What a naughty boy. It is not at all comparable compared to its brother, look how good it is. This is becoming a bad boy”. So, so quickly, we tag a child. When bad behaviors are repeated in them, the label comes out automatically: he is a bad boy.
What are the causes of bad children?
How is a good child different from a bad child? The first thing that may come to mind is that good children are obedient, calm, slow, generous or affectionate. And when we think of bad children, children who hit, who are aggressive, selfish, rebellious, mischievous, impulsive… That is to say, good children are easier to manage in our day to day and, on the contrary, , bad children are not so easy to educate because they protest, often tell us no, ignore us or use aggressiveness as a response.
But we have to bear in mind that behind this conduct an emotion is hidden that our sons and daughters are feeling and that perhaps they do not know how to express it or that they express it in this way to get our attention and so that we pay it to them. María Soto, an expert in positive discipline and the creator of Educa Bonito, points out that many times we worry much more about behavior and attention and do not pay attention to the emotion that is hidden behind that action. “His behavior is important, but more so is the emotion for which he reacts like this”, bill. And it is that that disobedience and that discomfort that our son presents is his way of reacting to an unmet need.
Therefore, a child being bad can be a cause for us to pay more attention to their needs and emotions.
The problems of conciliation also have repercussions in this labeling of bad children. The psychologist Alberto Soler says that, just as we arrive home tired after our workday, our children also arrive irritable and exhausted. A rebellious and protesting child will be irritable at the end of the day, and for us as fathers and mothers, says Soler, “it makes our day very difficult and it makes it very difficult for us to get to the end of the day.” In this way, any behavior that we consider inappropriate will be for us one more addition to the label of bad children.
That they are bad children is not as bad as it seems
Although we all want children to be good, if our child is rebellious and does not behave in the most correct way, it does not have to be as bad as it seems. This is how Soler reflects: “When we think that this child is going to become a slightly older child, that later he is going to become an adolescent, that later he is going to become an adult… Are we going to want, for example, that adolescent or that young person is always obedient to authority? Are we going to want a child who bows his head in the face of injustice? Are we going to want a child who is very easy to handle, for example, by his group of friends, those who take drugs, smoke joints and do bad things? There we are going to want a child who protests, who says: I don’t want to do this.”
“There, perhaps, we begin to see those characteristics that we are attributing to bad children as less bad. Because deep down they are not good things or bad things. Rather, they are things that, as parents, at a certain moment, we are easier or more difficult,” he adds.
A bad boy is nothing more than a label
The truth is that There are no bad children or good children, they are just labels that adults put on children to categorize their behavior. Therefore, there is no bad child, but there is a label that dictates what that child is like.
But with these labels You have to be careful. Well, if we constantly attribute a label to our children, we will end up believing that our children have the attributes of those labels, so we will relate their behavior (they behave badly) with their way of being (they behave badly, so they are bad). ). “This idea or expectation that we have about someone leads us to treat them in a certain way,” explains Soler.
In addition, they will begin to act according to that label. This is how Soler explains it: “These labels end up making those children that we initially perceive as good or label them as good, finally end up fitting even more into that label of good children; and those children that we have mistakenly labeled as bad children , they end up fitting even more into that category of bad kids”.
How to correct the behaviors of a “bad child”
If we are worried about how our son or daughter acts, we have to take into account several issues. Do you have all your needs covered? Are we allowing you to express your emotions or are you repressing them?
We must allow our children to feel their emotions, we cannot judge them for them, although we can criticize their behavior and try to redirect it.
Alberto Soler gives us four tips to carry out this:
- Get down to his level and look him in the eye: Only then can we calm the child, since being at the same height, he will be much more receptive.
- don’t yell at them: Although it is very difficult not to yell in certain situations, we have to think that by yelling we will only aggravate the situation and the bond with our child will worsen.
- Send them unconditional love: Expressing signs of love and affection can help calm them down. Likewise, it can be accompanied by phrases in a calm tone such as: “Honey, I love you very much, but this is not possible.”
- Redirect once the crisis has calmed down: In the midst of an emotional outburst, as much as we want to appeal to the rational mind of our son, he will not understand anything. We can go talk to him when he’s calmed down about what’s happened.