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Mothers and grandmothers believe that all small children necessarily love their parents, but children do not know about their love for their parents and often beat their mother, grandmother, or even father. They beat them in the face, they beat them with a stick, they hit them with a fork — in any way they like. And what to do with it?
We will not analyze situations where parents can be hit by their teenage children — these are already situations of a completely different class, usually situations of pedagogical neglect. With kids, everything is easier, at least everything is easier to understand, although it is not always possible to stop this disgrace in a quick way.
The main thing here is to understand two things.
First, when a child hits you, he has nothing against you personally. He just does what he wants to do now. And what in this case appeared before him is your problems, and not his direct intention to deal with you personally.
Second: the smaller the child, the less he is guided by the mind (until you put the mind into him, the child does not have it) and to a greater extent is just an organism. The same as any other animal that is controlled by reflexes and gains experience primarily with the help of associative and conditioned reflexes, receiving positive or negative reinforcement for its actions from the external environment (that is, primarily from parents). At least, most children under two years of age behave this way. So,
What to do with babies?
The solution to the problem with children of this age lies primarily in the field of the art of training, no matter how terrible it sounds to those who want to see a highly spiritual being in a small child. Your baby will definitely become a reasonable person: smart, understanding, compassionate and just wise, but later. In the meantime, he lives at the level of a cat and a dog, and understands, first of all, the language that other cats and dogs understand — the language of positive and negative reinforcements.
One of the first natural tricks is attention deprivation, or the time-out method. For example, if a child hit his mother, then do not scold the child, but walk past him and start feeling sorry for the mother: stroke her, say kind words to her. Telling a child that fighting is bad makes little sense: your words for a child are just communication with him, and he just needs communication. On the other hand, if you stroke your mother, the child will want to repeat it after you sooner or later.
If the baby hit (bit) you and there is no one next to you who would take pity on you, solve the issue yourself. Namely: without screaming and without crying, stand up abruptly, remove the child from your arms, then, without screaming and without swearing, silently leave to do business. The child will be left without you, and this is punishment enough for him. It will not work immediately, but a few repetitions are usually enough.
As for the «hit back» or «bite back» technique, it’s a great move, but most of the time it doesn’t work. More precisely, it works in men, but it does not work in women. The fact is that the father may well hit the child on the arm so that he does not take it into his head to beat him with this hand, and mothers love their children and “in response” they do it gently, not painfully … As a result, the situation of exchanging blows (bites) turns into a new game for the child: he is you, you are him, he is you, you are still him, and the child is only fun and interesting. This does not work.
To work, you need to have iron nerves and the habit of reacting in three steps: 1) explanation, 2) warning, 3) punishment. That is, the child has bitten you — you calmly tell him: «Don’t bite, it hurts me!». He bit again, you warn: «Don’t bite, but I’ll hurt you just the same!». If he bites after that, he needs to be bitten back in earnest in order for him to really hurt. And for a blow to the face, you take his hand and hit it seriously painfully.
If you are not ready for this, then do not do it, and if you do it once, like a man, then this will be an effective solution. Note that this is how all children solve this issue among themselves, and it works: children can consciously fight, but just like that, mindlessly hitting another — it doesn’t occur to them. Why? But because they tried and got the answer as it should.
So, if you were able to do this, you have accomplished a feat. It was hard, but you did it: be proud of yourself! And to calm yourself after that, take the screaming child on your lap, hold him and explain: “Mom is sacred! You can’t beat your mom!» Sooner or later it will come. It will come to you sooner, to the child later. If psychologists have told you that in such a situation you need to tell your child about your feelings, please tell them. If it helps you, tell me, but as for the child, the only important thing is that you hold him firmly on your knees and do not let go. Sitting on your lap instead of playing is a punishment for him, it affects him, and talking about your feelings only affects psychologists.
Yes, a common question: why explain something to a child if it doesn’t help? Answer: this is not necessary for the child, but for you. Because it is you who should get used to not hitting or biting a child, but to resolve all issues peacefully. Accustom yourself to this, and soon the child will already respond to your words.
And if you missed it, and the child is already three years old and older?
Third: any reasonable order must be protected, and if a child deliberately violates these rules, he is punished for this. We repeat the rule: 1) explanation, 2) warning, 3) punishment. In this case, slapping once hard on the pope or on the arm is normal and correct. If the child tries to hit the wall, it will hurt him, and he will not hit the wall a second time. Be a wall: do not fight yourself, but give back to the child what he has done.
Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov
Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there so few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A story that couldn’t be better. Paying for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.