Why children misbehave.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  A new book might show that much of what we think is deviant behavior in children might actually be good intentions.  My friend told me the story how his son was brushing his teeth.  The boy got his hands all soapy and wanted to leave the room before he had washed the soap off.  The dad didn't want the boy to leave until the soap was off.  After the usual discussion, the dad asked the boy why he wanted to leave the bathroom.  The boy said that he wanted to open the door and show his mom that he was using soap on his hands.  The dad thought that the boy was being disobedient when all the boy wanted to do was to show that he was listening to his mom.

Marie-Nathalie Beaudion talks about this concept her book http://www.skillionaire.org/ talks about much of child's erratic behavior is actually a result of their brain still learning the best way to solve a problem.  When child is first born, it has very few neurons and can not reason through a problem.  Between the ages of 7 and 12, the child has the most neurons that it will have in its life but the path between the neurons is not clearly defined. The child may become easily distracted when it tries to solve a problem because each thought leads to other thoughts.  As the child matures, the number of neurons begins to decrease but the path between the neurons becomes more defined and the person is more equipped to solve complex problems.

According to the book, your job as a parent, is to help the child reinforce the good neural paths.  The best way to do this, is to listen to how your children work through problems especially when things go wrong.  Instead of yelling at your child when they do something that makes you upset, try to understand the child's thought process to see what they were thinking.  Often times, you will hear that they have several conflicting ideas in their head.  By talking to them, you can help them sort through their thoughts and learn the best way to handle a problem.  Next time they encounter the same problem, their mind will have reinforced the neural networks and they will be better able to handle the problem.  See a previous article that I wrote on how people learn, http://latentvalue.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-people-learn.html.  The article talks about how repetition of a thought or an action leads to excelence.

The process of getting a child to talk about their thought process is not easy and is even more difficult when you as an adult are angry but the results can be very beneficial not only to your relationship with your child but also to their development.