A huge chunk of parenting is responding to our child’s behavior. While we may try to anticipate as much as we can, and even try to be an influencer and guide things in the direction we would like them to go, the truth is that often we are in response mode—responding to whatever crisis or behavior our child has come up with. Instead of responding and reacting to everything your child does, however, you might want to ask yourself if this is something you can possibly ignore?
This can be such a tricky and sticky parenting technique—after all, we don’t want to ignore those behaviors that are harmful or dangerous AND for some children, they will push and push and try more and more unsavory behaviors until we HAVE to respond. Other children, however, will respond to being ignored by getting their feelings hurt and internalizing some of those hurt feelings. As a parent, we have to make a reasonable guess and decide when it is best to ignore things and when it is not.
I find that there is a difference between annoying behaviors—those that seem purposefully mastered to drive me crazy and garner a response, and truly harmful behaviors. If your child is making goofy noises, impersonating a friend, mimicking a sibling, etc.—can you ignore it? If you are able to ignore it, the behavior may stop sooner.
Additionally, your child might be making personality statements that are better ignored—if you can avoid comment on clothes, haircuts, style choices, etc. those choices may have a shorter shelf-life, or at least you will not get into a battle or power struggle over something so trivial.
I am not advocating ignoring dangerous behavior, however, and there are plenty of times when we parents have to step in and intervene. There are those other times, however, when it is best that we pretend we do not even notice what is going on.