Lesson Two: Children Need to Behave

<–Back | Forward–>

Chapter 3

All Behavior Is Learned

“The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.”
—King Edward VIII

We are not born knowing how to behave, responsibly or irresponsibly. We do, however, have needs. For a newborn, the most pressing need is the need for survival: food. The only behavior a baby knows is to cry. The baby soon learns that this crying behavior is a good thing: “I cry. I get food. Crying is good.”

Unfortunately, babies attempt to take this one learned behavior and try it out in other situations. For instance, it doesn’t take long for a baby’s need for love and belonging to emerge.

The higher-order psychological need for love and belonging appears as the need for survival is satisfied. If the need for survival is not met, other needs are suppressed and slow to develop. The physical need to survive takes precedence. When survival is threatened, nothing else matters.

Back to our growing baby. The baby, being well fed and having his physical needs met, now feels the need for love and belonging. Bedtime comes along, but the baby’s need for love and belonging is more pressing than the need for sleep. So, when he is put into the crib, he applies the only behavior he knows: crying.

Now, most well-meaning but gullible parents fall right into the trap that the baby set. They feel sorry for the crying baby and pick him up. Guess what? He stops crying. His need for love and belonging is being met. He’s satisfied. He’s happy.
As I said before, all behavior is learned. What did the baby learn from the above situation? Yes, he learned that if he cries, he can get attention. This is a behavior lesson well learned by the baby. Unfortunately, it will stay with him for some time. He’ll find this behavior a particularly interesting tool as soon as he turns two years old.

(Let me pause a moment here to talk about my use of gender. In writing about discipline problems, I am especially sensitive to an equal use of she and he, his and her, boy and girl, and so forth. Neither gender has an exclusive on irresponsible behavior. I’ll try to remember to alternate my use of gender. Bear with me.)

Back to babies. Why do I know that this explanation of crying behavior is true? My personal experience confirms it. When my wife and I had our first child, we were living in an apartment. Being first-time parents, we were very concerned about doing the right thing. We were also sensitive to not disturb people in the neighboring apartments with a crying baby.

So, when our daughter cried at night, we held her and walked her and rocked her. Night after night, my wife or I would be up at least once during the night. I remember wondering if it was colic. It wasn't; she was lonesome. Little did I know that I was teaching her that crying was a very effective attention-getter.

You might ask, "How do you know that the crying isn’t because she is hungry or needs burping or changing or, heaven forbid, is really sick?" That’s a very good question, and I don’t remember exactly how we dealt with that. I can tell you that after five children, our copy of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care was dog-eared and frayed.

Of course, if there is any question about a possible physical problem, you have no choice: The baby is going to get attention. If you suspect there could be a medical problem, don’t hesitate to consult with your health-care professional (or, as we used to call them in the old pre-politically-correct days, your doctor).

If you are just curious about medical problems, I recommend that you visit the Dr. Spock Web site (http://www.drspock.com) . This is a great site, especially for new parents. You will find information about behavior and development, health and medical problems, feeding and nutrition, and much more.

Back to crying. Crying is such an effective behavior, that older children often fall back on it when their needs are not being met. When she reached two, my daughter took crying a step further when she was not getting her way. She would throw a tantrum. This usually involved banging her head on the floor to get our attention.

Here is another trap into which many well-meaning parents fall: saving children from the consequences of their choices. With my daughter, my first reaction was to run and pick her up before she hurt herself. Wrong. If I do this, what is it going to teach her? Right, to get dad’s attention, go bang your head on the floor.

What did we do? I have to hand it to my wife. She had the answer. She put a pillow under our daughter's head so that she could bang away without hurting herself. This behavior, my daughter soon learned, was not productive, so she stopped it. Thank goodness.

Being a parent is not easy. It is especially hard when you realize that every time you react to a child’s behavior, you are teaching him or her something. Consciously or subconsciously, your child is learning “If I choose to do this, I will get this result.”

Our job is to guide our children to make the best choices with the most-positive outcomes.

<–Back | Forward–>