A
misbehaved child is one of the worst nightmares
you can have as a parent. Before becoming a parent,
many of us have seen children being obstinate, yelling,
showing anger and defiance, and causing unwanted
troubles of many other sorts.
In
our minds, almost all of us seeing such a child,
have secretly hoped that our own children would
never behave as bad as that. In
the unfortunate case that we do have to face such
a situation with our own children, it helps tremendously
to understand the problems our children face and
solve the issue permanently and properly.
What are the different
types of bad behaviors that children tend to demonstrate?
There are a number. The most prominent ones have
either a motif of aggression or passiveness. Each
of them can be further subdivided based on the exact
symptoms shown by the child. Anger is one of the
worst kinds or aggressive
behaviors. A child with the anger
syndrome would tend to demonstrate anger at
the smallest event that is not of his/her choice.
A further aggravated form of anger is often the
violence symptoms. The child tends to be destructive.
S/he would try to break things into pieces for even
the smallest of reasons. S/he might tend to bully
other children at times. None of these are great
signs of the mental health of your child.
Another form of aggression
is yelling. The child would yell at the smallest
cause. A yelling child can disturb you to no end,
although yelling in itself is probably a milder
form of aggression. Yet another aggressive behavior
among children is the oppositional, defiant behavior
syndrome. The child would actively oppose anything
that s/he is offered. S/he would refuse to listen
to the parents, and be driven only by his/her own
thoughts and actions. She would try to defy each
and every rule and regular s/he is expected to follow.
The other most prominent
form of bad behavior that children tend to show
is rooted at passiveness.
Passive behaviors,
too, have some more subtle variations. Silence
is one such behavior.
The child tends to
remain silent in this case, no matter what you do
or say. The child would seem to have given up any
effort to respond to you, irrespective of whether
you praise him/her or show disagreement.
The child would typically
not respond when you call him/her or when you speak
to him/her. S/he will simply seem ignorant of any
activity. The silence factor is also accompanied
often by indifference of the child to other affairs.
Silence and indifference is often said to occur
when the child wants to hide something from the
parent either in the short or in the long term.
The child may still
keep enjoying most of the parts of life that s/he
used to enjoy before starting to show such symptoms.
In the bad cases, the passive behavior may gradually
morph into depression. Depression
can be a serious dumping factor for your child.
A depressed child will almost never enjoy any part
of life. Your best and most expensive efforts to
cheer up the child will normally go to vain. The
child will feel a deep dark sinking feeling inside,
and the feeling will remain. The child may or may
not be able to express it, so be on the alert if
your child is showing chronic silence syndrome.
In fact, it is suggested that you pay a visit to
the child-psychologist in such a case, since a depression
in childhood is much more than a mere state of mind.
It affects the subconscious of the child with a
tremendous negative impact.
Among the other kinds
of behavior, there would be manifestations of the
child-like trends of mischievous behavior that go
too far. Being overtly talkative is one of them,
if they do it on purpose to grab attention. Demonstrating
obnoxious behavior is a problem that children commonly
show, and in particularly in front of an audience.
Sticking the tongue out, not letting others talk
by shouting and disturbing others by simply physically
falling on top of them are some of the more common
forms.
The question that
would bother you is that why would the child want
to behave badly, and how to stop the child from
continuing such behavior? The philosophy to the
answer of the first one is easy. The child would
behave badly only if s/he sees some incentive in
that. That creates the foundation of the philosophy
of the second answer - if you provide the child
with enough incentive to behave well, then the child
is going to stop behaving badly. Remember that every
human being has a good corner inside the heart.
A good life is a matter of identifying and bringing
out the good corner. And your child is no exception
to this.
The child's incentive
to behave badly is usually rooted into one of a
few well-known bases. They are power, control
and fear.
The child would act aggressively if s/he wants to
enjoy more power and control. If s/he believes that
it is the aggressive behavior that would give him/her
the power and control s/he desires over you and
over the real life situations, that is when s/he
would behave aggressively. On the other hand, if
the child wants to conceal facts and truths from
you and is afraid that s/he may face unwelcome consequences
if you find out such truths (for example, bad performance
in school) then that is when they tend to show negative
and passive behavioral trends.
As a parent, you
would want to make sure that you understand what
is wrong with your child. Once you understand the
nature of the problem, you would want to assertively
talk to your child about the problem. To your surprise,
you would find your child starting to respond more
normally than before. This would indicate that you
are no track. Once you get this head-start, you
can leverage the advantage and understand the entire
problem from your child. Then, making the child
understand the notions of consequences and responsibilities
of our own works, you need to enlighten the child's
mind on how to solve the problems. In general, make
sure that you play and stay the role model in your
child's mind, since that makes it a lot easier for
you to gain your child's confidence and thus get
rid of the problem as a whole.
Visitors
who read this article also read:
-
Out
of Control Children
-
Aggressive
Child Behavior and Anger
-
Depression
in children
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