Why Is My Child Behaving This Way?

What is it about “behavior” that makes me behave? How do I know what is expected of me socially? How do I keep friends and know to consider their wishes? Why do we see some kids struggle to make sense of it all and others take to these skills so readily? These are hard questions, though also quite simplistic.

 The word “behavior” has become a word connected to a child that is not doing what we expect them to do, acting in a socially immature way, creating difficulties in the home and at school and sometimes assumed to do these “behaviors” willfully. Most kids struggling with “behavior”, either have a haunted, sad look in their eyes or a daring attitude of defiance when we look their way. Others simply cringe at eye contact as if they could will themselves not to be seen. In the 1950’s Erik Erikson described the first year of life as the child’s foundation of trust vs. mistrust. Through the parent’s caregiving, and the child’s own temperament, they form the foundation of their relationships in life. Do they “trust” or “mistrust” that the important relationships in their lives will be there for them? Are they worthy of love? He identified this as the stage of hope. In the second to third year of life, this stage was identified as “willpower”. The conflicting issues at this stage was whether a child would have autonomy or shame. The will of the child could be formed in either direction. Would the child feel he is achieving or not?

 In much later research, this still holds true, though many more pieces have come to light. The Amygdala is a small center in the Limbic brain (emotional center), where the functions of fight, flight and freeze find their home. These functions are deeply seated in the subconscious brain. When something is in the subconscious brain, this means that when a child responds with fight and flight, it cannot possibly be because he or she wanted to. If it is triggered way “down under”, then the child is as much a victim of his or her own experience as the person on the receiving end would be. Think about when you are triggered on some of your hot spots as an adult. Do you not also wish you did not say something you did? And for the most part we call ourselves mature adults, which we are and I include myself in this experience, no judgment here.

 All of our experiences, from within our mother’s womb, until now is buried in the memory banks with our emotional connections to those experiences. If we truly ponder this, we realize what enormous influence our experiences have in our lives. If a child, for e.g. struggle with dysregulation and sensory processing of information and their experiences are fraught with mis-messages to their brain, their emotional experiences, however seemingly innocuous to us, are fraught with chaos, feeling anxious, uncomfortable and certainly not willing to do this again. They cannot trust new and novel experiences, which neurotypical children would thrive upon. And we scratch our heads. Every other child in the universe would enjoy spending the day on the beach with the family, but our child refuses to leave the car? It seems so incoherent to our typical nervous system that we turn to our frontal brain and logic tells us that the child is rude, obnoxious, selfish and out to make it difficult for all.

 You may ask why they could not simply override their need and come along just for the sake of their family? The answer again is both simple and complex. You are thinking with your pre-frontal cortex with good access to logic, while your child is responding to the limbic brain, reacting to the immediate need of fight and flight. While in that state, the child does not have access along the highway of logic in the brain, and is stuck in an instinctual response of self-protection. Self-protection you may ask? Yes, as the nervous system is not playing along as it should, giving us incorrect information about the moment, the child’s instinctual drive would be to go into self-protection whether it is fighting you or fleeing from you or even simply just freezing on the spot.

There is so much to say about this topic, especially how these reactions lead to rigid behavior, difficulty maturing socially emotionally and then there is a lot to say about what can be done about this. I will write more about it later. But if you do recognize this in your child, please do not allow anyone to put a behavior label on your child. Your child deserves more respect than a label could give. Seek services such as sensory integration therapy that absolutely can help this situation. Call us at 484 840 1529, no matter where you are or e-mail: [email protected].