When a young child bites or hits, it is usually related to some type of frustration. Despite the fact that we are patient and understanding as related to their frustration, this inappropriate behavior cannot continue. If this biting and/or hitting moves out of your house and onto the playground, all of a sudden that behavior may hurt other children, and may stigmatize your child for exhibiting it. So what can you do?
First, you must understand how socially inappropriate behavior occurs. Something happens to cause the child to exhibit inappropriate behavior. This is called the antecedent. The child then exhibits the socially inappropriate behavior. Finally, after the child exhibits the behavior, he experiences some consequences. By consequences, I mean anything that causes the behavior to occur again and again. For example, if a child tries to be the “class clown,” and the class laughs when he is behaving inappropriately, the consequence, the other children’s’ laughter, causes the child to continue behaving inappropriately. The consequences do not refer to you making him take a time out, necessarily. They only refer to what keeps the behavior going.
The best way to start to try to diminish your child’s inappropriate behavior is to make a list of his socially inappropriate behaviors, what happened before the behavior to possibly cause it and what happened after the behavior to keep it going. Just so you know, one difficult thing is that sometimes whatever happened to cause the inappropriate behavior did not happen recently, but rather, some time ago So, if you cannot find out what happened immediately before the behavior, try to talk to your child to find out if anything happened a while ago. This could be an altercation on the bus, an episode of teasing or being rebuffed by one child.
In my next post, I will talk about what to do with all of that information that you have gathered.
No comments:
Post a Comment