Behaving 'badly'

I’ve worked with children for over a decade. In that time I’ve often been asked by teachers and parents why their child is ‘badly behaved’. and why the reward schemes they’ve tried to use aren’t working.

For some children an incentive, like a reward, will work in helping to change unwanted behaviours. For many they don’t have the wanted result. There are a few reasons why this might be.

Emphasis placed on the ‘bad’ behaviour

When the emphasis is placed on ‘bad’ behaviour the child may start to feel that they are bad for doing the behaviour. Shame unfortunately will often drive the ‘bad’ behaviour further and compound feelings that the child is not good enough. It is important to emphasis the wanted behaviour. If that is putting a hand up in class or tidying up after themselves, the behaviour is more likely to happen if they are rewarded for showing the expected behaviour. A reward can be as simple as some positive attention and praise.

If you’re doing this the ‘reward’ should be something you’re happy to continue doing long-term. If the reward starts to stop after a while, you might find them returning to the ‘bad’ behaviour. In fact, sometimes the reward is not enough to stop the behaviour at all.

Why is this?

Well all behaviour meets a need. It is important to find out what need is being fulfilled by the unwanted behaviour in order to help meet that need in another way. You may even find incentives don’t work at all because the need the ‘bad’ behaviour fills is too great to miss out on.
For example, a child who is lonely or feeling ignored might make extra effort to get attention. Any attention is better than no attention, so being naughty might meet their need to have someone pay attention to them.

Another example: A child who is very hungry who’s parents do not have enough money for food. At school they are caught stealing food from another child’s lunchbox and stuffing it in their pockets for later. Of course the behaviour of stealing is wrong. Rewarding this child with a sticker when they don’t steal or making them lose break time if they’re caught is going to have little impact. The need driving the behaviour (hunger) is so strong that punishments are rewards will have an affect. What would have an affect would be understanding why the child is stealing in the first place and helping put support in place so this doesn’t happen. This situation might sound extreme but unfortunately is something I have seen a lot of over the past few years.

Whilst the need for food is very practical, emotional needs of children are just as important and should be taken just as seriously. If we do not respond and support the emotional needs of children their emotional health, and subsequently behaviours, will continue to suffer.

The important thing is to consider what need the behaviour is filling and to work from there. Parenting support, a service I offer, is there to help parents consider this type of thing if they’re having difficulty figuring out what might be going on.