The Good Behaviour Book: How to have a better-behaved child from birth to age ten

The time in your arms, at your breasts, and in your bed lasts a very short while in the life of a growing child, but the messages of love and security last a lifetime.

6. Become a Facilitator

At each stage of development, a child needs significant people who care about him and whom he cares about. These people act as facilitators, helping the child learn how to conduct himself in the world. A facilitator is like a consultant, a trusted authority figure who provides emotional refuelling to the child, a person to lean on who helps the child both develop his skills and take advantage of the resources around him with a view toward becoming self-sufficient. The facilitators don’t tell the child what to do; they help the child learn what to do. They don’t give commands; instead they take cues from the child and weave their wishes into the child’s wants. The child says, “I do it myself”; the facilitator says, “Yes, you can!” The facilitator watches for teachable moments and takes advantage of them. A wise disciplinarian in my practice describes her role as facilitator: “My job is to help my child glean from life’s experiences lessons he might not otherwise glean for himself.”

Babies need facilitators.

You have been functioning as a facilitator ever since the moment of birth. You positioned your baby at the breast to make it easier for her to feed. You held the chair steady to make it safer for the beginning cruiser to keep his balance. You arranged child-sized furniture, utensils, and cups to make it easier for your child to have a snack. A facilitator structures the environment so a child doesn’t waste energy. She helps the child focus on important tasks.

There needs to be mutual trust between the child and the facilitator. They are interdependent (see meaning of “interdependence” (#ua05efc30-0cab-46ed-8cd8-cad895dff7b1)). The child relies on the helper’s availability and the helper is sensitive to the child’s needs, taking cues from the child and filling in the missing steps to help the child complete a task. The facilitator anticipates what the child needs at each stage of development in order to thrive. Thinking of yourself as a facilitator keeps you from hovering over and smothering your child with overprotection. Being on standby as needed helps you and your child negotiate an appropriate level of independence. When your child is going through a healthy independent stage you stay connected, but at a distance.

Expect discipline problems to occur when the child lacks a facilitator. A child forced to function on his own will become frustrated and discouraged. I’ve watched children try to function without the help of a parent or someone else to act as a facilitator: The child seems angry, as if he senses that he is missing out on the help he needs. He will either withdraw out of insecurity or, if gifted with a persistent personality, make himself noisy enough to get help. Either way, his emotional and intellectual development are compromised. One of the main features I have noticed among attachment-parented children and their facilitator parents is these children know how to use adult resources to their advantage, and the parents know how to respond appropriately. Ideally, for two years, the facilitator is mainly the mother and then gradually both of the parents as the father helps the child move away from “mother only”. As children grow they may latch on to additional facilitators: grandparents, teachers, coaches, scoutmasters, and so on. It’s the parents’ job to monitor these, persons of significance in their child’s life. Behaviour often deteriorates when a child must function without these special persons. Throughout this book you will find many suggestions to help you become a facilitator.

how attachment parenting makes discipline easier (#ulink_ec48dc61-6af7-5c14-8039-c940ce7d57d9)

You probably never thought of these attachment tools as being acts of discipline, but they are. Attachment parenting is like immunizing your child against emotional diseases later on. Here are other ways this style of parenting improves the behaviour of your child and the way he experiences life. Jill, an attached mother of three, told us: “Knowing my children empowers me.” This kid knowledge becomes like a sixth sense enabling you to anticipate and control situations to keep your kids out of trouble. Our daughter-in-law Diane describes her experience with this style of parenting: “I know Lea so deeply at every stage of her development. Attachment parenting allows me to put myself in her shoes. I imagine how she needs me to act.”

Attachment parenting promotes mutual sensitivity. At six years of age Matthew would come to me with a request, “Dad, I think I know the answer, but …” Because our mutual sensitivity and trust is so high, he knows when to expect a “yes” or a “no” answer. He tests me, but knows my answer. The connected parent and child easily communicate each other’s feelings. Once connected to your child you will be able to read his body language and appropriately redirect behaviour, and your child will be able to read your desires and strive to please. As one connected parent put it: “Often all I have to do is look at him disapprovingly and he stops misbehaving.”

