Eating, Sleeping and Getting Up is psychologist Carolyn Crowder’s answer to how parents can stop the three most frustrating, sometimes daily battles, we have with our children.
She starts off by answering the age-old question, “Why do children misbehave?” According to Crowder, children misbehave because they have “become discouraged about finding a positive place of significance within the family. Each child needs to feel he or she is an important and useful member of the family. Because this desire for significance is so important, children work to achieve his goal through either negative or positive means.”
The first duty of a parent is to be a teacher and a guide to show children how to be a positive, productive, respectful member of the family and society. The author also points out that many of our responses to our children’s misbehavior makes the problems worse. When we use empty threats, promises, emotional outbursts and physical punishment, we do not curb the behavior.
One important thing we have to do is to follow through with logical consequences for our children’s misbehavior. Parents should be firm but kind. We also need to let our kids experience the consequences of their misbehavior.
The book covers three topics: eating, morning routines and bedtime routines. As I stated at the onset, these are three frustrating behaviors we sometimes have to deal with on a daily basis and I speak from personal experience.
The author offers a lot of great tips for dealing with each behavior. For instance, if your child misbehaves in a restaurant, the author suggests you do the following:
Leave as soon as the child starts to misbehave. Do so in a calm tone without any anger, threats or cajoling.
Take two cars and decide in advance that if one child misbehaves one parent takes that child home while the rest of the family continues with their meal.
On the ride home don’t mention the behavior. The parent driving should remain friendly but silent. The author states that the child will figure it out.
Inform the child that they will have another chance to go out and eat and that you are sure the next time they will behave appropriately.
Finally, concerning meals, the author points put that children can learn to eat meals that are prepared for them and that they don’t need any special food or treats to entice them to eat healthy food. She also points out something Tyler’s pediatrician told me once when I complained that he was a picky eater. Sometimes I would actually make two or more meals just to get him to eat something he liked. But as they both pointed out, “Your child will not starve if they miss a meal or two. They learn from the consequences of their choosing not to eat.”
In part II, I’ll tell you some of the author’s tips for keeping bedtime battles at bay.
See also:
80 Parenting Tips