I have always believed, since my children were very young, that all kids want to be good. They want to please their parents and do the right thing. When they don’t, it’s because something is wrong.
The Redirecting Children’s Behavior program, the brain-child of Kathryn Kvols, based her work on the famous child psychiatrist, Rudolf Dreikurs who believed that all children have needs. Actually, all people, even adults have needs. Children and adults are just trying to get their needs met.
Some needs that children have:
- To feel loved
- To give love
- To feel special
- To feel powerful
- To feel valuable
- To experiment and explore
Think how hard it is for us, as adults, to sometimes express our needs and get them met. Children, with far fewer communication skills have an even more difficult time. They express those needs through their behavior. When we, the adult, can look past the behavior and identify the need and begin to address getting the needs met the amount of misbehavior a child exhibits decreases.
I was helping to run a week long children’s workshop awhile back. Everyday we’d take the kids to the pool for an hour of swimming fun! Early on in the week one of the other teachers came to me exasperated, “Eileen, I don’t know what else to do with Dianna. She’s pestering Ben, grabbing the ball from him, splashing him, knocking into him and she just won’t stop. I tried talking to her, I tried scolding her, I even gave her a time-out! She just won’t stop! I’m ready to throw her out of the pool for the rest of today.”
I told my co-teacher I would try.
I found Dianna in the pool and asked her if she could help me. Dianna was very guarded. She didn’t trust adults but she was willing to listen. I told her I was cold and I didn’t want to sit alone in the hot tub and would she be willing to sit with me while I warmed up.
I knew from the brief smile on her face that I had reached her. A teacher singled her out and asked for her help. Out of all the children a teacher asked for Dianna’s help! With my one simple request I helped this unpopular 7 year old child feel loved, valuable, special, and powerful. She gladly followed me into the hot tub where we sat and chatted for no more than 5 minutes before she asked to go back and play with the other kids. The negative behavior with Ben stopped and Dianna was much more cooperative. My co-teacher was amazed at Dianna’s transformation.