*Available in bookstores across the UK and Amazon in Paperback and Kindle format.
Chapter One: Managing Children’s Behaviour
Chapter Two: The Meaning of Behaviour
Chapter Three: Unacceptable Behaviour
Chapter Four: Looking Back
Chapter Five: Your Turn
Chapter Six: Right or Wrong?
Chapter Seven: Helping Children to Behave
Chapter Eight: All Purpose Suggestions and Ideas
Chapter Nine: Damage Control
Chapter Ten: Conclusion
ADHD
Bed Time
Bed Wetting
Biting
Bullying
Divorce and Separation
Dummy or Thumb?
Games
Masturbation
Mobile Phones
Pets
Picky Eaters
Recipes
Sex Education
Siblings
Special Needs
Tantrums
Starting Behaviour Management
Haven’t we all heard – or even said ourselves – things like ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ and ‘I’m warning you, do that one more time and…?’
Broken promises lose motivation, repeated threats just get ignored, and either, long awaited, are soon forgotten, like the one I heard in a supermarket on a sweltering August afternoon: a weary mother telling her troublesome four year-old ‘Santa won’t be coming to our house if your carry on like that.’
No-one else knows, cares, thinks or worries as much about your children as you do, and it’s the intention of this book to help you become experts in your own child care.
Here, from my experience, is a list of the seven most common meanings and messages of children’s misbehaviour.
Most parents find themselves sometimes saying or doing things in front of their children which it would be better if they had not. Things like swearing, smacking, smoking, being inconsistent or unfair. I know I have, and expect so also will you.
Red socks or blue socks? The choice matters more to the child than to even the most fashion-conscious parent who, allowing it, may be rewarded by an easier time with all the other clothes.
The only three things that really matter when it comes to the behaviour management of any family:
When it comes to right and wrong in the care of children there are very few things – as the saying goes – written in stone. These are the ones that have been most important and useful to me.
‘Give me a child till he is seven, and I will give you the man.’ So the Jesuits have been saying, since the seventeenth century, about the young people in their care. The clear implication is that children don’t suddenly become well-behaved the day after their seventh birthday. My own interpretation of this old saying is ‘teach your child acceptable behaviour while s/he is still pick-up-able and carry-able to your choice of naughty, time-out or ‘reflection’ place in your home.
We all make mistakes with our children and regret things we have and have not done, but we can all take comfort from the teaching of one of our most respected child psychiatrists. Donald Winnicott claimed that even if perfect parenting were possible, it would not be in the best interest of children who need to learn, while still at home, how to deal with the failings of others as well as their own. With that in mind, all parents can – and need to – be is not perfect, but in Doctor Winnicott’s time honoured expression, simply ‘good enough’.