Social distancing? How to deal with bad behavior
All children eventually misbehide. This is normal when they are tired, hungry, afraid, or learning to be more independent. And they can drive you crazy when they're trapped in the house!
Redirect
- Notice each bad behavior in advance and redirect your children's attention from bad to good behavior.
- Stop before it starts! When they start to get restless, you can distract them with something interesting or fun: "Let's take a walk!"
Stop for a moment
- Are you about to freak out? Give yourself 10 seconds. Inhale and exhale paused five times. Then try to react more calmly.
- Millions of parents say it helps - AND A LOT.
Consequence Management
Consequences help teach our children about taking responsibility for what they do. This allows you to discipline them in a controlled manner and is more effective than hitting or shouting.
- Allow the children to have one more chance to follow their orders before they have to deal with the consequences.
- Try to stay calm when applying the consequence.
- Make sure that you can follow firmly with the consequence. For example, saving a teenager's phone for a week is very difficult to reinforce. Depriving use for an hour is something more realistic.
- Once you're done managing the consequences, give your kids a chance to do something good and praise them for it.
Continue using tips 1 to 3
- Alone time, "eye to eye", praise for being good and planned routines will reduce episodes of bad behavior.
- Give simple tasks to children and adolescents, but they require responsibilities. Just make sure it's something they're really capable of doing. And when they do, remember to congratulate them!
This material was developed by Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) and is available in 46 languages and 32 languages in the process of translation.
Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) is a set of free programs for parents who use the principles of social learning and parent management training to improve the relationship between parents and children. The programs equip parents with skills to generate them in a positive way and develop healthy relationships with their children.