If you have a child with challenging behaviors, more than anything you want them to stop. The problem is that too often we want the child’s behaviors to stop before we understand what’s making it difficult for the child to meet expectations and express desirable behaviors.
First Understand The Challenging Behaviors
At Asheville Family Counseling we start with understanding that kids do well when the can, not when they want to. It’s not a lack of motivation or desire, but a lack of skills, that leads to challenging behaviors.
Too often adults assume a child is intentionally misbehaving, but that’s not what we believe. If your child is exhibiting concerning behavior – whether it’s screaming or non-stop gaming – we need to first consider what’s making it difficult for them to exhibit more desirable behavior like “sharing your toys with your younger brother” or “eating dinner with your family.”
Recently a family came to me because their young daughter would often scream during any time of transition – leaving the house for school, leaving school, and getting ready for bed. I asked what the parents do when she starts screaming and they said they generally tell her something along the lines of “Stop screaming. You need to listen.”
I asked them to view her screaming as a sign that she’s having difficulty meeting the expectations of “leaving for school,” “leaving school,” and “getting ready for bed” – all of which are expectations that actually involve many different steps. I suggested that we “unclump” these expectations into discrete steps like “getting out of bed by 7 am,” “brushing teeth by 7:15 am” “getting dressed by 7:30 am.” Once they explicitly stated their expectations, the child no longer had difficulty. Put if she had we noticed, or we would have asked her, specifically, what was making it difficult for her to, say, “get out of bed by 7 am.”
What Meaning Does the Challenging Behavior Have for the Child?
Another family came to me for their teen son’s “addiction to gaming.” When I asked the teen what he likes about gaming he said that it’s because he’s good at it – it’s challenging and rewarding and helps him feel significant. He also likes the social aspect – gaming provides him connection with his friends.
When I shared with the family that connection, novelty, challenge, competence, and significance are all essential human needs they then understood why gaming was so important to him and stopped demonizing his interest in it.
They also learned that there were other essential human needs – like love and contribution – that were equally important to him. When they focused on the positive expectation they had for him, like, “eating dinner with the family,” it changed the conversation completely and the child willingly ended his gaming so that he could have dinner with the family. If he had had difficulty, though, we would have addressed the difficulty with the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS) model. This model helps everyone in the family get their needs/concerns met, and empowers families to enjoy much more peace and harmony.
Connect in Order to Re-Direct
The upshot is that before we attempt to suppress behaviors (the “Just stop it!” approach), we need to determine the underlying child’s needs and how we can meet them. Family therapy is all about how to tailor our interactions to meet everyone’s physical and emotional needs. The great good news is that they can almost always be met within the context of the family.
With support, any family can develop a better understanding of individual differences and how to leverage relationships and the environment in order to build the strongest foundation for peace and harmony. It starts with these steps: 1) Prioritizing the child’s concerns and needs, 2) Identifying the problems that are creating the concerning behavior, 3) Helping the child (along other family members) get their needs/concerns met.
Still Need Help? Get It with Family Counseling
With family counseling we start with prioritizing a feeling of safety within relationships because once a child’s relational safety needs are met, many challenging behaviors fade away naturally because the underlying needs driving the behavior are being met in met in many different ways.
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We’ll discuss how we may be able to help.
