A Change Of View Regarding Negative Behaviors

I feel that the caregivers of children should look at negative behaviors differently. Please, let me elaborate:

When it comes to negative behavior in children, for most caregivers, their first tendency is to look at the child’s behavior for what it is, not for what it’s saying. This approach often leads to the caregiver personalizing and misinterpreting the child’s actions. However, if caregivers can make a shift from focusing on surface behaviors to what the child’s behavior is actually communicating, it can be a life changer, for both the caregiver and the child.

One of the people I follow, Ariadne Brill (Positive Parenting Connection) says: “Misbehavior isn’t always what is seems. It doesn’t always require ‘discipline’ as much as it requires a parent willing to decode or understand what is going on underneath it all.”

When we look at it from a neuroscience point of view, we learn that our actions follow suit after our thoughts and feelings. Therefore, any behavior is an extension of what’s currently going on “behind the curtain” or an indication of the state of the child’s mind and heart. If the caregiver can become in tune with the child’s underlying needs he or she can be exponentially more effective as a caregiver. For this to happen, the root cause of the issue is needed to be addressed and not just surface behaviors.

Let’s take a weed in a garden for example. When we kill weeds, we don’t just take off the top half of the weed. The reason for this is because if we only take off the top half of the weed, the roots are still in the ground, which will cause the weed to remain and re — grow. On the other hand, if we cut out the weed in it’s entirety, including the roots, it will be much harder for the weed to re — grow.

This is why it is so important to focus on underlying issues to be able to solve the bigger problem at hand. The underlying issues can be thought of as the “roots” whereas the bigger problem can be thought of as the “weed”. We can form a simple equation based off of this analogy:

Uproot = Problem Solved