Is your child misbehaving? Do you feel you need to be harder on him so that he behaves better? Don’t worry, you are not the only one. All parents feel like you at times. Your feeling may be right; your child may need you to be firmer. However, he may also need something totally different: love and attention. Rules are great tools for behaviour management but will not work on their own. Effective rules have to be accompanied by an effective attitude. An effective attitude for managing childrens’ behaviour is full of R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Below I will explain what these ‘letters’ mean. 1. Respecting your child [by accepting him for who he is]. 2. Encouraging your child [by showing confidence in his abilities]. 3. Spending quality time with your child [by giving him one-on-one positive attention]. 4. Praising your child when he does something good [by describing what he does well]. 5. Enabling growth [by giving him room for mistakes ]. 4. Communicating positively [by seperating behaviour from the child]. 5. Treating the child with love and affection [by kissing, hugging, saying loving words] Dealing with naughty behaviour in a negative way Below is a case of a parent who had very good rules that didn’t work out because she missed out some aspects of the R-E-S-P-E-C-T attitude. Anna (fictitious name for privacy reasons) is a working mom of two children, a girl of 4 (Raihanna) and a boy of 7 (Norman). Lately mom is becoming very annoyed with Norman’s behaviour. He is always naughty (she says). He hits his sister when mom is not looking, leaves the living room messy after playing with toys and yesterday he even told his mum he doesn’t care when she told him he was naughty. He doesn’t seem to do anything right! Anna decided to ask for help. In this case we can see that Anna – with all good intentions – keeps feeding the negative behaviour of her child. She only seems to see Norma’s misbehaviour and only responds to that negative behaviour. So the negative behaviour of Norman triggers her negative response. Her negative response in turn keeps Norman’s negative behaviour going. This turns into a vicious circle where both mom and Norman are triggering each others negative responses. What is not immediately apparent from the case is that Anna didn’t spend a lot of quality time with Norman because she was so busy working. When she was home, she had to cook, clean and of course manage the naughty behaviour of her son. Stress and negativity was the result which – although very understandable – wasn’t helpful for Norman’s behaviour. Dealing with naughty behaviour in a positive way It would help if mom spent more quality time with Norman (even if it was just 20 minutes per day). She could do something with him that he likes (he likes playing lego), watch him do something he likes (like watching a football game) or talk to him about something he likes without criticizing him for anything he does during these activities. This quality time could give him enough positive attention to not look for negative attention because children who do not receive positive attention will look for negative attention like I have explained earlier in the article: ‘Is your Child Attention Seeking or Attention Needing?’. It would also help him feel better which prevents behaviour like hitting and being rebellious. It’s also important for Norman to hear what he is doing good because his mum tells him what he does wrong a lot. Imagine if your partner, friend or colleague would constantly tell you what you were doing wrong, would that help you change your behaviour? You would probably think: ”I don’t care about what you think anymore, everything I do is bad anyway!” This is similar response to Norman’s response who said: ”I don’t care” when his mom told him that he is naughty. This case is an example of some ways through which the R-E-S-P-E-C-T attitude can positively influence behaviour. The rules of mom were not bad. They were actually very good. It’s a good rule that he has to tidy up after himself and that he should keep his hands to himself. But these very good rules did not work out because the R-E-S-P-E-C-T attitude was not complete. So it’s very important to have a R-E-S-P-E-C-T attitude to make your rules work. Posted by: Mustapha Himi