Mindset Matters: Your Child Is Not Misbehaving on Purpose

Through my collaboration with hundreds of parents over the past 30-plus years, I have identified eight specific mindsets that present obstacles to parents responding to their children in the most loving and effective way during difficult moments. When you become aware of these mindsets—the lens through which you filter and respond to your children’s behaviors—it enables you to make critical mindshifts that help you to see your child’s behavior more objectively and respond with sensitivity as you help her cope with life’s inevitable challenges. Making these key mindshifts proves to be the missing link between knowing and doing.

This is the first post in a series that explores these mindsets.

1. My child is misbehaving on purpose. They should be able to accept limits and exhibit greater self-control.

Kishan takes his 3-year-old daughter, Seema, to the pool several times a week in the summer. Even though Kishan gives Seema a five-minute warning before it’s time to get out of the pool, when time is up, Seema says she hasn’t had enough swimming and needs five more minutes. When Kishan says no, she calls him mean and starts to pout. In a desperate attempt to stave off a tantrum, Kishan relents and gives Seema the extra time, but that changes exactly nothing. Seema still refuses to get out. Kishan tries bribery and threats—she’ll get a treat if she gets out, or she’ll lose a book at bedtime if she doesn’t get out. Nothing works. Eventually, Kishan has to drag Seema out, which is mortifying for him and, he imagines, pretty embarrassing for Seema, too. Kishan starts to dread going to the pool with her and finds every excuse not to. Instead they spend more time at home doing indoor things. He knows it would be better for his daughter to be outside, using her muscles, learning to swim, and making new friends. He feels frustrated and sad for both of them.

If this scenario sounds familiar, you are not alone. Interactions like this play out every day in families with young children: The child doesn’t follow a direction, the parent tries a range of strategies to get the child to cooperate, the child still doesn’t comply, the parent loses it and gets punitive, the child melts down, and the parent either feels bad and caves or angrily punishes the child with no positive resolution.

One of the most foundational mindsets at play during these encounters is the parent’s belief that their young child should have greater self-control than she is capable of. It’s tricky figuring out what is developmentally appropriate: How do you make sense of the fact that your child can repeat a rule aloud but still keep violating it? How can you interpret this behavior as anything but intentional? What brain science tells us is that just because children can verbalize a rule, it doesn’t mean they have the impulse control to follow it. The part of the brain in charge of managing feelings and impulses is still very immature in children under age five. They are not able to stop and think about their feelings; they are functioning from their “downstairs brain” that is driven by impulses and emotions, which they act out. Their desire to get what they want when they want it rules the day.

It's also true that young children learn to rely on behaviors that are successful in getting them what they want. If accusing you of being mean or unfair results in more screen time (or pool time, in Seema’s case) your child naturally files away these tactics as effective tools for getting what they want. If making a big ruckus at bedtime results in a quick ticket to getting to sleep in your bed so he doesn’t wake up his younger brother, this behavior is reinforced. These kids are not purposefully “misbehaving"; they are being strategic.

Having appropriate expectations is critical because the meaning you assign to your child’s behavior influences how you react. If you think your child is purposefully trying to drive you mad with her defiance, you are much more likely to respond in harsh ways that lead to an increase, not a decrease, in acting-out behavior. When we get revved up and reactive with our young kids, it escalates their distress, making it harder for them to calm down and learn from the experience. If you see these behaviors in the context of normal development, you are more likely to implement limits calmly and with empathy for how hard it is for your child to learn to manage his strong desires and impulses. When you are clear about expectations while remaining loving, you avoid a lot of anger and shaming. Your child does not get consumed with upset about the “break” in the relationship with you in that moment and is able to be calm and adapt more quickly.

With this mindshift—that Seema is driven by her emotions and desires and needs help to learn to follow rules and cope with frustration and disappointment—Kishan modifies his expectations. He becomes less angry and frustrated and more empathetic about how hard it can be for little Seema, with her 3-year-old brain, to manage her emotions. Kishan is now able to accept Seema’s disappointment when she has to end a fun activity. He doesn’t expect her to be able to pull herself together right away.

The next time this scenario arises with Seema, Kishan responds in a calmer, more effective way. When it’s time to come out of the pool, he tells Seema she has two great choices. Option 1: She comes out of the pool on her own. Option 2: She refuses to come out of the pool, in which case Kishan will be a helper and carry her out. When Seema swims away at Kishan’s direction to come out, he calmly steps into the pool to retrieve her. Kishan reminds himself that as unpleasant as tantrums can be, Seema is not misbehaving on purpose and that he doesn’t need to be angry at her during these encounters—which he actually finds very freeing. He understands how hard it is for Seema to cope with transitions and limits she doesn’t like. Accordingly, he quickly dries her off and ignores her screaming. He tells her that he knows it’s hard to leave the pool and then just starts singing one of her favorite songs to show Seema that he is not angry or frustrated. His mindset is that because he loves her so much, he is not going to engage in a protracted battle. He is just going to help her move on.

Even seeing it through this lens of empathy, carrying Seema out of the pool is still humiliating. But Kishan reminds himself what the alternative is, and this helps him stick to the plan that he knows is right and loving even if it still feels bad in his gut.

After a few days, the combination of Kishan responding lovingly and calmly, and Seema experiencing the natural consequences of her choices, yields positive results. Seema more often than not chooses to get out of the pool by herself. Further, the more Kishan uses this approach in other challenging moments with Seema, the less frequent and intense her tantrums become and the more she begins to cooperate with directions, even when she has to transition from a pleasurable activity to a more mundane task.

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Next mindset: When my child tries to get her way, she is being manipulative.