One Change That Could Radically Transform your Child’s Behavior

Parenting can feel difficult at times.

How your child actually behaves and how you want your child to behave sometimes seem like they will never coincide.

There are certain skills you have to teach your child as a parent, but sometimes it feels like you aren’t even able to get them to calm down and talk, or just clean their room. You feel like you’re struggling, fighting an uphill battle with them.

Oftentimes you wonder what you are doing wrong. The behaviors you get from your child are hit or miss. You hate to admit it but you lose sleep over about whether you are parenting your child well enough—about if you are a good enough parent. Maybe you even wonder if you are cut out for this.

When you are able to de-escalate and calm your child when they are feeling big emotions, you often use these steps, but recently you’ve found your child is acting out more.

Calming your child when they are feeling big emotions starts with validating the emotions your child is feeling. When we can validate how they are feeling, they feel heard and seen, and most times, don’t feel like they have to continue acting out to be heard.

But as therapists, we see parents overlook this step of de-escalating their child, and this often makes the child act out more.

The step that is often overlooked by parents lies in validating their child’s emotions: We often see parents validating their child’s behavior rather than validating their emotion! What happens when we validate the behavior is the unwanted behavior begins to repeat itself.

For example, your child is throwing a tantrum in Walgreens. You are overwhelmed and you want your child to stop crying, so you had them the iPad that you originally had every intent to take away and turn off. By giving your child the iPad back, you validate their tantrum. Essentially you are saying, “If you cry and act out, you will get what you want.” When really, we want to validate their emotions and how they are feeling.

Validating their emotions instead of the behavior can sound like, “I see you are angry and frustrated right now, but we are not going to use the iPad in the middle of Walgreens.” See how this acknowledges the emotions rather than the behavior? This helps you hold your boundary, while also letting your child know that it is okay to feel angry and frustrated.

Teaching children how to behave can feel like it is never-ending at times. Maybe one day they respond to you, while the next day they went right back to the bad habit you were trying to kick.

That’s normal. Parenting is a process. It is about building a relationship with your child, and relationships don’t happen overnight—they take time and energy to nurture. And even then, it isn’t ever going to be “perfect.” We are human, and bound to mess up.

Give you and your child a little grace. In the end, it’s all going to be alright.