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CYNTHIA ARMSTRONG

Where Do Children's Behavior Come From

By Cynthia Armstrong

Today, I want to discuss where children's behaviors come from. When parents come to me, there are a lot of questions around this. Why does my child do this? How come they do that? I want to go a little bit into that and have that foundational understanding of where some of the behaviors come from. There's a lot of interaction between ourselves and our children, and all kinds of other things coming in. But this gives you the foundation to begin to look and to understand where these behaviors come from.

To start off, I know I talk about this a lot, but when we understand this concept, then we get a lot farther when it comes to helping our children. That is, that our brain works from that neurochemical reward system. It fills those neurochemicals with our emotions and our feelings. Those feelings come from trying to meet our six psychological needs. I'll mention some of them in this episode, but you can find where I talk about all six of the psychological needs in previous episodes.

For an example of this, let's talk about cleaning up. Let's say we have a child that does not like to clean up. They want to throw fits. It's not a preferred activity, so they're running away and screaming or crying. As a preschool teacher, when we first get to play with all the toys and then we have to clean up, I get to see children across the spectrum who do or do not want to clean up. (I also have some of that in myself. I am quite willing to cook food, but cleanup has less appeal for me. It's something I tend to avoid if possible. I've had to learn not to avoid cleanup after cooking.) For children, let's say that you ask them to clean up and they immediately curl up on the floor and start crying. Or, some children say, “You want me to clean up?” and they just knock things all over because they don't want to clean up.

If we look at it, they're getting a chemical reward in their brain from meeting a psychological need. It can be any one of the needs, or any combination of needs. The tricky part is that whichever one our child feels they have the deficit in the most, that's the one that they're really trying to meet. We can look at the psychological needs and see that, maybe, they like to have variety. If they have to clean up every single time, that doesn't give them the variety that they want. In this case, the children have associated cleanup with a deficit in that variety. To alleviate this, we could do things like play cleanup games, or singing, or things like that.

If they're throwing a fit about cleanup, and it's not variety, perhaps it is love and connection. Maybe somewhere they have associated cleaning up with a lack of love. For example, if we've been upset with them before about cleanup, or we've done things that get them to associate (and we have no control over how they associate; we could respond the same way to clean up to two children and they both associate them differently). For whatever reason, your child has associated lack of connection or lack of love with cleanup. And so, they're going to throw a fit, because that means they’re going to be lacking in love and connection if they need to clean up.

You can take any of the psychological needs and find a reason for a child to not want to clean up that fulfills their needs. The opposite is true: children who need things cleaned up, need to have everything in its exact same place. We might call that having OCD. Sometimes we can say that jokingly, that they're just particular about that and it's a quirk in them. Or, we can say that they have OCD and it's affecting our lives. But it doesn't matter whether they have severe OCD or it's just a little quirk in our child. It's still to try and meet their psychological needs.

When we look at that, the first psychological need that's in pretty much everything is certainty. With that certainty, remember, is also safety and control. Those are other words that fit into that need. If a child must have things a certain way, then perhaps it is that they need control in their environment. They think, “Maybe I can't control what my mom and dad are doing or what my sibling does. Maybe I can't control the weather outside. But I can control this. I can make sure everything is in its place. And when I do, I feel safe.” When things are messed up, they feel unsafe. They feel they're out of control. Then they'll throw a fit so that we can put it back in place for them. Then they feel that safety and security again.

Again, you can go through any of those psychological needs and find a reason for it to fit. Maybe cleanup has always been fun. We've been down on the floor with our child, we sing songs, we play with the toys, or whatever. Our child associates that with doing things with mom, with dad, with their sibling. It meets their need for connection and love, doing this together. When they have associated cleanup that way, it's something that is fun for them. It's something they like to do because it gives them that chemical reward of feeling that way.

You can apply this to any example of what a child is doing: hitting somebody else, or putting somebody down, or not doing their chores. Whatever it is, if you look at it and fit it into how they are meeting their psychological needs, with temper tantrums or acting out or things like that, you will see that also is a way to meet their needs because they're afraid of that need not being met. As parents, as teachers, as people who interact with others, we are scientists and we're always experimenting. If I say this, how does my child respond? If I do that, how does my child respond? If these things are in place, what happens to the routine of our family, how does that flow? We're always looking, and as we look and ask these questions, we get to see more, and we can help our child more, and be of greater benefit to them.

Thank you for being on this journey with me, as we help our children to live their greatness.