Every child grows up with aggressive behaviors such as hitting and snatching.
Under normal circumstances, as the child ages, the cognitive level, the emotional ability improves, and the moral awareness continues to improve, the aggressive behavior will gradually decrease.
The children who used to hit people all the time gradually stopped doing things at will.
However, there is one type of child who is an exception, his aggressive behavior will become stronger and stronger, he will always have a bad temper, he will be very impulsive, it will be difficult to obey the constraints of **, and he will use physical and relational aggression against others with a high frequency.
It continues until elementary school and becomes a highly aggressive child, which is a headache for the family.
Some people will label these children as "born this way", but in fact they are not.
The formation of a highly aggressive child is the result of chance (genetic factors) plus necessity (parenting patterns), in which necessity predominates.
The first ring: heredity
Why are some children more aggressive than others?Biological factors may play a part, such as temperament, which is prone to aggression and anger in difficult children who are very emotional and have low self-control---Developmental Psychology".Aggressive children are genetically related, which is an unavoidable biological basis, which means that children are more likely to have aggressive behaviors.
Ring 2: Demonstration
Since the child has a highly aggressive gene, it is likely that both parents or one of them are also habitually aggressive.
Parents often quarrel, fight, moody, and problem-solving patterns use yelling, violence, to force each other to give in.
Parents also often use aggressive methods such as corporal punishment, intimidation, and threats to force their children to obey them.
The highly aggressive family atmosphere provides ample soil for the highly aggressive gene to grow.
The third ring: copying
Children replicate their parents' behaviors through their ears and eyes, and constantly try to use aggression to resolve conflicts, vent emotions, and achieve goals.
Especially after the child is more than a year old, self-awareness begins to develop, entering the first rebellious period, and parent-child conflict is on the verge of breaking out.
The child replicates the parent's aggressive pattern to resist the parent, yelling, losing his temper, smashing toys, hitting and pinching, and is completely out of control.
Fourth Ring: Negative Reinforcement
In the face of highly aggressive children, parents often resort to higher aggressive behaviors to suppress their children:
Beating and scolding, scolding, harsh corporal punishment, threatening and intimidating children with words such as not wanting you and not loving you.
It's useless to say it's useless, it's honest to beat it, and at the moment, it really works.
However, if this trick is always used on a highly aggressive child, it will deepen the child's false perception that aggression can solve the problem, forming negative reinforcement.
Because this is how he himself was **, when he had a conflict with a child, he would use aggressive behavior without thinking.
The Fifth Ring: Circulation
The above four links are constantly played out in family life, one after another, and finally parents and children fall into a vicious circle:
Parents discipline their children with threats, criticism, punishment, and high pressure.
The child complains, resists crying, yells, and rages until the parent gives in.
Parents attack their children, and children replicate their parents' attacks and in turn resist their parents.
There are constant parent-child conflicts, and the family atmosphere is tense.
The interaction model between parents and children is a template for the child's interaction with the outside world.
The repetition of the above 5 links allows children to learn to look at the world around them from the perspective of violence, and to see non-hostility as hostility.
Eventually, it is possible for a child to attack someone without being provoked and conclude that aggression is effective in controlling others.
A highly aggressive child will be ostracized by his peers, no one will want to play with him, he will be criticized by teachers, and even taken out alone and marginalized.
In order to gain attention and integrate into the group, children will use wrong methods such as "deliberately making trouble, breaking rules, and physically attacking" to make themselves the focus, and they will be rejected by everyone.
In the face of highly aggressive children, a simple and rude "countering violence with violence" will not work, and it is not something that we can say with our bitter preaching.
1. Parents demonstrate reduced aggression and provide new behavior templates
This link of heredity is something we cannot intervene in, but the latter links are controllable, first eliminate our bad example of children:
Quarrels between husband and wife are inevitable, but don't make a big fuss, fists and kicks, let alone swear words.
In addition to this, we need to give children a new model of conflict resolution:
Sit down face-to-face and debate what we both think about the same thing, what we both want.
Of course, this is not easy to do, it requires a very stable emotional ability, and the average adult will give priority to outputting emotions.
But if we want children to learn to solve problems with language, we have to model this.
After all, most parents will say when they are faced with children who are angry, crying, and beating others: crying and anger will not solve the problem, and if you have any ideas, you can say them in words.
Second, important things rely on rules, and inconsequential little things follow the children
In fact, it is to reduce the frequency of confrontation with children as much as possible and re-establish a parent-child trust relationship.
We agree with our children about important things and stick to them, such as watching TV, eating snacks, sleeping, playing with mobile phones, doing homework, etc.
If we can give our children a clear and clear rule about when they can play with their phones, how long they can play each time, how many snacks they can eat each time, and which snacks are healthy to choose from, we will not let our emotions dictate our children.
You must know that parents always go back on their word, say one thing and do another, and it is easy to turn on the child's irritable mode.
Let the children go with the little things that don't matter, what kind of clothes to wear, how to play with toys, what books to read, where they want to play, who they want to play with, how many meals they eat, etc.
Children with a lot of freedom are relatively emotionally stable and have a strong sense of rules because they can often control themselves.
3. Parents are good at proposing compromise solutions and demonstrating new models of problem solving
Highly aggressive children are Xi using aggressive behavior to solve problems, and the thinking pattern is relatively simple:
Attack can solve the problem, if it can't be solved, it means that the attack strength is not enough, I have to be more powerful.
We need to give children a taste of the multiple pathways to problem solving.
The first is that parents are good at coming up with compromises.
For example, if a 4-year-old child is reluctant to clean up toys all over the floor, we predict that if we force him to do so, he may start to be irritable.
Then come up with a compromise: there are a lot of toys, I can clean up with you, you pack the car, I'll clean up the dinosaurs.
After the car dinosaur is cleaned up, it continues to advance: you pack the blocks, I pack the picture book.
Finally, praise the child's efforts to solve problems cooperatively and express his love for the child.
If parents can do these things, the change in their children will also be visible to the naked eye.