More Time = Better Behaviour

Children like to do things at their own pace. This is inevitably a lot slower than our pace.

In our busy adult world there is so much to do, we are rushing to get the household jobs done, rushing to work, getting everyone organised for their activities, cooking dinner, finding the missing teddy ah the list goes on.

Children have the luxury of not having to worry about any of that. In a child's world they are just focused on one thing at a time. This to them is an important thing, in fact it is THE most important thing in their lives at that moment. Often this thing is to practise a new skill or area of development and they want to practise this relentlessly as many times as they can until they have mastered it.

You can see that the adult world and the child word are vastly different.

Us, as adults don't always have time to wait for our child as they go about their snail-paced methodical 'work'. Often we don't actually understand that walking up the stairs independently or putting on their own shoes every morning is so important to our child and that their self-efficacy depends on it. So we rush them, or we do try to do things for them... whatever it takes to ensure we are not late!

But what happens next...

Tantrums, melt-downs, non-compliance, angry behaviour - that's what.

It's not nice for your child to feel this way, you feel awful and that parental guilt sneaks in again, and guess what - you're late anyway because you have to wait until this emotional Tsunami has dissipated before you can even think about getting in the car and going any where.

So... next time you see your beautiful, inquisitive little learner 'working' on their latest area of development and you get that multi-tasking, adult instinct to rush them, consider if it is really worth it.

An unhurried child is a happier and more compliant child.