Attachment parenting produces people who care. General Norman Schwarzkopf once said, “Men who can’t cry scare me.” Many of the world’s problems can be traced to one group of people being insensitive to the needs and rights of another group. One of the mothers in my practice arranged a talk for a group of attachment mothers, and she invited one of the survivors of the Holocaust to come and tell her story. Commenting on the social benefits of sensitive parenting, the survivor concluded her talk, “Because of children like yours, this tragedy will never happen again.”

an exercise in sensitivity

Because of misguided teachings from “experts”, some mothers have to go through “deprogramming” before they can let themselves respond naturally. Try this exercise: When a baby cries (yours or someone else’s), examine the first feeling that comes over you. Does the cry bother you in the right way, prompting an irresistible urge to lovingly pick up and comfort the baby? Or does the baby’s cry trigger insensitivity: “I’m not going to let this little person control me.” If you have a less than nurturing response, you are at risk for a disappointing disciplinary relationship with your child, and you need to learn more about the needs of tiny babies and to rethink the giving end of parenthood.

A mother I counselled in my surgery during a prenatal interview was worried that she wouldn’t be a good mother. I asked her how she feels when she hears babies cry. She responded, “I just can’t stand to leave a baby crying. I want to rush over and pick that baby up. It bothers me to see other mothers ignore their babies’ cries.” I assured this woman that she was very likely to be a good mother because she had the quality of sensitivity. Cries bother sensitive women – and men too. Cries are supposed to bother us.

Attachment parenting organizes babies. To understand better how attachment parenting organizes infant behaviour, think of a baby’s gestation as lasting eighteen months – nine months inside the womb, and at least nine more months outside. The womb environment regulates the baby’s systems automatically. Birth temporarily disrupts this organization. Attachment parenting provides a gentle, sensitive, external regulating system that takes over where the womb left off. When a mother carries her baby her rhythmic walk, familiar from the baby’s time in the womb, has a calming effect. When the baby is cuddled close to his mother’s breast, her heartbeat reminds him of the sounds of the womb. When baby is draped across mum or dad’s chest, he senses the rhythmic breathing. Being kept warm and held close calms him and helps him control his reflexes. This high-touch style of parenting, with its emphasis on keeping the baby comfortable, has a regulating effect on the infant’s disorganized rhythms. Baby knows where he belongs. With his needs for food, warmth, comfort, and stimulation receiving predictable responses, the attachment-parented baby is physiologically better off. A 1993 study compared sleep-wake patterns and heart rates of breast- and bottle-fed babies. The breastfed babies showed more energy-efficient heart rates and sleep patterns. They were more organized. The researchers concluded that a baby who isn’t breastfed is like an engine out of tune.

synthetic substitutes

Soothing babies has become big business. There are vibrating beds, lullaby-singing teddy bears, battery-operated swings, and bottle holders. These synthetic sitters are snapped up by tired parents in hopes of making life with baby easier. While many parents need a break, and artificial soothers can provide this occasionally, a steady diet of synthetic subs will sabotage your discipline. Using your own resources when the going gets tough boosts your creativity, your patience, and your confidence – all of which you will need to discipline your child. And if the use of artificial substitutes gets out of balance, your baby is at risk of learning to be comforted by things rather than people. As you browse through baby stores, hold on to your credit cards. Relying too much on synthetic help early on may set you up for later disappointment when you realize there are no substitutes for disciplining your child.

Attachment parenting promotes quiet alertness. Both research and our own experience have demonstrated that attachment-parented babies cry much less. So what do they do with their free time? They spend much of it in the state of quiet alertness. During waking hours, babies go through many types of behaviour: crying, sleepy, alert and agitated, and quietly alert. Babies are most attentive to their environment in the state of quiet alertness. By not fussing and crying, they conserve their energy and use it for interacting. The result is that they are more pleasant to be with. And because a responsive parent takes time to enjoy the baby when he is in this state, the baby is motivated to stay quietly alert for longer.

Attachment-parenting promotes trust. Being in charge of your child is an important part of discipline. Children need to know that they can depend on their parents not only to meet their needs but also to keep them on the right path. Authority is vital to discipline, and authority must be based on trust. It is crucial for baby to trust that he will be kept safe. An attachment-parented baby learns to trust the one person who is strongly connected to him. When an infant can trust his mother to meet his needs, he will also look to her to help him behave.

connected kids are less accident-prone

Securely attached children do better in unfamiliar situations because they have a better understanding of their own capabilities. In parent parlance, they are less likely to “do dumb things”! The organizing effect of attachment parenting helps to curb their impulses. Even children with impulsive temperaments tend to get into trouble less if they are securely attached to a primary caregiver. A child who operates from internal organization and a feeling of rightness is more likely to consider the wisdom of a feat before rushing in foolishly. This may be because connected kids are not internally angry. Anger adds danger to impulsivity, causing a child to override what little sense he has and plunge headfirst into trouble. In essence, connected kids are more careful. Also, connected parents are naturally more vigilant and are more likely to keep on the heels of their toddler when visiting homes that are not childproofed.

