The child needs to be helped to develop into a healthy person.
This will be achieved to a great extent, if we act in a right way with them.
But proper raising is possible only if parents understand child’s behavior.
The Child Is Not an Adult
The child is not an adult person in a nutshell, it is a homunculus – (a man in diminutive) Many physical and mental functions of the child are less developed than in the adult person, and not fully ripened.
For example, the children do not have the muscular power of adults, so compared, they don’t have the intelligence of adults or life experience.
A Psychological Approach to Understanding Children
Children are essentially different from adults and have different life needs, interests and aspirations. Their life experience and knowledge are fundamentally different from how adults experience the world.
The children’s intelligence is not only inferior to the intellectual abilities of the adult person, but also have a different structure – emotionally responds differently to the sensations of the environment.
So, all psychological characteristics of the children have their own specific features, and the parent’s task is to be empathetic and to adapt them.
If a child is obedient and ambitious, serious and disciplined, most parents will evaluate such a child as “good”. On the contrary, the rebellious, naughty or temperamental child will be judged as “mischievous”.
A Child’s Behavior: A Case of a Positive and Unhealthy Social Structure
A child who is calm, worthy and obedient in front of the parents only to harm their brother or sister for jealousy and to devalue their brother/s. Or, the child is serious and diligent just because they suppresses their emotions or feel a strong feeling of insecurity and an inability to react among his peers.
On the basis of these examples we can conclude that the first case is about a child with a healthy and positive social structure of the person, and the second, a child person who develops in an unhealthy, socially negative sense.
The Role of Parental Control in the Development of a Dynamic Child
A child’s desire to protect themselves against negative environmental influences is a sign of their vitality and innate sense of resistance.
Many children do not develop into negative persons, although parents were passive when the child was formed as a person. Dynamic – restless children, the environment calls them “impossible” and “difficult to upbringing”, are usually children who are temperamental.
A good prognosis can be made for their further mental development, unless the parents make major mistakes and take the child to the wrong path.
The Reason for Children’s Behavior: The Meaning and the Purpose
A certain form of behavior gets a social and moral sense only because of the motive, what is causing such behavior and to which goal it strives. In assessing children’s behavior, one should not take into account only the way they react, but to find out what motivates them to react.
This means that parents need to ask themselves, what is the meaning and the purpose of the child’s reaction at a given moment?
The Origin and Motive of Behaviors of the Child
Knowing the origin and motive for a certain behavior, then we can say that we understand the child. The knowledge of motivation sets the principles of proper upbringing.
Parents should support the natural, healthy and socially useful motivations, while the unreal and non-social ones to be suppressed. Even less is it possible to successfully raise a child with a disorder if it is not revealed what is “hiding” behind such a behavior.
The Effects on Defiance
The impact only on behavior, without considering its causes, does not make sense, because it will not produce a positive result. It has long been known that with “physical punishment” we can only suppress the current childish defiance, but not the defiance itself.
If we persistently apply this educational measure and do not see its meaninglessness, the defiance will soon appear in a changed shape, but with much greater vigor.
The Child’s Behavior: A Reflexive Response to the Environment
Many parents are making mistake when the reason for particular behavior of their child is sought in their individual qualities.
Parents need to address their behavior towards the child with great self-criticism. It should always be borne in mind that the child’s behavior is essentially their reaction to the environment.
To correct the behavior of the child, it is necessary to correct the educator himself.
This will provide a precondition for permanent correction and development of a healthy child psyche.
Understanding of The Cause of the Inadequate Behavior of a Child
It is common for a child to be punished promptly when it does not behave properly on a given occasion. This type of punishment automatically creates a tendency for repression.
Instead, it is necessary to understand the cause of inadequate behavior that is usually a result of the current state of the child’s psyche.