Track and Record Your Child’s Tantrums to Help Change Their Behavior
Sleepy habits. Fertility. Steps a day. Consumption of water. There is a tracker for all this. So it probably shouldn’t surprise me that I read Dr.Katherine Perlman’s advice for struggling parents, but it did startle me in some way. When you are trying to change a child’s behavior and are not sure if what you are doing is working, she offers to collect some data and analyze it.
Pearlman is the author of Ignore It !: How Selectively Looking The Other Way Can Reduce Behavioral Problems and Increase Parental Satisfaction , which teaches strategies to ignore and reward children for bad behavior. While she has seen her approach work surprisingly well (which is why she wrote a book about it), this strategy – or any new parenting method you choose to apply – is not the magic wand that instantly transforms your child into the perfect child. a cute angel who says something like: “Mom, can I please read the book quietly while you rest with your sweet head?” Childhood is inherently fickle, emotional, difficult, and it is often difficult to see anything other than the crying that lies in front of you.
This is why you need a chart.
“Tracking helps parents see if there are any improvements,” Perlman tells me. “It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Better to improve a little than nothing to improve. And the vision that there are some changes motivates the parents and gives them the opportunity to continue them. I’ve used tracking for sleep training, eating problems, teens provocative behavior, and more. It can really be used to track any behavior. If the child only eats 10 foods, it may appear that there is no change when the child eats 12 foods. But this is a huge improvement. Without tracking, a parent may miss out on a little success. ”
It is also a clear way to notice any patterns and possible triggers so that you can adjust your procedures accordingly. In his book, Perlman cites the example of Conner, a three-year-old who had violent tantrums that seemed to be triggered by even the slightest anxiety. His parents, who turned to Pearlman for help, began tracking his breakdowns on the schedule. Every time he had a tantrum, they added a little label. It looked like this:
Have you noticed any patterns? Perlman writes:
The results were instructive. Typical tantrums for Conner occurred between noon and 2 pm, as well as a few hours before bed. It was especially hard for him on weekends (fourteen tantrums on Saturday and sixteen on Sunday).
After careful consideration, Conner’s mom and dad could understand why Saturday and Sunday were a mess for Conner. His brothers used to play two games a day. Since they were not on the same team, this meant that each of the parents had to take the boy to the game individually. Hence Conner’s weekend was being dragged from this field to that field and from this field to this field. He did not sleep and he did not have time when activities were structured according to his needs. The food was usually late or on the go, and by the end of the day Conner was through and through.
After the analysis, Conner’s parents made some changes. Their nine-year-old gave up one sport (he didn’t like football anyway). They also worked hard to coordinate travel arrangements for the older boys and hired a babysitter for times when they didn’t want to miss a game. “These small changes have led to a sharp drop in the incidence of tantrums on weekends,” Pearlman writes.
You can really frolic with bar and line charts, but only if you want to. Pearlman points out that if tracking your behavior makes you more stressful, not less, you shouldn’t. She also warns that tracking should be something parents should be doing discreetly for their own information – don’t make a giant poster-sized table and hang it in the living room.
Here’s a template from Ignore It! to start (secretly) monitoring your child’s behavior. It can even help you take your mind off pure emotions and start looking at things more objectively. Remember, this isn’t just hysteria – it’s data.
The charts are from Ignore It !: How Selective Looking The Other Way Can Reduce Behavioral Problems and Increase Parental Satisfaction, written by Katherine Perlman with permission from TarcherPerigee of Penguin Random House. Copyright © 2017 Katherine Perlman.