Saturday, June 6, 2009

Parents, ... Your Kids Will Follow Your Lead

This applies more so to younger children, but also to adolescents depending on how good your communication is with your teen (see my blog of 11/9/07, "Teenagers,... What Can I Say?"). People are sometimes surprised when I tell them that I work with very young children. I have frequent success helping families fix their kid's behavior problems. That would be tantrums, aggression, self-stimulation, defiance, eating problems (eg. pickiness, or refusal), bed-wetting/toilet-training, hyperactivity, school problems (once they become of age), or other problem behaviors. Actually, my experience has been that young children's behavior tends to change fairly dramatically shortly after they begin treatment. This primarily depends on the participation of the parents.


Your child's problem behavior is often in response to their effort to adjust to a new situation, the stress level in the home (or school), a need for more or different attention, their diet, or other situations in their life. Parents are typically the ones with control over the child's environment. Young children also have not yet had time for the behavior to become a habit.


So if your child's behavior needs to change, consider changing yours and see how it affects them. The approach I use (and not just with children) is ABC. 'A', for antecedent (what's happening before the behavior that may be triggering it). 'B' for the behavior. And 'C' for the consequence of the behavior, ie. what typically happens as a result of the behavior. Try changing 'A' or 'C' and the behavior is bound to change. Figuring this out can be as simple as A, B, C!

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