What to do when a child misbehaves? - Dr. Gordon Neufeld | Kids in the House 12

0:01 In my 40 years of parent consulting, I don't think there was a question that was  asked more frequently than what to do when. This is probably at the top of any parent's mind. The key, of course, is to  realize that most problem behaviour is rooted in instinct and emotion. And it's rather useless to battle against the  symptoms, and so the issue that we should - the modus operandi, the guiding principle of the incident - is to do no harm.

0:26 If we did no harm - if we didn't harm the  relationship, we didn't harm the dignity, if we were able to get out of  the problem situation without exacerbating the problem - we would do well. We put way too much emphasis on the incident. What we want to do; if we  throw an infraction flag, "That's not the way to speak to your sister." "Those aren't the kind of  words we use in our house." Or "You know that you were supposed to  turn off the television 10 minutes ago."

0:53 If we throw the infraction flag, we should  do so simply, and without shaming the child. And if we throw the infraction flag, the most important thing to do is  to bridge the problem behaviour. And to bridge is to go right over the  problem behaviour to what stays the same, or the next point of connection. What that does, the bridging interaction, is it says the relationship is  more important than the problem. So you say, "I'm still your Dad, we're okay, I'm  looking forward to watching the game with you."

1:21 But you bridge the problem behaviour that  gets the relationship thing out of the way. Because every child wants to know, "Are we okay?" You say, "We're okay, we're okay."  Now we can deal with the problem. But in the incident, we're better  off thinking about it first. And so, we're always better off getting  out of the incident sooner than later, exiting sooner than later. The thing to realize is a place to deal  with problem behaviour, the context, is not the incident - it's the relationship.

1:48 Once you activate the relationship - you get the  eyes, the smile, and the nod - then go to work. Try to bring the child onside with a good intention, help move mad to sad if you need to,  help them find their mixed feelings. There's so much that we can  do to get to the root problem, and we can make tremendous strides in this. But the incident is not to do our work, the incident simply notifies  us that there is a problem.

2:12 It's in the relationship that we should always  do our work, and nothing replaces talking. Talking with our child is the most  important way of interacting with them.