Managing behaviour
Guidance or discipline is most effective in a warm and loving relationship where your child feels supported and secure.
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Children explore and experiment to find out about the world. All their climbing, poking, jumping, touching and questioning helps them to find out about he world. It helps them learn where their boundaries are.
You can help them by keeping them safe and giving them new things to learn and explore. This helps them develop the skills and knowledge they will need as adults.
What works
- Give lots of love, warmth and praise.
- Communicate. Tell your child what they are doing well, so they develop the confidence to learn new things.
- Be clear about what you want your child to do and what you don’t want them to do.
- Talk to them when things go wrong. They might need help to work things out.
- Think about what happened and why. They might be tired, hungry or frustrated and not be able to tell you.
- Think about why they’re refusing to do something. Do they want attention? Are they frustrated? Are they unsure? They might just need a hug and some encouragement.
- Talk about consequences. For example tell them that if they hit the cat it might scratch them, or if they throw a toy it might break.
- If you ask them not to do something and they do, follow through. Ask them to say sorry if they hit someone, or to help clean up if they make a mess.
- Say sorry yourself. Act as you want your child to help.
- Be patient. It takes time for children to develop their own self discipline.
- Plan. Put precious things out of reach. Don’t take your child to busy places if they’re tired.
What doesn't work
- Yelling and screaming can make things build into a major battle. Take a deep breath, walk away.
- Smacking or hitting doesn’t teach children anything, except that hitting is ok.
- Withholding love tells your child you don’t like them. It’s their behaviour you don’t like.
Other ideas
- Very young children can be distracted easily. Show them a toy, give them a hug, read a story.
- Have some special distractions for when your child is tired or fed up. Take a book or toy in your bag for the car.
- When everything feels out of control and you’re tired and stressed, go to another room and calm yourself. Sometimes just going and looking out a window or counting to 10 can calm things.
- When things have calmed down have a chat with your child. Talk about what happened and what the consequences will be if the behaviour continues.
- Talk about how their behaviour affects others. For example if they take toys off their friends they won’t want to play with them.
- Listen to their ideas about how things could be sorted.
