Some time ago, when writing the entry in which I talked about prizes and rewards can be as harmful as punishment, I used the phrase "I buy it if you behave" and turning it around I realized that behaving well can be something very different for many parents.
It is common to see the parents of newborn children say: "Sleep a lot, behave very well" or "complain little, behave very well." In this case, the child who claims little to his parents is considered a child with good behavior and, by elimination, the child who sleeps little or does not let sleep, who eats little or complains often, as a child who does not It carries well.
It is a way of speaking, of course, nobody thinks that a baby who claims a lot to his mother or who wakes up often is doing it to annoy and nobody thinks that a baby who sleeps a lot or cries little does it thinking about the well-being of His parents.
However, this way of speaking, this "behaves well" is acquiring meaning as children grow up and the obedient child, who does not complain, who complains little and who is little insistent is a child who behaves well, while a child with more personality, who does not easily accept the rules, who cries and gets angry when he does not get something, very moved (like all children, I would say) and who very often requests the presence or help of parents (something like that together exasperates their parents), misbehaves.
These definitions are dangerous, because most children are very moved, most children need their parents at various times of the day, most children want to play with their parents and most children cry and get angry when they don't get something. that they want and therefore most children "misbehave" daily.
What does it mean to behave well?
From my point of view, behaving well should be a phrase that means that a child respects others (and therefore does not hurt, does not hit, does not bite and does not insult). Maybe I leave something and maybe what I say would be treatable, but by boat I soon think that misbehaving would be everything that a child can do intentionally to hurt others. Something like doing with others what they don't want for themselves.
Cry?
“Do the children cry? Noooo, good children don't cry, ”a mother once said to her son. "No, mom, (sniff, sniff) good children don't cry (sniff)," replied the boy, holding his tears.
Are we bad adults who cry? If you catch a finger and cry in pain, are you bad? If you are robbed and cry of helplessness, are you behaving badly? If your husband tells you he goes with another and you cry, aren't you being good?
Get angry?
"Come on man! Do not be angry that it is not so much, ”said a mother to her angry son.
Anger is a feeling, a feeling, an emotion. It is something that happens when something does not go as you expected, when someone treats you badly, when someone does not do what you expect of him, when you do not get what you want, etc.
We adults get angry and in fact we have every right in the world to do so. Children, therefore, also have the same right to be angry.
Nobody tells a child "don't be so happy, man" because it never occurs to anyone to encircle happiness. Joy, happiness, smiles, are emotions too and, just as we accept joy as emotion in children, we must accept anger as emotion.
A child who gets angry is not behaving badly, but is showing his emotions and, correcting me if I'm wrong, but externalizing emotions and explaining what he feels is one of the healthiest attitudes and aptitudes that exist (don't you the phrase sounds "don't keep it to yourself, the more you keep, the more ball will be made, and one day it will burst"?).
Now, a child can get angry by stopping talking, leaving on his own initiative to his room, explaining what he feels in his own way or, if he is still small to know how to manage this emotion, screaming, kicking and hitting us.
Are you behaving badly when you do this? Well, it's not that he's behaving badly, it's that is expressing his anger in the only way he knows. We, as parents, should try to teach you an alternative way to explain your anger.
In other words, we must allow him to be angry and to communicate it to us, but not to do so by hitting us, shouting or biting us. To do this, obviously, we must act accordingly and not use screams or cheeks. It makes no sense that we want our children to behave better than we do with them..
The tags
"Call me bad and I'll be bad, call me good and I'll be good." This simplistic phrase summarizes a very interesting topic (which deserves an entry, no doubt) such as labels.
A label is an adjective that we put to our son that becomes standard of his way of being. It doesn't have to do so much in what it does, but in how it is.
It is usual (too), that we talk about children in their presence: "Yes, this one behaves very well, but this one is a bug", are phrases that almost all children hear from their parents when they talk to other adults.
The child who hears that is bad, misbehaves and is mischievous ends up believing that he really is and therefore acts accordingly.
The child who hears that is good, attentive, who shares, etc., tends to act in this way.
Obviously the behavior of a child does not depend solely and exclusively on the concept we have of them, however it has more weight than we believe.
Imagine a child who never shares anything with his younger brother. He doesn't leave any toys and one day he decides to allow his brother to play with one of his cars. In the afternoon, in the park, a boy approaches Juanito to play with his ball.
We can address the situation in several ways, two boats soon occur to me: “Yes, Juanito never shares anything, do not insist, today he has left a car for his brother and I would say that he has played with him because he has not heard” or “I don't know if Juanito will want to leave you, ask him. He'll leave it anyway because today I saw him share a car with his brother. ”
The situation is the same, but in one we make it clear that Juanito is a perfect “non-sharer” while in the other we are saying that Juanito does know how to share.
When a child hears others talk about him with positive adjectives, saying that he is affectionate, attentive, capable of playing with his siblings, etc. Children tend to behave this way. If we label a child, the child will look at the label to see what role he has to do.
