Teaching New Skills

It is very rare that a child's intention is to be “bad”. Sometimes, they are testing their boundaries, sometimes they are mimicking behaviors they've learned from other children or adults, and sometimes they are struggling and don't know how to handle that emotion. For this week, we'll talk about that last one. 

When children are trying to learn a new skill, they don't even comprehend they don't have that skill. If they experience challenges learning this skill, doubt may build in their mind and they may start to have feelings about it; anger, frustration, sadness, disappointment, insecurity...

For children, these feelings come out as behavior challenges because they don't know how to process them and/or express them. They don't know how to handle their frustrations.

They not only need your help and attention learning that new skill but, even more importantly, how to express themselves. 

Maybe they’re overwhelmed with a task that wasn’t broken down into simple enough steps for them to handle. Maybe they have fear of the unknown. Maybe they just don't understand. There are so many possibilities for why your child may be acting out.

If we can think of them as trying to communicate as opposed to trying to be bad, the way we handle it will come from a whole different place in our hearts.