Kids Like Mine

When Kids Misbehave

When my first child was 8 months old, I heard a blurb on the radio that 80% of what most kids hear is "no" or some variation thereof ("stop that"; "quit it", etc.). I decided right then and there that at least half of what my kids heard would be what they could do instead of what they couldn't do. Even though both my kids are ASD, I have been told by all kinds of people on two continents how remarkably well behaved they are. I think this simple decision is a big part of why they behave so well in public even though I have spent little time and effort on trying to get them to "behave". Telling a kid "no" (or "stop it") over and over forces the child to figure out what is acceptable by trial and error. That is the longest, hardest, slowest means to find out what works. It's no wonder so many parents are so frustrated with their kids.

Unfortunately, when I try to tell people they need to give their kids more positive feedback, one thing I hear back is this idea that they need to frame things in a more positive manner without changing their own behavior. The example I keep hearing is the parent will be more positive and constructive by saying "Yes, you CAN have a cookie -- right after dinner!" instead of saying "No, you cannot have a cookie". Um, no. That isn't what I mean at all. I call that spin-doctoring and I consider it to be a form of manipulation. (One thing parents complain to me about sometimes is how manipulative their children are -- while asking me for better methods to manipulate the kid. Gee, I wonder where the kid learned that manipulating people is perfectly acceptable behavior?)

Spin-doctoring an answer is still telling them "no". It's just a "no" in sheep's clothing. If anything, I think that would cause more behavior problems than just giving an honest "no" up front. I was going to digress for a bit and talk about that cookie, but I think that needs to be a whole other essay on fostering a healthy relationship with food and empowering kids to feed themselves. For now, suffice it to say that questions like that generally didn't come up in my home and I am disinclined to tell a child "No, you can't have a cookie until after dinner."

The decision I made to give my kids constructive feedback brings up a number of different principles that stood me in good stead as a parent:

1) Parent by modeling good behavior rather than manipulating your children. This required me to treat my kids the way I want them to treat others rather than beating them up emotionally (which is what constant negative feedback generally feels like) and then expecting them to somehow learn from that how to treat others better than that.

2) "Garbage in, garbage out": If a child gets a constant barrage of negative feedback and little or no constructive feedback, don't be surprised when their behavior reflects this negative atmosphere and is, therefore, equally negative. On the up-side, it works the exact same way if you treat them with real respect and give them genuinely positive life experiences: "Good stuff in, good stuff out".

3) Memes. Memes are self-replicating idea patterns. For purposes of parenting, you might think of the phrase in the bible about how "the sins of the father are passed down unto the fifth and sixth generation". What it boils down to: If I didn't like what my kids were doing, I often found the source of the problem by looking in a mirror. I spent a lot of time working on ME rather than trying to whip my kids into shape. (This relates to modeling rather than manipulating but there's more to it than that.)

4) Problem solving works better than punishing. Punishing a kid may not stop them from doing X because they probably have a compelling reason to do X. If they can't stop doing X because it is the only way they know how to meet their needs, then punishing them will just make them resentful and may also cause self esteem problems ("I'm a bad person") and teach them to more sneakily defy the rules to avoid being punished. A problem-solving approach doesn't start with the question "How can I stop my kid from doing X?". It starts with the question "WHY does my kid keep doing X?" Understanding the underlying needs which drove their behavior was much more useful to me than any suggestions on manipulative and/or punitive parenting tactics.

So, let's say my child is being a huge pain in the butt and I need a solution. First, I try to give constructive feedback on what specifically I have an issue with and why, then tell him what some of his alternatives might be. Real life example: Bouncing and being noisy next to mom when she is having a terrible day and has a fierce headache. Something I actually told my child: "Today would be a good day to finally become an abused child.* I feel like hell and have a terrible headache. Please do not bounce within 10 feet of me. If you must do that, go do it elsewhere. And please don't be so noisy around me."

Let's say this is a persistent behavior, not a one time problem, and all the positive feedback on his options has done little or nothing to help the situation. Well, then I would examine what his underlying need was. Let's use the same example of being annoyingly bouncy and noisy and unable to sit still. My solution was to put my child in gymnastics. He had a need for more physical activity than he was getting. Trying to tell him to "sit still" wasn't ever going to work. Meeting his need for physical activity was a far more effective solution than crabbing at him constantly. If he's tired and his excess energy is spent, he can sit still. To this day, he has to manage his physical need for sufficient physical acitivity. Currently, we don't have a car. He periodically walks to EB Games 5 miles away (10 miles round trip) in part to burn off his excess energy so he doesn't become a troublemaker. He is well aware that "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" (so to speak) and that when he doesn't expend sufficient energy constructively, he just starts creating trouble without meaning to. That energy has to go somewhere. Bottling it up only puts it under pressure until it explodes out into the world in the worst possible way.

Solving this problem didn't require much self-examination on my part but could have if, say, I had grown up with ideas like "Kids should be seen and not heard" or if I had some deeply rooted idea that kids should "sit still" when told to do so, like little automatons. The school system certainly had issues with trying to force it's memes down our throats concerning this issue. They wanted to put him on Ritalin as their solution for forcing my son to sit still. That's an example of how memes becomes "sins": Let's damage the kid by giving him mind-altering drugs he didn't need in order to force him to behave in the way we want him to. Most people try to force the world to fit with thier ideas and then bludgeon the world into doing so, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I never saw my kids as "bad kids" so I didn't force them into being bad kids. I saw them as innocent and I saw their problem behaviors as indicators of a problem that needed to be solved and could be solved rather than proof my kids were bad.

As for modeling good behavior: In the above example, I didn't blame my child and I didn't tell him he was a bad kid. I told him I had a personal issue and please give me some space and make some allowances. That's rooted in good boundaries, which I think is a very big part of healthy parenting. I respected his boundaries by not telling him he couldn't bounce or be noisy. The bouncing and the noise weren't the problem. The problem was I had a headache, didn't feel well, and was having a very bad day and because of that bouncing and being noisy NEAR me was an issue. He was allowed to bounce. He just wasn't allowed to do so such that it caused me more suffering. So the answer is that we both had needs and we should both be allowed to get those needs met. I needed peace and quiet. He needed to be bouncy and noisy. The simple way to make sure we each get those incompatible needs met is to do them in different places.