“All misbehaviour is a cry for help or connection. Respond to the need and the behaviour will change. “- Dr. Laura Markham
As humans, our natural state is to be in harmonious connection with our loved ones. It’s how we ensure our survival as children. If our child is acting out of alignment with this- being difficult, being provocative, picking fights- there is always a reason.
Have you ever picked a fight when what you really wanted was a hug? I hope i’m not the only one!
Perhaps your child is feeling scared that you love the new baby more and has started hitting.
Make Special Time a priority and tell your child often, “I could never love anyone more than you” and the hitting will stop.
Maybe you’ve been stressed and you haven’t been able to pay as much attention to your child as usual. They might break a few rules to say, “Hey, notice me and pay attention to me!” (even if it’s not the kind of attention they really need.)
Take a few minutes to delight in your child throughout the day to meet their connection needs and the provocative behaviour will stop.
Maybe our child is needing some extra nurturing but instead of saying so, they insist that they need help with EVERY.LITTLE.THING.
Pretend your child is a baby (yes, even big kids) and give them that extra nurturing they need and their independence will return.
When your child is acting out or being difficult, try to look past the behaviour to figure out the need that is driving it. Remember: They’re doing the best they can!
Want some more support?
Book a free short consult with me.
You can also join our free Peaceful Parenting Facebook group.
Sarah Rosensweet is a certified peaceful parenting coach, speaker, and educator. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three big kids (ages 15, 18, and 21). Peaceful parenting is a non-punitive, connection-based approach that uses firm limits with lots of empathy. Sarah works one-on-one virtually with parents all over the world to help them go from frustrated and overwhelmed to, “We’ve got this!”
Read more at: www.sarahrosensweet.com
![As parents, we all face challenges, but what happens when traditional parenting approaches don’t work?
That’s why my client during this call, Samantha, is actively transitioning to a Peaceful Parenting approach.
We’re talking through how those challenges can feel even more intense when your child is more sensitive and needs additional attention and understanding.
Join us to discover major tips for a more peaceful parenting journey.
Go to https://link.chtbl.com/Z_YOP4jb to listen to this episode now, and share it with a friend you know needs to hear it too.
[ID: Photo of child and parent arguing on a blue background. Audiogram reads, “Yeah. The fact that he brought it up again tells me that he’s got some shame around it and feeling bad about it. So we don’t need to bring it up in a corrective way. I’m going to exaggerate for the purposes here, but, you know, yesterday when you bit me, biting is not okay. We don’t bite in our house. We don’t want to do any of that. He already knows that, right? There’s no information gap where he thinks biting is okay. So the healing that has to happen is around he needs to feel like, back to the beginning when we started talking, he needs to feel like you still think he’s a good person and that’s why he brought it up, because he feels bad about it. So you can say to him and he says, oh, what did he say again? Remember yesterday when I bit you? Yeah. And he said, I’m a bad boy. So you can say there’s no such thing as bad boys. Mhmm, that is, yeah. They’re only boys who sometimes are having a hard time.”]
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