6 Mistakes Parents Make When Their Children Disobey
Very often children have a peculiar tendency to disobedience. It is enough that we tell them something for them to do the opposite. Sometimes parents make mistakes when their children disobey, and this can make it difficult to handle the child’s misbehavior.
Virtually all children have an almost innate tendency not to abide by established norms. However, parents do not have an innate ability to manage these inappropriate behaviors of breaking the rules. For this reason, it is necessary to pay attention and think about what strategies we can use to stop these disobedient behaviors.
Mistakes Parents Make When Children Disobey
Many times parents make mistakes that we can avoid when our children disobey, but we do it without realizing it. In this sense, we have to stop and think about what we can be doing wrong in the face of our child’s disobedience and try to change it.
Parents must know and adapt to the mentality of our children in order to create resources that are beneficial for both sides. Next, we are going to look at some of those mistakes that are made when children disobey.
Shout out
As much as we shout, we are not going to solve anything. At this point, the child may stop his bad behavior or obey because he feels blocked or afraid, but not because he has understood the message. If we use the screams frequently, in the end they will get used to it and will not react to it.
Using fear to threaten when children disobey
Fear is never a good tool for a child to obey. If we frighten him with fantastic beings that cause him fear, we will only increase his fears, but we will not teach him to behave appropriately. At that time the child may obey out of fear, but in future times he will not and will not have learned anything.
Mimic the tantrum
When we establish a rule that our child does not like, he may rebel, yell, verbally attack us or even have a tantrum, but we cannot fight back in the same way, with yelling, anger, reproaches, etc. If we do this, the only thing we are going to achieve is to increase the conflict and to have a stressful and unpleasant time for the whole family.
In addition, if after this anger we punish our child, which is often what we do the most, the little one will interpret it as a consequence of the anger that parents have, not their behavior.
In this sense, if children are constantly being punished, we will be causing them feelings of frustration and resentment, which will make the situation worse, not better.
Make it appear that nothing has happened when the children disobey
If we pretend that nothing has happened, we can send the wrong message to the child: either they have not realized the disobedience or it has occurred, but they have not considered it important. When we do this, even if it is the most comfortable in the short term for adults, we create a feeling of inattention and that what the little ones do does not matter to anyone.
Demonstrate power
Sometimes parents make the mistake of taking disobedience as an assault on our authority, something that we have to manage through intimidation without more.
If a child does not obey, he does not do so by challenging us. Actually, this is most likely due to forgetting the rules, not following them. This usually happens because they do not understand and, consequently, do not memorize rules that seem like common sense to us.
If we want to avoid this error, we have to distinguish whether we have before us a case of disobedience or it is simply non-obedience; if it is not disobedience, we will have to do more to get the child to understand the rules and why.
Give
If we give in when children refuse to follow certain rules or break them, we are going to convey the message that disobeying works. The children understand with this that following the rules is something optional and that, therefore, it is useless.
In short, the mistakes that parents sometimes make when their children disobey have a solution. That the smallest disobey always has to have consequences, even if it has to be to negotiate with them the rules to prove that we take their needs and concerns into account.
The formulation of the rules must be done through negotiation with the children so that they know the reason for each one of them. In this way, we will achieve an appropriate balance between both parties. Therefore, we must try not to make these mistakes and, if we fall into them, we will always be in time to rectify them.
