How to deal with kids (without hitting them)
1. The Best Defense is a Good Offense: Be proactive with children’s behavior.
Don’t wait until a child is in the middle of a meltdown in the toiletries aisle of Target. Try to be aware of how different situations and stimuli might affect kids of different ages. A few tips:
Kids, especially toddler age kids, struggle with transitions. Give them a clear time table and stick to it. Give them updates as deadlines approach. “We are leaving the library in 5 minutes.” “We need to go see Grandma in 10 minutes.” “Target will only take 20 minutes.”
Getting toted around by adults can be exhausting and frustrating. Give kids tasks to do. Put them in charge of something. It can be something actually helpful (you get to hold the calculator and keep track of how much money we are spending in the store) or something fun to keep their mind busy (count all the blue things in this aisle.) Talk to your kids. Help them feel involved, instead of just a tote bag.
Model self care and emotional awareness. Kids are often dealing with SUPER new emotions, and may not know how to recognize them, contextualize them, or act on them. Talk through your own emotions, or emotions you think they may be having, and show them how to deal with them. “Yeah, I know, mommy is really sad that we can’t go to the park because of the rain. It makes me feel really bad inside. I think if we color with crayons for a while, I’ll feel better.”
Give kids choices. Obviously, age plays a big part here, but a reasonable, curated set of appropriate choices gives kids a growing feeling of agency and teaches making good choices. “Would you like peas or green beans?” “Penguin Shirt or Turtle Shirt?” “Water or apple juice?” This requires YOU to also speak with and listen to the kids. Always important.
Consistency is very important. Make sure your rules are clear, the reasons are clear, and the consequences are clear BEFOREHAND. Kids really can’t just infer rules out of thin air. They need to be taught the expectations, and then YOU need to keep to them.
Be aware of how the children in YOUR care react to things, and find ways to mitigate “bad” behavior before it happens.
2. “Punishment” is not the goal. Discipline means teaching.
Your goal, as a parent, as a teacher, as a baby sitter, is not to punish kids. Your goal is to help teach kids how to become thoughtful, responsible, and kind people. The entire idea of kids “deserving” bad things because they’ve “been bad” is flawed. If a kid does something “bad”, then we should aim to help them not make that bad choice again.
Identify any immediate stimuli or situation causing the bad behavior and remove/alter it so the behavior stops. This might mean leaving an errand unfinished, a time out, taking away a toy, etc, in order to STOP the behavior that is happening RIGHT NOW.
Talk to the child about why their behavior was “bad.” What bad affects could it have? How does it affect others? What caused it? Kids, even very young kids, can understand complicated things if explained in terms on their level.
Come up with a plan for what to do next time the original stimuli or situation happens. If Timmy tries to take your truck again, what can we do differently? The next time we are in line at the bank, what can we do to make it more fun?
If the child is older, and the offense is more severe, you may feel the need for a tangible consequence. Remember that these should be age appropriate, reasonable, and negotiable. Give kids the ability to reduce their consequence with good behavior, and be willing to modify the consequence if they have a compelling and reasonable request. Listening to kids and being empathetic is not a weakness. It is a sign of respect.
3. Don’t forget that kids are people. Kids are also kids.
Kids will not be perfect angels. You will not be a perfect adult. Sometimes they will be cranky, angry, tired, hungry, selfish, or mean. You can be these things to. One bad day doesn’t mean you are a failure, and it doesn’t mean the kids are a failure. You have to let kids have bad days sometimes. You have to love them anyway and be willing to give it a fresh go tomorrow.
Working with kids is not easy. No one said it would be. But part of working with kids is the obligation to always be thoughtful about our interactions with them- we teach them with everything we do. So we should treat them with all the respect, kindness, thoughtfulness, and patience we want them to learn.
(Here is a clean version of this, without the discourse, slightly updated)
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