6 Helpful Tips To Managing Your Child’s Disruptive Behaviors

Disruptive behaviors are actions that we'd prefer to decrease, eliminate, or change in some way. Though unwanted or disruptive behaviors are a normal part of childhood, parents often seek strategies to prevent bad behavior from getting out of control.

Changing behaviors requires some detective work. In this post, we share helpful tips for managing a child's behavior problems. 

How to Help a Child with Behavior Problems

1. Be a Detective

The first step in managing behavior problems is determining why your child is behaving this way.

Keep in mind that some behaviors may look the same but will occur for different reasons. For instance, your child might kick you because he wants your attention, but he may also kick you because he doesn’t want to do his homework.

Simply observing how the behavior appears (in this case, kicking) doesn’t give a clear picture of why the child is behaving this way.

Behaviors typically occur for four main reasons:

• The person wants something (tangible)

• The person doesn't want something (escape)

• The person wants attention

• Sensory needs (it makes the person feel good)

Become a detective and determine what your child is looking to gain by engaging in the negative behavior.

2. Catch the Behavior Before it Occurs

Look for trends or antecedents to disruptive behaviors. Identifying trends allows you to change the environment, and therefore prevent unwanted actions.

For instance, if your child has a meltdown each time you turn off the TV, realize that you turning off the TV is triggering the meltdown. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn't turn off the TV, but rather that you are aware of the triggering event.

You now can develop strategies to prevent the negative behavior. Some examples include:

• Giving a warning before turning the TV off

• Setting a timer and showing your child how much longer they have before the TV will be turned off

• Counting down from 10 to one before turning off the TV

3. Understand Why Behaviors Continue Occurring

In Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), a consequence is what happens immediately after a behavior occurs. This can affect the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future. Meaning, consequences after a behavior might be reinforcing the child's tendency to act this way.

Let’s go back to the example of the child melting down when the TV is turned off. If you turn the TV back on the moment your child gets upset (consequence: it happened right after the meltdown behavior), then having a meltdown might have just become your child’s form of communication. 

Your child may have learned that he will get what he wants by having a meltdown. Don’t underestimate your children.They are smart and can read you like a book!

Choose your battles. Some behaviors are worth giving in to if it makes your life easier. If you do, just be aware and understand why that behavior isn’t changing. If it’s worth the fight, continue to be aware of what occurs immediately after the behavior because that could have something to do with why it isn’t changing.  

4. Create Expectations & Establish Routines

Children (and most adults) thrive when there are clear expectations and consistent routines. Before “treating” an unwanted behavior, create expectations by:

• Using visual schedules

• Following the same daily routines

• Establishing and following family rules 

Children respond well to visuals and consistency. Disruptive behaviors might change without doing anything more than just adding consistent routines.

5. Find Replacement Behaviors

Once you have determined what is causing bad behavior, think about a replacement behavior that serves the same function.  Meaning, if your children were to use language instead of negative behavior, what would they say?

Or, what would be a more desirable action than the unwanted behavior?

An example of replacing behaviors could be teaching your child to say, "chase me!" or "play with me!" to a sibling instead of grabbing a toy and running away to elicit the same action.

If your child doesn’t communicate verbally, that's okay too. Use visuals to have him or her point to, PECS for communication, or a vocal output device for them to express themselves.

6. Positive Reinforcement Is The Most Powerful Tool When Strengthening Behavior

Instead of only focusing on undesirable behaviors, spend time focusing on wanted behaviors too. Use reward systems and positive praise to let your children know when they are exhibiting wanted behaviors. Tell them exactly what they are doing that you like, which is called behavior specific praise.  The more reinforcement provided for wanted behaviors, the more likely your children will use preferred behaviors in the future. 

Remember, behaviors do not change overnight! Consistency (and patience) are required to create a change in behavior. Also know that behaviors might get worse before they get better. That means your strategies are working! Don’t stop, and stick with it. Change is right around the corner.

Further reading: The Do's and Don'ts of Instructional Control

Bribery vs. Reinforcement: What's the Difference?

Photo by Markus Winkler