Attachment parenting promotes independence. If you are wondering whether attachment parenting will make your child clingy and dependent, don’t worry. Attachment parenting actually encourages the right balance between dependence and independence. Because the connected child trusts his parents to help him feel safe, he is more likely to feel secure exploring the environment. In fact, studies have shown that toddlers who had a secure attachment to the mother tended to play more independently and adapt more easily to new play situations than less attached toddlers. (To read more about how attachment fosters independence, see here (#ulink_14c43d50-62d6-5598-838c-62b4e7a05160)).

Between one and two years of age, an infant perfects a cognitive ability called person permanence – the ability to recreate mentally the image of a person, even when that person is out of sight. A baby who is securely attached to his caregiver carries the mental image of that caregiver into unfamiliar situations. Even when mother is not physically there, she can be there in the child’s mind, and this gives the child further confidence to explore. Attachment parenting helps the child build a mental image that is loving and dependable, which helps the child feel confident and capable. A child who is pushed into independence before she is ready to maintain this mental image will be either anxious and clingy or she may register no concern whatsoever. Much of her exploring energy will be diverted to handling these feelings instead of into learning.

the unconnected child

Suppose parents, for fear of spoiling their baby or letting her manipulate them, restrain themselves from responding to her cries and develop a more distant, low-touch style of parenting. What happens then? The baby must either cry harder and more disturbingly to get her needs met or give up and withdraw. In either case, she finds that her caregiving world is not responsive. Eventually, since her cues are not responded to, she learns not to give cues. She senses something is missing in her life. She becomes angry and either outwardly hostile or else withdrawn. In the first case, the baby is not very nice to be around, and parents find ways to avoid her. In the second case, the baby is harder to connect with, and again, parents and child enjoy each other less. Either way, this child will be difficult to discipline. She comes to believe that safety and security depend on no one but herself. Problems in relationships develop when a child grows up thinking she only has herself to trust in. Since the parents don’t allow themselves to respond intuitively to their baby’s cues, they become less sensitive and lose confidence in their parenting skills, another set-up for discipline problems.

You can tell the unconnected baby by his expression – or lack of one. He does not seek eye contact and he does not evoke the warm feelings so evident with connected babies. “He looks lost” is a comment we once heard about an unconnected baby. You can also tell an unconnected baby by the way he holds himself stiff as if moulded to fit his baby seat rather than to soft shoulders.

As the unconnected child gets older, much of his time is spent in misbehaviour, and he is on the receiving end of constant reprimands; or he tunes out and seems to live in his own separate world. This child becomes known as sullen, a brat, a whiner, a spoiled kid. These undesirable behaviours are really coping strategies the child uses in search of a connection. The unconnected child doesn’t know how to regain a sense of well-being because he has no benchmark to measure attachment. He has difficulty finding a connection because he isn’t sure what he lost. This scene results in patch-up parenting, with perhaps much time spent in counsellors’ offices.

The unconnected child is less motivated to please; he’s less of a joy to be around. As a result, unconnected parents don’t find job satisfaction on the domestic scene, so they seek fulfilment in professions and in relationships not involving their child. Parent and child drift further apart. Unlike the connected child who is a joy to be around and keeps making healthy friendships, peers may shun the unconnected child. He even puts off people who can help him form connections. The emotionally rich get richer, the emotionally poor get poorer.

With professional counselling, children and parents can begin connecting and settle into a style of discipline that brings out the best in each other. It will require a lot of energy to accomplish this at a stage past when it naturally is designed to happen. Newborns are more into being held than six-or nine-year-olds. The best chance for staying connected later on is to get connected early. (See “How to Raise an Expressive Child” (#litres_trial_promo), and “Getting a Handle on Anger” (#litres_trial_promo).)

