You are with your 6 year old or below in the supermarket. You shop everything you wanted and maybe a snack for the little one.
Now the Little person decides that you have to buy what he wants. Maybe he picks a very expensive toy or a snack and your budget does not allow that. You tell the kid you have no money at the moment but he won't hear none of it.
To compel you to buy, the kid starts throwing tantrums rolling on the floor and crying uncontrollably.
All eyes are on you waiting to see your next move. You're now embarrassed. You can't control the tantrums. To save yourself from the embarrassment, you decide to buy what the kid wanted. You even return some of the necessities you had bought since the money ain't enough.
You buy the item and the kid calms down. All the while, the kid was observing. The tantrums were a way of testing you. He wanted to see what you can do. What have you done?
You have enabled bad behavior. Shouting, rolling, screaming, throwing things is negative behavior that you wouldn't want your child to have. If you buy what he wanted after the kid does all this bad behavior, you are encouraging him to keep doing bad behavior since it's rewarding.
Everytime the kid wants something, they will do something bad so that you reward them.
You would rather get embarrassed than reward bad behavior. If the child screams and the whole supermarket is looking at you, do not be embarrassed, it's your child. Just pay and leave with the kid crying. You have done nothing wrong. The kid will just forget few steps away from the shop.
From there, you can explain to them why you did not buy the item. Let them know screaming and rolling is bad and cannot be rewarded.
The next time you go to the shop, the kid will not roll nor scream since he knows that my mom or dad won't buy something just because I am crying. That's how the brain of children work.
Whatever you reward is repeated, what you don't reward is suppressed.
©Joyce Mwai
Writer/ Teenage mentor/ Parenting Coach
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