10 Surprising Reasons Why Kids Misbehave

"You can't teach children to behave better by making them feel worse. When children feel better, they behave better."

The above lines are stated by an eminent scholar and parent educator Pam Leo. Why is this quotegiven here? We have the answer. We, today as a parent, Guardian, teacher or mentor, need to understand kid’s behaviour pattern from time to time.

The time has changed a lot. The parents of today's generation believe in democratic nurture of their children instead of being autocratic. But for being democratic in the right direction, we must know about our children. We should be perfectly known to our child's likes and dislikes, her/his behaviour pattern and habits. It often happens that children get angry on very little things (according to us). Sometimes they are over excited, they shout, they cry without any reason. To control them, we become strict, which is obviously not good every time when such situations take place. Scolding or becoming strict every time will definitely won't work.

So what should we do? First of all we have to understand that every child is different from other, so are his behaviour pattern. It is not expected from them to behave good every time. They often misbehave. To control their misbehaviour, we should understand the cause of their misbehaviour.

Here are 10 surprising reasons why kids misbehave and how can we manage such behaviours.

1. Feeling of Alienation: Children are the one who are attention seekers. Most often we, as an elder, are busy in their own work and children feel separated. To seek attention, they shout or do such things that could annoy us. So to curb this situation, we should handle the children with care. Spending time with them, listening to their opinions and needs, telling them about your day and asking about their day is a great measure.

2. Lagging Behind: The reason of child’s misbehaviour may be s/he lags behind from others. She/He is not able to compete with her or his group. This often leads to feeling of humiliation and depression among such children. They get irritated and hence misbehave. To curb such behaviour, we should first understand the concept of individual difference. We should recognise the special skills of the child in which s/he can excel. We should not lay pressure on them to lead in a skill which is not her/his cup of tea.

3. The Adolescent Age: We all know the kind of changes in behaviour pattern in teenagers. Stanley Hall has “said that adolescence is the age of storm and stress.”At this age they are burdened with studies. They are worried about their future ventures. They are stressed about scoring good and career plans. This is the age where many hormonal changes take place. Children believe that what they think or do is always correct. If we try to correct them in some situations they misbehave in one or the other way. This is a time when we should handle their behaviour with love, care and good communication.

4. Television and Mobile: Nowadays, children are involved in television shows and mobile phones. Exposure to these gadgets is the need of this age of information. But exposure to shows which have violent or misbehaving content, is rather harmful. Children of small age learn things faster by copying. They watch shows and movies which have misbehaving content and copy the same. So we should calmly have a watch on what are the children watching on TV or mobile phones. If they are watching any such content, we should tell them about its bad effects.

5. Children test your patience: You have observed that whatever we tell children not to do, they will definitely attempt the same. They test our patience level. They want to know what happens if they do the same thing which is not to be done as per the parents or elders or teachers. They want to know the result.In such a situation you must be role model. You should not lose patience, but show them the exact consequences of doing that, which was not to be done according to you.

6. Unfulfilled Demands: Children often misbehave when their demands are not met. They shout or scream to let us know what exactly they want. Fulfilling each demand when the child misbehaves is not good. Limit yourself to meet child’s demand every time when s/he screams. Otherwise they will make it a habit to scream or to shout whenever they want the things of their choice. The best way to tackle such situation is to let them know that if the misbehaviour is there, they might face bitter consequences. Parents can fulfil the authentic demands though, but when it is demanded without any shout or loudness.

7. Repeated criticism: Children often get angry and they misbehave because of repeated criticism from their elders for inability to do some task. Criticism in negative sense worsens the situation. Children only learn to misbehave if we criticize them again and again. We should give positive comments first. We should tell the child that what is good in him/her. S/he can improve certain things and obviously her or his behaviour.

8. Aggressive Environment: This is a fact that the children learn by imitation. They learn from the environment also. If the environment around them is full of aggression and violence or loudness and misbehaving, they will learn the same. To tackle this, we have the responsibility to create an environment where by the child can learn positive things like humbleness and good behaviour.

9. Feeling of Insecurity: Insecurity is another reason why children feel depressed, frustrated and annoyed. Parents and teachers should look after this issue very carefully. If a child feels unsafe he will be pessimist and he won't tell what is going on his mind. S/he will not discuss her/his problems. So we should try to communicate with our children who feel loneliness or are depressed.

10. Lacks self-confidence: Sometimes, children do not have faith on their own confidence or we can say they lack self-confidence, and because of this they are not able to do the things up to their capabilities. This is another reason for their inefficiency, which finally turns into the aggression and frustration of the child.

So these were the some surprising reasons why children misbehave with their friends, teachers, parents etc. We as parents, teachers or guardians should understand that the children are not finally moulded, they are to be unfolded as the eminent author Jess Lair has said, "Children are not things to be moulded, but are people to be unfolded." You should talk to your child about the day he/she has spent, how we have spent the day and what is going on around in his/her mind. Try to solve your child's problem or your child's excitement with love care and positivity. We as a parent should understand that whatever we present in front of our child, it will be reflected in him or her also. So we will end the article by the famous Quote of a French moralist Joseph Joubert, “children need models rather than critics"