Attachment parenting enables intimacy. Attachment-parented kids have a look about them. You can spot them in a crowd. They are the persons looking intently at other persons. They seem to be genuinely interested in other persons. I love to engage these children in visual contact because they are so attentive. The reason these kids will look you straight in the eye is that they have grown up from birth being comfortable connecting to people, and they connect appropriately. Their gaze is not so strained or penetrating as to put off the other person, or so shallow as to convey lack of interest. It’s just the right visual fix to engage people and hold their interest.

Much of a child’s future quality of life (mate and job satisfaction) depends on the capacity for intimacy. Therapists we interviewed volunteered that much of their time is spent working with people who have problems with intimacy, and much of their therapy is aimed at re-parenting their patients. Because connected kids grow up learning to bond with people rather than things, they carry this capacity for intimacy into adulthood. Many a night I watch two-year-old Lauren inch over and snuggle next to Martha in bed. Even at this young age Lauren is learning a lifelong asset – the capacity for feeling close.

Attachment parenting helps you discipline the difficult child. This style of parenting is especially rewarding in disciplining kids we call high-need children. Sometimes parents don’t realize until their child is three or four years of age that they have a special child who needs a special kind of discipline (for example, a hyperactive child, a developmentally delayed child, or a temperamentally difficult child). By helping you shape your child’s behaviour and increase your sensitivity to the child’s special needs, attachment parenting gives you the right start that increases your chances of having the right finish. Connected parents have a head start in disciplining high-need children because they are sensitive to their child’s personality. The connected high-need child is easier to discipline because he is more responsive to his parents. One of the reasons temperamentally difficult children are difficult to discipline is they are disorganized. As we discussed earlier, attachment promotes organization. In fact, studies comparing the long-term effects of early parenting styles on a child’s later development show that attachment parenting (or the lack of it) most affects the character trait of adaptability (the ease with which a child’s behaviour can be redirected to the child’s and parents’ advantage). Adaptable children are better prepared to adjust to life’s changing circumstances. They learn to accept correction from others and eventually correct themselves. Some children are born puzzles. Attachment parenting helps you put the pieces together.

reconnecting

What if, due to medical problems, domestic changes, or just bad parenting advice, you weren’t able to connect with your infant during the first two years, and now you are having discipline problems with your child? The beauty of human nature is its resiliency, the ability to bounce back from a poor start and have a happy ending. Yet reconnecting can be complicated by developmental mistiming. If you connected early, you were bonding when your baby wanted to bond. Trying to connect with the older child is more difficult because you are trying to bond when the child is working on breaking away. Still, it’s never too late to get attached. If you are having discipline problems with your child, no matter what your child’s age, step one on the road to recovery is to examine the depth of your parent-child connection. If it is weak, strengthen it. Remember, a child’s attitude wasn’t built in a day, and behaviour doesn’t change overnight. You may need to devote six to twelve months to the reconnection process. This time may include drastic lifestyle changes, involvement in your child’s projects, a high frequency of focused attention, and lots of time just having fun with your child. One parent we know home-schooled her six-year-old for a year; another father took his seven-year-old with him on frequent business trips. One parent described his reconnecting process with a difficult child: “It was like camping out with our five-year-old for a year.” Whatever you need to do to shorten the distance between you and your child, do it; and discipline will follow naturally.

Timing is important. Developing children take two steps forward when they need to act and feel independent. The child may be generally negative; “I do it myself.” During this stage parent-child conflicts are likely to occur. Then they take one step backward, a positive stage when they return to home base for some needed emotional refuelling. During this stage, the child is most open to reconnecting. Watch for openers: the child sits next to you on the couch while you are reading; stop reading the magazine and read your child. Your older child reappears for the nighttime story to the toddler and hints for “one night” sleeping in your room; honour this request. When your child shadows you, take the opportunity to reconnect. If you try to bond while your child is trying to break, you are likely to meet resistance.

building better-behaved brains

The developing brain of an infant resembles miles of tangled electrical wire called neurons. At the end of each neuron tiny filaments branch out to make connections with other neurons, forming pathways. This is one of the ways the brain develops patterns of association: habits, and ways of acting and thinking; in other words organization. Attachment parenting creates a behavioural equilibrium in a child that not only organizes a child’s physiology but her psychological development as well. In a nutshell, attachment parenting helps the developing brain make the right connections.

