Planning ahead: behaviour management tool

Why planning ahead helps with behaviour management

Shopping trips, travelling in the car, taking telephone calls, attending appointments for yourself, visiting friends – these are all times when it can be challenging to meet your child’s needs and get things done.

In these situations, there Is a risk of difficult behaviour from your child and frustration, stress or anger on your part. This is for a few reasons:

• You are trying to care for your child as well as get something done.
• You have got to do something or be somewhere at a particular time.
• Your children are bored.

Planning ahead can help you to manage these challenging situations better. You can try using our seven steps to planning ahead. These steps help you to think about what causes behaviour problems and how to manage them if they happen.

1. Identify challenging situations

Before you can plan ahead, you need to identify situations that are challenging for you and your child. These might be times when you have felt stressed, frustrated or embarrassed by your child’s behaviour.

To begin, try to work out what is making the situation difficult. Is it too many demands, time pressures or boredom? Or does the environment lead to difficult behaviour from your child – for example, in a shop is your child tempted by sweets that are kept at his eye level?

It is also worth thinking about whether you can avoid the situation or ask someone to help. For example, you might stay home with your child while your partner goes grocery shopping.

If you cannot avoid the situation, or you think it might help if your child learns how to cope better in the situation, planning ahead might help. The steps below take you through some ideas for planning ahead.

You might find it helpful to read more about how you can encourage good behaviour by changing your child’s environment.

2. Make expectations clear

Talk with your child before you go into a challenging situation. It helps if you are clear about what you expect from the situation and what behaviour is acceptable.

With toddlers and preschoolers, you can say what you expect. School-age children will have their own ideas, so work together to develop a few specific rules. With school-age children, this step is more of a negotiation, but you still have the final say.

Rules should be clear, simple and focused on the behaviour you want to see. For example, rules for a doctor’s waiting room might be, ‘Talk quietly’, ‘Ask before you touch’, ‘Be gentle with the toys and magazines’, and ‘Play on the floor next to me’. Your child will be more likely to remember the rules if there are not too many of them.

It is also a good idea to agree in advance on what happens when the rules are followed and when they are broken. For example, for the doctor’s waiting room you might say, ‘If you stay close to me and ask before you touch, you can play with the toys or read the books. If you forget to stay close or touch without asking, you will sit on the chair next to me for one minute’.

Check that your child understands by asking him to explain the rules and the consequences to you. Do this again just before you enter the challenging situation – for example, just before you go through the door of the doctor’s clinic.

Family rules can help your family members get along better and make family life more peaceful.

3. Think of your child as a ‘learner’

Difficult behaviour can happen because a child does not have the skills to cope with a situation. Ask yourself how you can help your child learn what to do in challenging situations. Here are some suggestions.

Give your child chances to practise and succeed
When your chid is learning a new way to behave, it will help if she can practise the behaviour and succeed in easier situations. Once she is coping better, she can try harder situations. Here are some examples:

• Shopping: plan a few short shopping trips for just a few items.
• Visiting/visitors: arrange a series of short visits from/to a friend or relative.
• Phone calls: arrange a series of short telephone calls.

Think about when your child is likely to be at his best
If you can, plan challenging situations around your child’s routine. For example, try to make appointments for directly after your child’s nap or snack.

Work out what skills your child needs to learn
For example, if problems happen during phone calls, your child might need to learn how to say ‘excuse me’, how to wait for you to respond, how to accept your answer, and how to keep busy and quiet. These are things you could talk about. You could also show your child how to do these things, and praise him when he does them.

4. Plan ways of helping your child keep busy and engaged

For toddlers, plan some activities that will keep them busy in challenging situations. Have a ‘going-out bag’ ready, with a drink, a snack and a few small but interesting items – for example, paper and coloured pencils, stickers or blocks.

With your help, preschoolers and school-age children can plan interesting activities themselves, or you can get them involved in what you are doing. For example, while grocery shopping you might ask your child to find things on the shelves and put them in the trolley, or to identify colours or words on labels. When queuing at the post office, you could play a quiet game of ‘I spy’ or ‘Who am I?’

You can have special activities just for car trips or telephone calls. These could be audiobooks, music, sticker books and so on.

5. Encourage good behaviour

During a challenging situation, look for and encourage behaviour you like. Take the time to stop what you are doing every now and then to let your child know when you like what she is doing.

It can be hard to remember to do this, but praise makes it more likely that your child will repeat the behaviour. Try to praise more than you criticise. As a guide, try to praise your child six times for every one time you say something negative.

For example, during a shopping trip, you might praise your child for staying close, speaking in a quiet voice, and helping you find things. If the challenging situation is a telephone call, you might briefly stop talking to praise your child for playing quietly.

6. Use consequences for behaviour you don’t like

If you put the steps above into action, your child will be more likely to behave well. But it is best to plan consequences that you will use if your child misbehaves.

The good news is that most consequences that you would use at home you can also use somewhere else with some changes. For example, if you are using time-out at home, you can also use it on shopping trips by getting your child to sit or stand beside you for a short time at the supermarket.

7. Have a follow-up talk

It can help to have a talk with your child after you have been in a challenging situation. During the talk, highlight things your child did well, and celebrate the progress you are making together.

You might also point out one or two things your child might do differently in future. These can become your goals for next time.