Pivot For Good Behavior

Children are bound to misbehave throughout the day and I know that your tolerance for mischievous behavior may vary depending on what you have going on. Some days you can deal with telling your child to stop jumping on the couch, and other days you lose it after they’ve done it for the hundredth time and scream at them that you’ve told them to stop doing that and take away all their toys. More often than not, that results in a full-blown meltdown and exasperates you even further. It’s usually a series of events or behaviors that lead up to you losing your cool, especially when you have more than one child and one of them is misbehaving.

I know you don’t want to lose your patience and you probably regret it later. It never feels good to yell and you wonder how it even got to that point in the first place. The good news is I’ve got a simple behavioral strategy you can implement anytime and anywhere that doesn’t involve any yelling— promise.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: the most valuable tool in your parenting toolbox is your attention. And as such, you should pivot it in these situations. Yes, PIVOT! (All I can think of is Ross on Friends when I tell parents this- haha)

Your child engages in different behaviors for different reasons, but I think we can agree that one main reason is to get your attention. Once you really understand the power of your attention, it’s helpful to use it to your advantage.

So a simple strategy to implement when one child is misbehaving and another one isn’t is simply to pivot your attention to the child that is behaving appropriately. Don’t even look at the other one. Just walk straight over to your other child and start talking excitedly about the task they’re engaged in and make sure you do it loudly enough for your other child to hear it. Maybe even take a minute to briefly play with this child; I’m willing to bet your other child will stop what they’re doing and want to join you.

Super simple and easy to do in the moment wherever you are. A bonus side-effect of this behavioral strategy is that if you implement it consistently on a daily basis, you’re going to automatically see a decrease in mischievous or challenging behavior because your child will learn that they get your attention when they are engaging in appropriate behavior.

I’d love to hear how this worked for you or if you have any questions in the comments below!

— Tania Henderson, MS, BCBA, LBA-VA