The unconnected child, however, is at risk for developing disorganized neurological pathways, especially if that infant has come wired with even more than her average share of disorganized pathways. This child is at risk of developing behavioural problems later on, namely hyperactivity, distractibility, and impulsivity – features of one of the most increasingly prevalent “diseases” in childhood and now adulthood – attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A person’s brain grows more in the first three years than anytime in life. Could the level of nurturing during those formative years affect the way the behavioural pathways in the brain become organized? We believe it does, and we also believe that research will soon confirm that many later child and adult behavioural problems are really preventable diseases of early disorganization. (See related topic, “Disciplining the Hyperactive Child” (#litres_trial_promo).)

Attachment parenting encourages obedience. The real payoff of attachment parenting is obedience. This style of parenting, besides opening up parents to the needs of their baby, also opens up the baby to the wishes of the parent. The universal complaint of parents is “My child won’t obey”. How compliant your child is depends upon his temperament, which you can’t control, and the depth of your parent-child connection, which you can influence. Because your minds mesh, the connected child is more open to accept your perspective and switch from his mind-set to yours, to listen to you instead of being closed to you. The connected child trusts that parents know best.The attached child wants to please.

Even the iron-willed child bends to the will of the mother or father who operate on the parenting principle “The stronger my child’s will, the stronger must be my connection.” It is this connection that gives parents confidence. Wanting to please and trying to obey are the behavioural trademarks of the connected child. Jenny, the mother of a high-need baby, who is now a strong-willed four-year-old volunteered: “Initially attachment parenting took more energy and was less convenient. Now caring for Jonathan is easier because discipline flows naturally between us. I’m finally beginning to cash in on my investment.”

For more benefits of attachment parenting and discipline, see: Chapter 3, “Understanding Ones, Twos, and Threes” (#litres_trial_promo); Chapter 7, “Self-Esteem: The Foundation of Good Behaviour” (#litres_trial_promo); Chapter 8, “Helping Your Child Express Feelings” (#litres_trial_promo); and the special feature “Inner Peace” (#litres_trial_promo).

(#ulink_72f8d418-1be8-552a-8cdc-b7d7c3362ee4) We discuss each of these attachment tips in greater detail in The Baby Rook (Thorsons, 2005). We treat them here in briefer form to show how they lay the foundation for discipline.

chapter 3 understanding ones, twos, and threes (#ulink_de577dc5-f765-5f9f-8427-9f4cf3f8f5e8)

Hold on to your hat – the fun begins. Babies turn into toddlers, and their new skills add challenges to being a parent. As a child’s physical and mental world grows, parents begin to think about how to shape his behaviour to help him learn, yet keep him out of trouble.

This is an important learning period for parents as well. To understand how to discipline a toddler, it’s helpful first to understand toddlers and their behaviour. Let’s get into the mind and behind the eyes of the typical toddler to learn why this fascinating little person is so challenging.

how toddlers act – and why (#ulink_c36480c2-c11c-5692-ac3d-a0fe6d862c2a)

At each stage developmental skills dictate behaviour. To cope with toddler behaviour it helps to remember the basic principle of development discipline: The drives that babies have in order to develop are the same ones that create discipline challenges. Babies need a strong desire to explore so they can learn, yet these ventures can lead them into uncharted territory. By understanding what skills click in when, you can be prepared for the actions that result and channel them into positive behaviours. From one to two years of age a baby gets a lot of what he needs to be more independent – “wheels” to roll on and a “horn” to blow. With these tools he feels ready to travel the roads of the world – or at least the immediate neighbourhood. Here are the changes you can expect.

Wheels to run on. Imagine how it must feel to learn to walk! Baby can see all those tempting delights around the room, and he finds ways to get his hands on many of them. Once the developmental skill of walking appears, children have an intense drive to master it. So toddlers toddle – constantly. And they can toddle into unsafe situations. Walking progresses to running, and climbing a few stairs turns into scaling kitchen counters.

growing out of it

How often have you heard, “Oh, just wait, he’ll grow out of it”? Though partially true, this lame excuse for not bothering to correct certain behaviours shows an incomplete understanding of child development. Growth and development used to be pictured like clothing sizes. The child outgrows an outfit, discards it, and puts on a bigger one that fits better. In reality, it’s not that simple. Children don’t always discard behaviours from one stage of development when they grow into another. Misbehaviour that is not corrected at one stage may linger into the next. On the other hand, don’t get too excited or worried when you see “good” or “bad” behaviour in your children. It may be a one-off thing that children try on for size and quickly discard when it doesn’t fit.