Help With Kids Behavior

The fundamental rule for all discipline problems is encouraging good behavior instead of punishing bad behavior. It’s a tried and tested method that rewards work better than punishments.

The important thing about establishing discipline is to remain consistent in your speech, your actions and your attitudes. Most importantly, you need to follow up with action what you assert with words. If you are not consistent, you send confused signals to the child. Then you can’t blame him for not obeying you. How can he abide by your wishes, if he doesn’t even know what you want him to do?

You can’t afford to neglect child discipline; but punishment tactics should be avoided as far as possible; they don’t work. Try a reward system instead. Rewards don’t have to be tangible; a nod of approval, a word of praise and a warm hug can work wonders. You can encourage positive children’s behavior by positive reinforcement. It makes you and your child feel good. And, it saves time on the yelling.

Don’t know where to start with establishing a reward system? Here are some parenting help steps to help you get started.

* Parents should sit down and discuss discipline problems threadbare. Together you should set up a list of child behavior actions and rewards, for example, cleaning up the bedroom without having to be reminded means an extra hour of TV on the weekend.

* Once you have clarity on behavior actions and rewards, you should explain the system to the children. You’ll be surprised that even very small children respond to rewards. It’s a good idea to actively engage the older children in this type of routine change; it will ensure better implementation and the system will run smoothly and many child behavior problems will be avoided. It will give them a sense of achievement and participation in the household decision making process.

* It is most important that you follow through and keep a record. Keeping track of a lot of activities can be hard to do. Use the chart to keep track of where each child stands. This is also a visual reinforcement.

Following these three steps will help you get started in establishing a reward-based child discipline system in your home to help make sure things get done. By rewarding good child behavior and the accomplishment of child discipline tasks, you set a positive foundation for self-esteem.

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Catching your child in a lie is maddening, painful and upsetting. What else does he lie about? How can I trust him? Behavioral therapist James Lehman explains why kids tell lies and suggests a better way for parents to deal with it.

Q: When your child lies to you, it hurts. As parents, it makes us angry and we take it personally. We feel like we can never trust our child again. Why does lying cause such anger, pain and worry for parents?

James: Parents are understandably very afraid of their children getting hurt and getting into trouble, but they have very little protection against these things as they send their kids out into the world. Kids learn from other kids and from external media, and this makes parents feel unsafe because they can’t control the information and ideas that their children are exposed to.

Your kid’s honesty becomes the connector between what’s happening to him on the outside world and what happens at home. You need him to tell you honestly what happened today, so that you can honestly decide if that’s best for him. You need him to tell you what he’s doing so you can decide if that’s going to help him meet his responsibilities now and in the future. When parents don’t get the right information, they’re afraid they’ll make the wrong choices for their kids.

When your kid lies, you start to see him as “sneaky,” especially if he continues to lie to you. You feel that he’s going behind your back, that he’s undermining you. You begin to think that your kids are “bad”.” Because, certainly, if lying is bad, liars are bad. It’s just that simple.

Parents need to make their kids responsible for lying. But the mistake parents make is they start to blame the kid for lying. It’s considered immoral to lie. But when you look at your kid like he’s a sneak and an operator who’s undermining your authority, it’s a slippery slope that starts with “You lie” and ends up at “You’re a bad person.” I think that perception of your kid promotes more lying. If your child thinks you think he’s “bad,” he’s going to hide the truth from you even more, because he doesn’t want be bad. Even though they are lying, kids don’t want to disappoint their parents.

Q: Let’s look at it from the child’s perspective. What’s going in on a child’s mind when they lie to their parents?

James: Kids know lying is forbidden. But they don’t see it as hurtful. Not the way that parents see it as hurtful. So a kid will say, “I know it’s wrong that I ate a sugar snack when I’m not supposed to. But who does it hurt?” “I know it’s wrong that I traded my dried fruit for a Twinkie. But it doesn’t really hurt anybody. I can handle it. What’s the big deal?” That’s what the kid sees.

When they don’t see it as hurtful, there are two different value systems operating: the family’s value system that says this is forbidden and the kid’s value system that says if it’s not hurting anybody, what do you care? The kid rationalizes his actions and justifies his behavior with the idea that it doesn’t hurt anybody. The outcome is a dishonest situation. A lie.

When you get to adolescence, of course, the stakes get much higher. But the thinking remains the same. Kids smoke pot and drink and say, “Well it doesn’t hurt anybody. My friends smoke pot and it doesn’t hurt them. I know drinking’s wrong, but my parents drink and it doesn’t hurt them. I can handle it. I’m older than my parents think I am.” They know it’s forbidden. They either don’t see it as hurtful, or they rationalize the hurt away.

Q: So what’s the best way for parents to deal with lying, so that they don’t feel hurt and resentful about it and so that the child learns not to lie?

