Divas & Dictators: The Secrets to Having a Much Better Behaved Child by Charlie Taylor

Author:Charlie Taylor [Taylor, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Family & Relationships, Psychology, Parenting, Children with Special Needs, Developmental, Child
ISBN: 9780091923853
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Rules

When I am talking to parents about rules, I often encounter some resistance. For some people, rules have a resonance of authoritarian teachers and school days, but what they are, simply, is one of the ways we communicate our values to our children. As a society, we are bound up in a myriad of rules, all with different levels of importance and for different situations. We have the rules of the country which tell us what we are not allowed to do. There are rules of the road, rules for communicating, rules for eating, rules for listening, for talking, for sitting, for speaking at home, for speaking at school, for speaking to our friends, for speaking to our grandparents and there are also rules that apply for people of different ages. If you were to count how many social and legal rules you follow during the course of a day, the number would be staggering.

As children grow up, we expect them to follow these rules. It is one of the endearing (and embarrassing) things about small children that they don't understand many of the social conventions. My daughter used to go up to complete strangers and ask them questions of a highly personal nature. By and large, she was able to get away with it because people are more tolerant of children, but as she grew older she needed to start to learn the rules of social interaction.

We consciously teach children many of these rules, such as eating with your mouth closed, and how to use a knife and fork. Children will also pick up a lot through school, through socialising with their friends and through playing. They will learn a huge amount from watching their parents. Children whose parents shout and swear in the car will have children who will shout and swear. Whether you like it or not, children will learn many of their values through the example set by their parents. Unfortunately, 'Do as I say, not as I do' doesn't cut much ice.

Using Rules to Improve Behaviour

When a behavioural issue arises in the family, it is often useful to impose an explicit rule to help the child know what he is not supposed to be doing. Let's take the example of brothers who fight all the time. To some extent, we want to encourage children to play-fight. They need to learn how to use their strength safely, how far to go before they hurt each other. However, what often happens is that one of the children ends up hurt and in tears. This is a useful time to impose a rule – one that is really simple and easy to understand, such as: 'be gentle' or 'don't hurt'. Once you have a rule, then you can teach the children what it means and how to follow it. With play-fighting, you could give the children a spoken or physical script they could follow when they are in pain. This could involve simply saying, 'Stop, that hurts!' or giving a series of taps to show things have gone too far.

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