It has been tempting to dive straight into those chapters of this book that dealt with the one issue that was close to my heart, namely, how to parent a misbehaving toddler. But I decided that it would be more fruitful to go through chapter by chapter to get a clearer picture than to jump the gun.
The chapters on understanding and solutions to misbehaviour are right smack in the middle of the 356-page book. (Okay, if you are reading this post, I better cut to the chase.) Misbehaviour from toddlers could fall into any one of the four categories:
1) Undue attention (“I’ll keep you busy with me!”)
2) Misguided Power (“You’re not the boss of me!”)
3) Revenge (“I’ll make you feel as bad as I do!”)
4) Assumed Inadequacy (“I give up”)
Why do toddlers misbehave sometimes? The authors pointed to the underlying mistaken goals the toddlers have and these goals resulted in their misbehaviour.
Where Hannah is concerned, she misbehaves for undue attention and misguided power.
When a kid calls for undue attention, she might think that she only belong when she is being noticed or getting special service, and that she is only important when she is keeping the parent busy with her. Hence, the coded message sent by a child for wanting undue attention is this: “Notice me – involve me usefully”. And my reaction when she demands for attention? Well, sometimes irritated and other times guilty. Irritated because I had chores to attend to, guilty because I knew that I had not spend enough 1-to-1 special time with Hannah. I am certain of the latter because whenever I have spent enough time bonding with Hannah, she could occupy herself with her play things contentedly without demanding for my attention.
One quick solution to her need for undue attention has been to involve her in helping me with household chores. This calls for creativity on my part as I have to introduce simple tasks for her to do to occupy her time. Actually, it would be easier if I had preempted these situations by thinking ahead and planning a set of little tasks for her. Below is a recent video-clip taken of Hannah draining vegetables for me while I prepared dinner. After she was done with the task, she wanted to dump all the vegetables back into the basin of water and re-do the whole exercise if not for my intervention. On hindsight now, I should have let her as she started ‘bugging’ me with “mommy carry Hannah!” soon after that!
I shall share on her misbehaviour in the area of misguided power in the next post. :)
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