James: The first thing you have to do is be careful of is giving lies too much power. If you have a kid who’s mad at you or feels aggravated and powerless, and if he feels he can gain power over you by telling you a lie, he’ll use dishonesty to get that power. He’ll withhold information and lie by omission when you’re trying to get the truth. He’ll give you little pieces of information, and that makes him feel powerful. It’s a trap for parents. Honesty is important, but if you communicate that too strongly to your children, they will use that to have power over you. You have to keep these things a certain size so that they’re not used against you.

The second thing to remember is that you have to understand the power of the culture that kids go into. It’s a very powerful culture that exerts a lot of pressure to “fit in.” They may feel guilty if they lie to their parents. But, again, they’re thinking, “This isn’t that hurtful, and my parents just don’t understand.” Of course, parents do understand. They’re frightened, and they should be.

So I think that parents have to assume that kids are going to tell them lies, because they’re immature and they don’t understand how hurtful these things are. They’re also drawn towards excitement, and their parents aren’t. It’s not like the good kids aren’t drawn to excitement and risk, and the bad kids are. It’s not that the good kids don’t lie and the bad kids do lie. They’re all drawn to excitement, and they’ll all have a tendency to distort the truth because they’re kids.

I think parents have to deal with lying the way a cop deals with speeding. If you’re traveling too fast, he issues you a ticket. He’s not interested in a lot of explanations from you. He’s just going to give you a consequence. Look at it the same way with your child. He didn’t tell the truth, whether the truth was distorted, omitted or withheld. There should simply be consequences for that. The first time you lie, you go to bed an hour early. The second time, you lose your phone. It should be something that the kid feels. You lose your phone for twenty four hours. You lose your phone for two days. You lose computer time or TV time.

The consequences have to make the child uncomfortable or they don’t change anything. The idea is that the next time he’s faced with telling you the truth or lying, he’ll recall how uncomfortable he was when he did the consequence for lying, and he’ll tell you the truth instead.

The consequence should be about the lying. If there’s a separate consequence for the incident, that should come down separately. If you come home later than your curfew and you tell me the truth, you may still lose going out Friday night, but you won’t lose your phone. If you lie to me, you lose both.

Parents should not focus on the morality of it. Just be clear. Lying is wrong, it’s hurtful and, in our home, we tell the truth. But don’t make it a moral issue. Make it a technical issue. You broke the law. You broke the rules. These are your consequences.

When a cop writes me a ticket, he doesn’t follow me home or argue with me. He hands me my ticket and he drives away. Approach the consequences for lying the same way. Don’t argue about it or get into a big discussion. Discuss it in a structured way: “What were you trying to accomplish by doing that?” Not “Why did you lie? You know how much lying hurts me.” Just ask what he was trying to accomplish, then point out that lying is not the way to solve his problem. Compliance is the way to solve it. Talk about it after things have cooled down, not in the heat of the moment. Explain what will happen if he lies again. “If you lie to me about the dance, you’re not going to the next dance and I’m taking your phone for twenty four hours.” Just keep it really simple.

Copyright 2007. EmpoweringParents.com

If you have a child who is out of control, then a good children behavior management program can be helpful. As you are probably aware, behavioral issues can start at any time even in a child who is usually resilient. When this happens, you will want to know how to curb this type of behavior. The reason is clear: if you enable problem behaviors instead of teaching your child self-discipline, this can lead to a style of behaving that can adversely affect your child’s future.

Most parents understand that children’s behavior is a function of where they are in their development, but take care not to use this as an excuse for inappropriate behavior. For instance, not feeling well is not an excuse for being abusive to others or lashing out at family members or peers.

Although it may help parents to know that their child has had a bad day, it’s not okay to let the child use this as an excuse. The issue is that many parents have not been trained to figure out how to sort through developmental issues, so they unwittingly enable their children’s behavior, which just worsens the behavior over time.

But punishing children’s behavior can backfire, making some kids even more defiant and rebellious. This is where a good at-home children behavior management program comes in: it shows parents how to teach accountability and set firm limits without being punitive. That said, there is no reason to feel bad about needing to learn these simple strategies that no one ever taught you. Now that you know that such techniques exist, it is a good idea to learn them in order to restore a sense of peace and order in your home.

Even kids who have a conduct disorder can change their lives with an effective children behavior management program. That’s because these programs teach parents how to change behavior which is the yardstick that is used as a measure of success. In other words, learning equals a change in behavior. In addition to learning useful parenting techniques, your child will gain tools and strategies that will benefit him throughout his life.

In the final analysis, it’s not just children’s behavior that needs to change. We can all benefit from learning tools that make change possible because even as grownups, we still struggle with behaviors that do not serve us.