Looking at Behaviour

This blog post isn’t about how to ‘discipline’ your child when they throw, hit, scream, kick. Instead I want to write about the reasons why you might be seeing a type of behaviour from your little one.

My colleagues, I’m sure, used to say that I was too soft on behaviour and that I let the pupils get away with too much. This was because I saw behaviour in a different way to many of my colleagues.

Before I became a Mummy, I learnt as a teacher that behaviour at its heart is communication. We all use behaviour to communicate how we feel. If I slam the front door shut and throw my bag down when returning home from work, my husband knows that I’m in a bad mood and that he needs to respond by feeding me wine quickly. Our children are exactly the same. Children use their behaviours to communicate their needs. As adults, we have the benefit of life experience that our children do not. If someone is annoying me, I know that biting them will make them move away quickly but I have learnt over my 38 years of being on this Earth, that this behaviour is not socially appropriate. Added to this our children’s language is still developing.

I strongly believe, as a teacher and a Mummy that when a child displays any type of behaviour, it is our responsibility to look at what they are trying to tell us.

So, what areas might our little ones be struggling with:   

Language skills and an inability to make needs clearly known

Our littles one will learn to talk at very different ages. Some will be expert communicators at a young age, whereas some take longer to speak. Every child, irrelevant of developmental ability have very clear ideas of what they do and do not want. However, some children will not have the ability to make their needs clearly known until they are older. This inability to communicate will be, at times, extremely frustrating. For example, imagine you are 20 months old and you only have a few words like “mummy”, ”daddy” and “no.” Whilst in the supermarket you spot an AMAZING toy that lights up, spins, plays music. You HAVE to have it. It looks like the best thing EVER!!! So, you point and say “mummy ga ga” but mummy doesn’t understand and just carries on walking. What do you do? If I was that toddler I would probably shout, cry, maybe lie on the floor or run back to the toy. The behaviour is more understandable when you think about it like that.

Difficulties in processing what is being said

As adults we assume that our children understand everything we say. Especially when we reel off a huge list of instructions. But in reality, it would be like us listening to an audiobook in order to build a piece of Ikea furniture without the ability to press pause or rewind. “Find screw 45654, place screw 45654 into hole 67765, find hinge 12459 and screw 45876 and add to wooden frame 21.” It would not be long before I ended up throwing the instructions, the screws and hinges and walking away in a huff. Our children are the same.  

Unaware of social rules

As a society we have loads of rules; saying please and thank you, not snatching a toy, waiting your turn, stopping what you are doing when someone is talking to you, not interrupting someone when they are talking, saying sorry. The list goes on. No one explains these rules. We didn’t learn these at school. We just somehow know them. We learnt them by breaking these rules. Our children don’t have this experience. So, they will break these rules. Constantly.  

Not picking up cues from what’s going on around them

Our lives move at a rapid pace and we don’t always have the time to stop and slowly explain to our little ones what is happening. As adults we are quite astute at picking up on non-verbal cues. For example, my husband knows that when I start putting the change bag by the front door, we are close to leaving. I’m not sure my toddler picks up on these subtle cues. So, it’s no wonder he can get frustrated with me when I pick him up mid playing in order to put his shoes on and walk out the door with him. He’s telling me “woah there woman! What’s going on?”

Difficulties in understanding the needs of others

My sister and husband know that when we have sushi takeaway, we share the sushi evenly between us. I’ve never explicitly discussed this rule with them. It’s an unwritten rule between us. My little one doesn’t get this. He sees. He wants. His current favourite word is “mine,” before snatching whatever I am holding. It’s a survival tactic but, it is seen as impolite. So, we reprimand our little ones for this. Of all the behaviours that I have dealt with, snatching is a huge trigger for me. I once caught myself embroiled in a tug of war with another toddler in a baby class because that toddler had snatched a toy snake from my son. Mid tug of war I saw sense and thought “wtf are you doing?” Not a proud moment of mine. Unlike me, that toddler responded completely appropriately for his developmental stage. He saw. He wanted. And he didn’t understand that someone else was playing with the snake and that they would probably get upset by his actions.

Being unable to self-occupy

This is an area in which my little one and I really struggle. My son can entertain himself for a couple of minutes (which is completely age appropriate) but then he gets bored and starts looking for the next activity. At this point, for some reason he finds his toys have become extremely dull. So, when I’m cooking dinner, he will be rooting around and emptying cupboards, climbing onto the dining table, creating a climbing frame with chairs. Generally causing as much mayhem as a 21-month-old can. Here my baby is telling me “help I’m bored! What should I do next?

Additionally, our little ones may have sensory difficulties. We have a total of 7 senses: visual (sight), auditory (hearing), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), vestibular (balance) and proprioception (where we are time and space). More on this in a later blog post. These sensory difficulties can have a huge impact on the way we ‘behave.’ Imagine if the sound of a hand dryer in a toilet made our ears hurt and we didn’t have the language to say “this hurts, I need to leave.” What would you do? You would probably try to get away, scream, hit out.

A helpful way to look at behaviour is comparing it to an iceberg.

The behaviours we see are the top of the iceberg; the bit above the water. But like an iceberg there is much more happening below the surface of the water that we cannot see.

There are other tools that can help an adult to analyse and understand the reasons behind a behaviour. One that I favoured when I was supporting schools with challenging behaviour is the STAR Analysis chart. If you would like me to talk you through how to use the STAR Analysis chart or would like to talk to us about behaviours that you are seeing, please leave a comment or contact us using the ‘Contact’ link below. Managing behaviour is exhausting and if the behaviour is tricky it can be really hard to see a way out of it. I have always found that talking to someone removed from the situation can help give a fresh perspective on the reasons why a behaviour is occurring.

So next time your little one is mid tantrum or is being ‘challenging’. Take a step back, a deep breath and ask yourself what is my baby is trying to tell me.