Causes of bad behaviour

Parents should be aware of some of the causes of bad behaviour among the children. In this instalment, we discuss a few of these causes with the hope that good parents will take measures to remove them from their childrens environment.

Boredom is a major cause of bad behaviour among children. In most cases, children want to be occupied or engaged in some activity; that way they will not get bored. This is not to say we should keep our children busy doing house work or working in the garden so that they behave themselves. There are, indeed, times for such activities, but the important thing is to ensure that children do not get bored by the SOS the same old stuff. The parents should devise new activities for the children to do other than just watching TV or listening to sick music. In our family, nobody is allowed to watch TV before 12 noon everyday. This also applies to visitors including ambuyas who may wish to start watching the enslaving box as early as seven or eight in the morning.

Then there is bad behaviour caused by too many rules, too many donts and too few dos. It is much better to have just a few rules or boundaries that are well kept than too many rules that are simply waiting to be broken through bad behaviour. A third cause of bad behaviour among children is the sense of insecurity. This relates to the lack of an environment where the children know that they are safe, protected and provided for. Insecurity causes children to worry about their own safety. In a family where the parents are always disagreeing, quarrelling, arguing or fighting, children feel insecure and may resort to bad behaviour as a way of escaping the home environment. A happy home is a secure abode for the children and so they will not need to be badly behaved.

Frustration also causes children to misbehave themselves. There are many things in the home that can frustrate children to the extent that they misbehave. Children can be frustrated by being made to carry out too many errands for adults. Do this, that and the other, after which you can do children need their space too. When their space gets too crowded by adults they get frustrated and behave badly. Perhaps the worst cause of bad behaviour among children is rejection. This may be from the parents or other relatives, or may even be from other children. Rejection promotes bad behaviour when the child seeks to even the score or demonstrate that they can dish it out just as effectively as it is dished out to them. The opposite of rejection is love, and a loved child tries to please by behaving themselves. A good parent will seek to always demonstrate love to their children, and the children will do their best to behave well.

A further cause of bad behaviour among children is disappointment. This may be caused by the parents failure to provide what they had promised to the child, or denial of permission to do something or go somewhere for no apparent reason. This gets worse when other children are allowed to do the same or similar activities. Disappointment will motivate a child to misbehave as a form of retaliation for unfair treatment. In todays fused families where we have so many step-children, if we may call them that, good parents need to be very careful how they treat all the living under their roof. Next week we will discuss a few other causes of bad behaviour.