Why Your Kids Misbehave—and What to Do about It by Dr. Kevin Leman

Author:Dr. Kevin Leman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Parenting;Child psychology;FAM034000;REL012030
ISBN: 9781493423125
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

Rewind

Let’s look at those three situations from earlier in the chapter and replay them with a positive-attention response.

The Seven-Year-Old Cuckoo Clock

Your seven-year-old chants, “Can we, huh? Can we, huh? Can we, huh?” like a cuckoo clock with OCD so you can’t hear the 10:00 news. He won’t go away until you promise to take him to the store the next day to get the latest hot athletic shoes.

Your response: Your eyes don’t move from the news, as hard as that is. When a commercial comes on, you turn toward him and say, “No, we can’t go tomorrow.”

“Why?”

If you could keep track of how many times that kid said, “Why?” you’d be as brilliant as Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking.

“We might have been able to go tomorrow, but you chose to interrupt me when you are supposed to be in bed.”

“But Dad . . .”

“Now if you ask me kindly in a day or two, when I’m not busy, I might have a different response. Good night.” And you go back to your TV watching.

That response might sound negative at first. It was too hard to ignore his cuckoo-clock behavior, so you chose to wait and address it during the commercial. He didn’t receive a reward for his negative behavior. There would be no trip to the store. But you introduced the concept that asking nicely and during an appropriate time would garner a different response.

Good job in retraining that kid.

The Social Drama Queen

Your social drama queen claims you never pay attention to her. “Hello, am I invisible?” she says. “I’m, like, right here but nobody listens.” And that’s after you heard her rant for half an hour about so-and-so #1 at school who’s no longer friends with so-and-so #2, because so-and-so #3 knew that some boy liked so-and-so #2 and told so-and-so #1 but not so-and-so #2. Your head was swimming as you tried to follow the chain of who was who.

Your response: “Hmm, that’s funny. I just heard you say . . .,” and you repeat back to her the muddy conversation that you thought you heard for the past half hour. As you ramble on, she starts to look confused.

You don’t address her snotty “invisible” comments. You don’t throw back in her face, “Young lady, what do you mean I wasn’t listening? I’ve been listening to you for a whole half hour.” Instead, you snow her with her own words, then walk away, leaving her stunned since you didn’t give her a chance to interject.

Later, you pick one thing out of her long blathery session to comment on: “Earlier you mentioned how bad you felt for your friend when she didn’t know a boy liked her. You were embarrassed on her behalf. That shows you have a kind heart. I saw it that time the other girls were picking on the new girl in your class, and you invited her to come to our house after school. . . .”

You’ve refocused her negative behavior in a positive direction—on someone other than herself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.