Are you Unintentionally Causing Your Child to Misbehave?

Are you unintentionally causing your child to misbehave? Are you saying one thing but your child is hearing something else?

Perhaps you are taken aback when your child lashes out at you. Perhaps your child’s unleashes his frustration on you as you try to help him. Many of us have been there and it’s no fun.

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Of course, we can work to comfort our children and help them through difficult times. An amazing way that I have found for children to work through their emotions is using the program Snuggle Buddies. It is a program that helps children identify their emotions. It is beyond the scope of this post but you can learn more about it here.

We May Unintentionally Be Causing Our Kids to Misbehave

However, there are times when without realizing what we are doing, we cause our children to misbehave.

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Children are discovering the world around them and learning about relationships. Their interactions with you as parents teach them ways to interact with others. Children test their parents to learn boundaries.

When parents are consistent, children learn that they mean what they say and will follow through and enforce rules. When kids see that sometimes we follow through, but at other times we don’t, they will continue to test us. Perhaps this will be a time that we don’t mean what we say or that we will give in.

Why is this important? Parents are frustrated when their children do not listen to a rule that they have stated many times before. We have all heard parents or either said ourselves, “How many times have I told you…:”

This happens when children learn that we only enforce rules sometimes. That means that if enforcing the rule is too difficult or we are just too tired and let it go, our kids will learn that we don’t really mean what we say. Or that we mean it only sometimes.

We may not realize that we are unintentionally teaching this lesson, but that is what our children learn. When we are consistent, our kids learn that our word is our word and they stop trying to test. In fact, they are secure in the fact that they have set boundaries.

Consequences Should be Natural and Not Punitive

This is also true of consequences. If our children exhibit behavior that goes against our rules, they will know if we will enforce consequences. Of course, our consequences should not be harsh or punitive, but rather a natural consequence that flows from an action.

To get my free checklist: Five Conditions for Effective Consequences:

For example, let’s say that (for older children) we require that they put their clothes in the laundry hamper. We have made our expectations clear about the rule. We have taught our kids how to do this as well as guided them so that they know the routine. Now we can expect them to go according to the rule. If they decide not to follow the rule then the natural consequence would be that their clothes don’t get washed.

Let’s say you are about to take your child to some type of activity. You let him/her know the time and give him/her a reminder a few minutes before its time to leave. If your child is not ready, then the natural consequence is that you would not take him/her. Or perhaps you would tell him/her that you will cancel the same activity next week.

If your child is yelling at you and you have already set the expectation on the type of voice that they need to use when speaking to you, you can refuse to talk to them until they approach you with the proper voice.

I once took five of my children to get shoes. Since I had taken them before and their behavior was always appropriate, I didn’t review my expectations before we went (a big mistake!) When we got to the store, the many different choices were too much for some of the slightly older children. They began running around the store and bothering the sales people and in general misbehaving.

I realized that I had not reviewed my expectations beforehand with my children and I realized that when they began to misbehave, it was partially my fault. However, in order to drive the point home, I quietly said that it was time to leave the store. As we walked out there were certainly some tears, along with shocked expressions that we would not be buying shoes that day.

The message was clear. In order to buy shoes, the behavior would have to change. I really didn’t have to say anything, the older children understood that we had left the store because they had chosen to misbehave.

I also learned that when taking so many children to accomplish a particular task, I needed to review the expectations clearly before the actual event and not assume that they would remember not to misbehave.

Consistency Is the Key

The important point here is that we need to be consistent in our parenting. Consistent not to make our lives easier (although it most certainly will) but because our kids need a consistent, predictable and secure environment so that they can learn to be successful in the world.Consistent so that they can know that what they do matters and that by showing up and doing the right thing, they will live happy and successful lives.

And this gives us the strength to carry through and make sure that we are consistent – even when we are tired and even when we had a terrible day.

We may slip up now and then. We are only human. But if our kids see that in general, we stick to our guns and that we mean what we say- they will be much less likely to ignore our rules or misbehave.

This means that we have to be very careful about the consequences that we choose. We have to think before we speak because it is important that our consequences teach our children:

a) Our rules are important and preserve the dignity of the family
b) Because they are important we need to make sure that our children follow them

Therefore when we make a consequence, we have to make sure that it is not punitive but instructive. We also have to make sure that it is a consequence that we will be able to follow through. If the consequence is too difficult to carry out or too inconvenient, then we will probably not be able to carry it through and our children will learn that they can misbehave.

Make Sure that We Can Carry Through the Consequence

This can happen for instance if we are on a trip with several kids and one of them decides to misbehave. If you were to say to your child, ”if you continue to do that we will have to go home” you are setting yourself up for a difficult situation if the child continues to misbehave.

To follow through, you would have to end the trip for all of the children in order to take this child home. If you don’t follow through, your child will learn that you can be swayed making it much easier for him/her to misbehave. S/he will learn that you don’t mean what you say.

Therefore it is better not to speak when you are frustrated and take some time to think of an appropriate consequence. You can say to your child. “You are not acting according to the rules and you will have to sit on the bench for 10 minutes before you can come back and play appropriately.”

Because you took the time to use a consequence that makes sense for everyone, it is instructive and not punitive and allows you to follow through.

To get my free checklist: Five Conditions for Effective Consequences:

Teaching our kids to act appropriately and not to misbehave can sometimes be challenging but by using the principles stated above you will be able to set secure predictable rules in place and help your child develop appropriate behavior. Your children will feel secure because you have set appropriate boundaries and you will stop the cycle of endless testing and poor behavior.

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