Changes

When something isn’t the way we want it we can quickly lose patience. The problem is, however, that change is complex and it takes time. If you think about anything you have changed in your own life you realise that it is not always easy.

Changing behaviour is difficult because we behave a certain way in a certain context or environment. When we try to get our children to behave and the environment stays the same, change is very difficult. Think about any changes you are trying to bring about. Do the conditions at home or at the sports club or wherever make it easy or hard for your child to change the way they behave?

The old behaviour brings with it all sorts of rewards - comfort, attention, fun, freedom - what about the new behaviour that they haven’t practiced much yet? It is not until we get better at the behaviours that they actually start to bring the rewards.

So we need to be patient and realise that for lasting change you need time. Remember also that the whole process is complex - if we try too much, too soon, we will not get very far.
So remember: hasten slowly.

Thinking about your own behaviours, you soon realise that changing behaviour is rare and a good reason is needed to achieve it. These reasons include: frustration, a growing sense of responsibility or necessity.

The conditions that makes change most possible is the feeling of being emotionally supported and good sense. When we want our children to change a specific behaviour I believe we must consider what is driving their behaviour in the first place. If we can do this it gives us a better chance of helping them to change what they are doing.

I wrote earlier in this article that behaviours brings with them all sorts of rewards - comfort, attention, fun, freedom. Children have pictures in their mind of how they do things and what these things bring them. We need to help them see new and better way of behaving (This is why having a role model helps).

With all children, and especially younger ones, an effective way of doing this is to model the behaviour for them.

You can do this by asking them if they would like to see what they look like. This can then be discussed and you should then model the new behaviour and get them to practice it. (If you don’t model and talk about the new behaviour they still only have the old pictures in their minds and you are no better off.)

Remember what their behaviours are driven by. The new picture has to be reinforced with comfort, attention, fun and/or freedom before it will be readily adopted as the preferred behaviour.