Puzzling Behaviour

Sometimes toddler behavior can appear puzzling, it seems like a child is being ‘naughty’ and we can get driven to our wits end trying to change their behaviours with time outs, sticker charts and so on. Frequently it is our own behaviours or to put it clearer it is what is going on in the child’s system and family that is causing a child’s ‘naughty’ times. It is important to attempt to understand what a child’s behavior is actually saying. Young children ( and many adults) are unable to communicate and locate their emotional seat, and anger and tantrums are the usual ways that confusion and emotional pain is played out. Meeting anger with anger is never the way. The most important simple advice that I can share with you is to step back and remember these words. ACT… DO NOT… REACT. Finding the root of a child’s behavior can be the challenge, and it is that is the difficult part that is often uncovered in therapy.

Here are some clinical examples. Young children can be indirectly forced to follow our adult agendas and time scales. Let me expand slightly on ‘our’ agendas. These are usually invisible, or need a little excavation to get to the truth in our hearts. A mum in my clinic recently spoke of how her four year old son rings her at work and asks her to buy something nice on the way home for him. She said he doesn’t request this often, he is not being spoilt therefore she happily does it. That sounds reasonable until you piece together the other behaviours that he has. Who is she buying a small gift for? Is it her son? Or is it for her own piece of mind, as she perhaps feels guilty about going to work in the first place? Does she know she needs to work at the weekend and not be at home at her usual time on this occasion? Has she a function later in the week, and will not be back for bedtime? Our adult choices are never about the one thing that they seem to be about, and children NEVER behave without a rational that is possibly embedded somewhere. Putting children into individual therapy for behaviours that are part of their system simply does not make sense it is feeding into our culture of blame and worse, preventing us as parents to be personally accountable.

Another example was from a dad who reported that his son is very funny at bedtime as he asks for him to read story after story and does so surreptitiously behind his mothers/wife’s back. It is their amusing little secret from mummy. However, it has got out of hand, as his son now takes two hours to separate for bed and his father. Furthermore his wife and him have no time together and cannot even pop out in the evening as this bedtime routine is dominating their family landscape. Who is dad doing this routine for? Is it for his son? Or could it be he works so sporadically and his son feels insecure that he is uncertain if it is a late day at work for his dad or an early one. Therefore the child elongates the bedtime routine as a security measure and the dad actually enjoys spending time reading story after story. Hence the two of them are engrossed in their system that actually is working for them, but falls under pressure from others who may judge it without deeper understanding of the purpose it is serving. The point however is that his child is NOT being naughty, although his behaviours were being translated as naughty.