and I’m on your side.”

My advice is to offer a reasonable choice or alternative. Kids hear no a lot, and many of those no’s are necessary. However, it is very frustrating to be told no all the time and to have so little control over your own life. Is there an alternative you could offer that makes you both happy? Sometimes I think we are afraid that offering choices and negotiating are signs of weak parenting and we are afraid these actions compromise our authority, but I believe it shows kids that we respect them as individuals, and this inspires them to respect us more.

Another tip is to disengage without disconnecting. When disengaging from a power struggle, we are effectively ending the conversation with a “that’s final.” However, there are two ways to do this, one that disconnects and one that invites connection. As you might imagine, “Because I said so and that’s final! One more word about it and you’re grounded!” might be effective at ending the power struggle (or it might not!) but it leaves the relationship with your child on shaky ground. We can stick to our guns and say the same thing but in a way that isn’t so harsh. Instead, try saying “I love you too much to argue with you, so let’s not discuss this any further. If you need to take some time to cool off, you can. When you are ready, I’d love for you to come and find me.” This communicates I’m not willing to change my position but I still love you and I want you around, and those last two messages are vital to a strong connection and to a child’s self-worth.

written by Rebecca Eanes