BEHAVIOR - The Child Outside The Home. (cont.) --
Many young children who display difficult behavior at
home, also do so outside the family - at day care, with
relatives and out in the community. Their parents often
find this extremely embarrassing and frustrating. Experience
suggests that difficult behavior outside the home greatly
increases some parents' dissatisfaction with their children.
In some cases, the parents' feelings may then be taken
out on the child once at home, in subtle or in obvious
ways. As well, the adults in other settings may also be
intolerant of the children and may send rejecting or critical
messages which may have a direct impact on both the children,
the families and the children's peers.
Clearly, children who are disliked in this way are at
serious risk of having self-esteem and other problems.
Parents are often puzzled by the fact that their children
behave differently for different people and in different
places. Even some professional people question a temperamental
basis for behavior that does not occur across situations.
This oversimplified notion of temperament falls down very
quickly when you consider shyness, for example. Shyness,
agreed by nearly all developmentalists as often having
a strong basis in temperament, by definition does not
occur with familiar people. Other aspects of temperament
will also be shaped by the particular context.
A normally inattentive child may be quite captivated
by novelty in a given situation, whether it is the pediatrician's
stethoscope or a new video-game. Experience suggests that
the following patterns are common in cases of temperament-related
behavior:
1. THE CHILD WHO IS SEEN AS 'HIGH
MAINTENANCE' ONLY BY THE FAMILY.
Children with classically 'difficult' temperaments may
not pose any problems in group care or when visiting another
family but reserve the stress-based reactions for home.
Sometimes it is the family dynamics and poorness-of-fit
with parents that explains this discrepancy. In other
cases, however, careful observation will reveal a child
who is tense and withdrawn in a group setting but has
sufficient self-control to inhibit an overt reaction until
later. Such children have been seen to 'explode' with
a tantrum the minute the parent arrives or the minute
they get into the car. Older children may fall apart in
the evening at home. In these cases, while the parent-child
fit may be relevant and needs exploration, an investigation
of the child's actual functioning in group care or while
visiting can be fruitful.
CAREFUL DETECTIVE WORK IS NEEDED.
While it is difficult sometimes to detect the distress
in a child who does not display it obviously, good observation
may reveal that the child is struggling with some of the
expectations of the other setting. These struggles may
be related to temperament, as in the demand for smooth
transitions from one activity to another or the requirement
to eat a food that is unfamiliar. Interpersonal problems
of fit can be relevant. Commonly, this is noted when a
teacher or relative displays impatience with a child's
temperament-related behavior, in subtle or obvious ways.
HOW CHILDREN ARE CHALLENGED.
One of the most difficult areas to address is the use
of common teaching methods or directions which are wrong
because they do not really address the temperament issue
for the child. An example is taking the time to reach
a child the methods of "taking turns" with a
toy and not recognizing that it is not a lack of SKILL
in turn-taking causing the struggle for the child, but
a temperament issue such as wanting to play longer with
a toy because of temperamental persistence. (In this case,
the missing 'skill' is frustration tolerance but it is
not always possible to remove frustration related to temperament
'violations', especially in young or 'extreme' children.)
Or a relative may tell a child not to 'be so picky' or
say "What's wrong with my cooking?" when the
child is displaying temperament-based reluctance to trying
a new food. Many children lack the awareness, the vocabulary,
the assertiveness or the emotional security, to say: "I
have some strong food preferences. Do you mind if I don't
try this time?" They may just wear an expression
that offends the relative. Or they may engage in a behavior
to distract everyone from the real issue. Or they may
suffer in silence and feel very misunderstood and misjudged.
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