Challenging Behaviour
’ve definitely been in a place (still am sometimes) where my child’s behaviour is so overwhelmingly awful. In those times you feel like you have two options:
1. Let the wave of despair overtake you and give up
2. You decide to give yourself a good talking to and say enough is enough.
So please hear me when I say I know it can be difficult and I know for some of you it is just difficult almost all of the time. For those facing that I applaud you and think you are particularly amazing. But I do believe, even if you child has additional needs or not, that it is possible to work on at least some of the behaviours and put in strategies that can support you and give structure and routine to your child.
There are some key things to remember when thinking about behaviour:
1. The behaviour is always telling you something
– Has the behaviour got worse in the last few days? Are they coming down with something?
– Does your child struggle to communicate? Is the challenging behaviour a way of expressing frustration?
– Have things changed at school or at home?
– Are they needing a bit more attention?
To name but a few of the reasons. But maybe if you can take a step back from the situations you may find that there is a reason for the behaviour.
2. You can’t combat all issues at the same time, you and your child will get overwhelmed.
For example, my little one when a lot younger would not walk up the stairs to our 2nd floor flat. He could walk up the stairs, he just wouldn’t. He would lay on the stairs or scream or generally send me over the edge especially when you had loads of bags and no lift! At the same time meal times were horrible – getting up or throwing food. To make matters worse bedtimes were also very difficult, and the list could go on! But instead of tackling all the issues at the same time, I had to decide which was the more problematic and then focussed on that one.
If you focus on one issue you can give your attention to that issue, also you can gain confidence as things change and also it can give you hope that success if possible.
3. Turn round the negative into a positive
It’s so easy when you are tired and possibly despairing to only look at the negative behaviour. Don’t worry we all do it!
If you can use strategies that encourage you to look for the positive behaviour, your child will pick up on this. Strategies such as:
– Every-time they do good listening – put a marble in a jar, can the jar get full by the end of the day.
– Put a Lego brick on a the tower every time they are kind – how tall will the tower get by the end of the day.
– Reward charts for eating their meal well.
By turning round the negative behaviour and looking for the positive both you and your child can start to form new habits, you can start to see that your child can do good listening even if at the moment it is only half the time. Children with ADHD particularly respond to praise and rewards so all of these strategies would be great if you child has ADHD or ADD.
Below is a reward chart you can download. Write in the top box, what you want to achieve and in the bottom box write the prize they will get when they have 8 stickers (don’t go large with your prizes – this won’t be the last reward chart you will do.)
4. Model it
I remember once shouting to my child ‘stop shouting at me’. And it made me realise that I shout a lot. I certainly won’t judge anyone who shouts and it’s not a habit I have been able to break 100% of the time. But if I want my little one to stop shouting at me, I need to stop shouting first. If you want your child to be brave about something, do you need to show them what it is to be brave? I mean not all challenging behaviour our children exhibit is stemming from what they see you do, I certainly didn’t go round biting people!! But there are somethings that we can model.
I know this post doesn’t necessarily solve specific issues, maybe that will come at a later date. But hopefully it will help you look differently at the challenging behaviour and give you the confidence to challenge the behaviour!