Unwanted Toddler Behaviors: Ignore! Ignore! Redirect!

I've been smacked in the face and bitten.  I've been run from.  I've seen toys thrown maniacally across the room.  The common denominator in these behaviors?  My son.  The other common denominator?  Laughter.   My son can commit the most atrocious offenses and his only reaction to any of them is to cackle like he's just had the best time of his life.  Here I am trying to guide him in the ways of the world and he's behaving like a prison inmate!  Can you feel me losing my mind?

These behaviors have been arising over the past month or so.  They are not atypical of a toddler; quite the opposite.  If you have a toddler and you don't know what I am talking about, consider yourself very lucky.  The rest of you toddler parents are probably nursing a wound (either toddler-inflicted or from banging your head against a wall!).  I see these behaviors in children all around me; some direct their unwanted behaviors at other children while many simply save them for mom and dad.  If your toddler is behaving in this manner, please know, you are not alone!  And neither is your child.  At this age, children have no ability to understand social cues, emotional cues, and understand appropriate behaviors.  They are at the perfect age to start learning, but they lack the ability to reason why they need to learn them.  They operate at a level of action and reaction.  They are gathering information.  And they are gathering it from you.

I have had a lot of conversations with parents who feel compelled to extinguish these behaviors (as they should).  But many people fail to understand the root cause of these behaviors, and so they often choose methods of confronting the behavior that can fail or frustrate.   There's usually a lot of panic involved.  And, it's fair to panic, because the idea of having a ten year old that still bites or a twenty year old that still hits is an unpleasant one.  We all know that we need to DEAL with these behaviors, right?

Our mistake often lies in that very notion: dealing with the behavior.  We make the mistake in believing that the child's behavior must be corrected or it will continue, so we attend to it.   But toddlers don't have the same kind of abstract thought that adults have; they don't reason or make conclusions in the same way.  Instead, they look for reactions, and what they want is interaction.  They want interaction with objects, to see how the world operates, and they want interactions with people.  They want attention, and that desire is rooted in their need for guidance and comfort.  So toddlers will experiment. Sometimes they choose behaviors that fall in line with what is socially acceptable, and other times they don't.  What matters to the child is not the behavior, but what happens when they do that behavior.  And one thing children quickly learn is that when they choose certain behaviors, they get a quick response.  Unfortunately, those are usually the unwanted ones.  In the professional world, we call this negative attention seeking.  What it means is that a child will trend towards those behaviors that get attention, even if that attention is negative.  Because, in their minds, attention is attention, no matter how it happens or what it looks like. 

For example, my son will often bite me when I'm not paying attention to him because there is absolutely NO way you can ignore a biting toddler...right?  Unfortunately, any natural reaction I can have to biting is the wrong one, because it's a reaction.  When I attend to the behavior, it increases.  It doesn't matter if I scream out and try to demonstrate that I am hurt, or if I pick him up and place him away from me, or if I leave the room.  It's all a reaction to him, and he thinks they are all hysterical.  Toddlers finding humor in these reactions is pretty normal.  It's not that they are insensitive...well, wait, yes, they are insensitive.  They haven't yet developed empathy and so they don't understand your emotions no matter how much you express them.  My son doesn't understand my anger or pain, he just sees my face react in twisted agony, and apparently my son loves funny faces.  

So, what do we do?  First, we ignore.  We do not attend to behaviors that we don't want our children to do, unless of course they are dangerous and require immediate intervention.  But even then, we should intervene with less attention.  We may tell the child "no," but engaging in a big explanation about it is just more attention and we are actually patterning the child to continue to the behavior rather than extinguishing it.  Instead, we need to then redirect the child.  We need to find something the child can do positively and then give that behavior all the attention in the world.  We must turn a negative attention seeking behavior into a positive attention seeking behavior.  By teaching our children what they can and should do, we help them develop a pattern of appropriate behaviors.  When my son bites, I must teach him to kiss or blow raspberries on my arm.  When he wants to hit, my husband and I raise our hands and let him do high fives (my husband's brilliant idea!).  And when he wants to throw his toys everywhere, I help him engage in something he can do with me instead (hey, come help me take clothes out of the laundry basket or Swiffer the floors!) or direct him to something he can throw like a ball.

We also must look at ourselves.  If our children continuously engage in negative behaviors, it can mean that they need more attention from us.  It may also mean that we need to give them attention when they do something positive rather than when they do something negative.  Dr. Montessori once wrote that "The things [a child] sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul.”  It is in the things that we show our children how to do, rather than what not to do, that help them become conscientious and contributing members of society.