Attention-seeking children | Why do My Kids Misbehave to get my attention

0:00 hi i'm lynne jackson co-founder of connected families and this is chad hey and gay one of our licensed marriage and family therapists and we're here today to have conversation about why kids misbehave and specifically what's going on when they are just demanding our attention what can we learn from that so chad what are your thoughts about why kids misbehave and demand our attention well usually behavior has a purpose and uh that purpose comes out in lots of different ways

0:26 our belief system is kind of what drives our behaviors and our kids early on are trying to figure out uh what their belief system looks like and they're viewing the world around them and they're trying to understand it and get a better sense of that and so misbehavior oftentimes comes from a um belief system that isn't quite on the right track yet and so what might a child that is demanding attention be believing i mean he's getting

0:52 negative attention usually for it and so why would a child do that yeah usually the belief around a child that's misbehaving through getting undue or negative attention uh is a sense that the only way that i'm significant or belong is if uh everybody's everybody's focused on me if the world is revolving around me the spotlight's on me then i'm okay oh okay so that's why a child can be playing nicely and as soon as the phone

1:17 rings it's like oh and now i'm aware that the tension is not on me and that creates an anxiety and i'm gonna run over you chad grab your pant leg daddy daddy and drive you nuts yeah absolutely and that's one of the things that parents will most often feel when their child is trying to get attention in negative ways they'll feel annoyed it'll almost be the sense where you just go you are driving me crazy you ever been there oh yeah yeah so and

1:42 this is an important thing to look at too it's like what are the parents beliefs that are driving that crazy feeling uh in their heads that annoyance and uh you know it's it's a belief of my child should not be doing this right now and somehow you know i may be a bad parent because they're even doing that so if we take a step back as parents and look under the surface and go okay my child thinks i'm really

2:06 important they love me they want my attention that's a good thing so lord what's the opportunity here to help my child grow in a way of asking for attention in a in a better way so if you had some experiences with that in your family yeah absolutely i mean one of the things that uh our kids learned early was that if they were to do something overtly disobedient uh they would get our attention undivided attention even and with lots

2:32 of energy yeah yeah right we just give them all this energy for this misbehavior and so we worked at uh helping our kids have a language for what they needed so they could actually say dad i need attention and this this is something that we're teaching our four five six-year-old kids to ask for what they needed and they were even able to identify that sometimes they would do things that weren't so good uh and they would get

2:55 this attention but they could just ask for it and we would give it to them this happened to me three times my daughter came up to me and said daddy i need your attention daddy i need your attention daddy i need your attention and the last time she said daddy i need your attention if i don't get it i'm going to have to go do something bad and i went right hi attention yes right yeah so

3:17 that was awesome she was learning to articulate her needs in a good way to get them met which is a great skill for an adult relationship yeah we did the same thing with daniel i can remember him saying i need some attention right now so what a helpful skill so let's just close with some practical applications here number one would be for parents to take a look under the surface what's going on with them and how can they be okay even when their

3:41 child is not how can they look at this as an opportunity uh what's another practical application well i think uh being able to uh have your child have an expectation that you don't give attention on demand so because my child is is demanding my attention is probably something i want to pay attention to and say well how about if you set the timer for two minutes and when the two minutes is up and you can ask for

4:03 my attention respectfully i would be happy to give it to you it would be great now we're teaching our child a skill so when they come and they ask respectfully for attention you can give it immediately and if they're demanding and doing something that is not a helpful behavior then you can also teach them delay of gratification just wait for that attention sure another thing that's we found really helpful with our kids who loved attention was to give it to them

4:28 in really big ways when they were just doing nothing in particular jim would have this thing of just going up to a child and going i feel so strongly about you which was just totally goofy and dumb but it gave them this big download of of wonderful happy attention and then we were able to talk about the different feelings that we have when we receive happy attention or unhappy attention and given the opportunity for happy attention kids will pick that one pretty

4:57 consistently yeah absolutely so any other thoughts about applications well i think the the bottom line is understand that your child's belief system is at play and that you are helping them formulate those beliefs and anything you can do to just encourage them to get what they need in helpful and respectful ways will be a good start great thanks for joining us today