As a parent or primary caregiver, we frequently encounter situations where our children’s behaviour may annoy, distract or anger us. During such times, we often experience the urge to discipline them and bring the situation under control. However, disciplining is an energy- consuming process, more so when the child chooses to resist the act of disciplining. It is most likely to leave us and our children drained out physically and emotionally.
Let’s take a moment to ponder over this: is discipline the only way out to resolve a child’s challenging behaviour? The good news is, no, it isn’t. A less demanding and definitely a more pleasant alternative to handling a child’s difficult behaviour is cooperation. While disciplining is quite a one-way approach, with the parent dictating what the child needs to do, cooperation is a two-way approach, giving the child the space to make a choice.
However, for a child to cooperate with you in a difficult situation involving their behaviour, there’s something crucial you need to establish with them. It is connection. Simply put, the child should feel connected with you. This connection is something you build over a period of time. To understand this equation between connection and cooperation better, think of your relationship with your child as a bank account. The more connection you deposit, the more cooperation you will be able to withdraw.
Let me share something that I experienced with my six-year-old niece, Ira, recently. I was working from home that day. My young niece was around and she wanted to play a game. She wanted to pretend that she was me. So while I was busy working on my laptop, she brought out her toy laptop. Soon, she started pressing its keys, just like I was doing on my laptop. Unfortunately though, being a fancy toy, the laptop made a loud sound every time she pressed a key. After a while, I began to find the sound quite annoying and distracting. It was a problem I had to resolve. I had two choices on how I could go about it – I could ask her to stop playing with the laptop, tell her to keep it away and do something else. Or, I could try something different – another approach; and I chose the second option. “Hey, Ira,” I told her, “I see you are having lot of fun playing with your toy laptop. I am thrilled that you are pretending to be me! I just love it!” I paused, “But, I have my work to complete and this noise that the laptop is making – it is bothering me and distracting me.” “Can we do something about it?” I asked her earnestly. To my pleasant surprise, almost immediately, Ira was standing next to me, with a roll of cellophane tape in her hand. We began working together – we took out lot of tape and stuck it on top of the toy laptop’s speaker. The result was of course that the sound reduced greatly! I went on to do my work and she continued to pretend to be me – both of us happy that we had amicably resolved
the issue.
As you can see, this incident with my niece is a perfect example of a child cooperating. It is very important to note that her intention was not to annoy me. Her intention was to just have fun. However, when I had a challenge, she chose to cooperate with me and came up with a creative solution to address it.
Cooperation, therefore, is a good way to tackle a child’s difficult behaviour. But how does one make a child cooperate? The answer lies in four specific steps that you need to follow to get your child into a mode of cooperation.
Step 1: Know that the child is acting in a certain way because they are intending to meet a particular need of theirs. For example, in the case of the laptop incident with my niece, she was trying to meet her need of having fun. Similarly, different children are likely to have different needs – like the need to overcome tiredness, the need to quench their thirst, the need to satiate their hunger, the need to connect, play, love and so on. As an adult caring for a child, it is important to understand that in all probability, the intention behind a child’s behaviour is not to make your life difficult; rather, it is about meeting a specific need that they have. This understanding can actually calm you down and make you more open to accommodating your child and their actions.
Step 2: Let them know clearly that their needs matter to you as much as your own needs. During the course of my conversation with my niece about the laptop’s loud sound, I clearly indicated to her that even though my work and deadline (my needs) were important, her need to have fun was equally important for me. I stressed on the fact that both our needs mattered.
Step 3: State whatever challenge you have very clearly. When sharing a challenge with a child, generalizing the problem with words like ‘always’, ‘never’ etc., is not a good idea. For instance, saying things like ‘You are always annoying’ or ‘You never listen’ would only make you sound confusing and unclear to the child. In my case, the problem was the laptop’s loud sound. Not the fact that my niece was playing. Not the fact that she was pressing the keys continuously. So I told her that I had work to finish but the loud sound was annoying and distracting me. I stated my challenge very clearly.
Step 4: Strive for a win-win situation. When you understand that your child is behaving in a certain way because they want their needs to be met, when you clearly tell them that their needs matter to you as much as yours, and when you clearly state the challenge you are facing due to their behaviour, they are very likely to come up with a solution for the challenge. Like my niece who addressed my noise-problem with a roll of cellophane tape! In case they are not able to resolve it, you can recommend solutions too. Since they are in a mode of cooperation, they would be quite inclined to accept the solutions you are offering them. Cooperation is the magical word and it often yields better results because of the mutuality inherent to it. Disciplining, on the other hand, leaves the child without choice, and even evoking resistance in them. When tackling a child’s challenging behaviour, it is important to take the approach of cooperation most of the time and reserve the act of disciplining to just few instances – only when it is absolutely necessary.
Needless to say, ‘the four steps to cooperation’ works most effectively when you have made a deep connection with your child. In other words, stronger the connection you have established with your child, more the child will be willing to see the value in what you are expecting of them or proposing to them. When you connect well with your child, they cooperate with you because they want your love and approval. They cooperate with you because they wish to make your life easy.
My niece, Ira, is an angel who mostly cooperates with me and does almost anything I ask of her. One day I asked her, “Ira, why do you cooperate with me? Is it because you are afraid of me?” She looked at me, smiled, and responded matter-of-factly, “No, periamma, I cooperate with you because I am happy with you.” When she said ‘happy’, Ira was referring to the fact that she felt connected with me. And that statement pretty much nailed the whole idea of cooperation in parenting for me.
(Edited by Anupama Krishnakumar)
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