How to know how to handle your child's behavior problems

Whether you have an adopted child or it is your biological child, sometimes handling children's behaviors problems can be stressful. If you ignore those behavior problems, things are going to get worse, and it can turn into a real threat for the entire family. Parents who are facing this problem are concerned about their child and want to get them help, but they are also worried about what they can do to protect the rest of the family.

Here are some things that you can do to help handle your child's behavior problems.

Step one: Seek counseling for the child. Ask around and find out which counselors come recommended. You can talk to other parents, friends, family members, or even your family doctor to get recommendations. If your child is adopted you will want to find a counselor who is knowledgeable about adoption and the issues that go along with that. If your counselor is not supportive of you as a person or as a parent, you want to find a new one right away.

Step two: Document all of your child's behavior problems and acting out. Have the child's teacher do the same for when they are at school. This is important because if it is not written down you cannot be sure that it really happened. Find a notebook and use it strictly for documenting your child's bad behavior. If you can remember things that happened before you started this notebook write those down as well. When documenting the information you want to include the date of the event, who was involved, what happened, and how it was resolved. You also want to include the actions you took as the parent involved in the situation. Do not hold anything back on your documentation of your child's behavior problems, if it concerns you or you think it is worth talking about write it down, nothing is too small in these cases.

Step three: Once your child has been diagnosed with a certain behavior problem, which will have to be done through your family doctor or a specialist, you will want to research the diagnosis. Find out everything that you can about your child's condition, including medication that is recommended or even trial medications.

Step four: Talk to your child's doctor about the medication that they are currently on. See if what is recommended for your child is actually working or if you need to consider switching the medication or dose.

Step five: If your counselor or family doctor recommends, any other tests for your child be sure to have those done, no matter how trivial they might seem. This is important because these tests might be able to help identify problems that you never suspected your children had.

Step six: To protect the other members of your family you need to put a safety plan into place. Make sure that you have told people that you have done this, put it in writing, and give it to your child's doctor and counselor.

Step seven: Find a group of family members or friends who will be there for you when you are stressed out. These friends and family members should be willing to step in to relieve you when you need a break from the child. You can also join a support group of parents that suffer from similar problems to yours. Talk to your child's counselor to find out about support groups in your area.

Step eight: Consider going to counseling as a family or as a couple. Having a child with behavior problems can be stressful on the family and on your personal relationship. If you or your spouse does not want to go through counseling, you still need to make sure that you take care of your relationship with each other. Keep one or two nights a week open for a date night where no kids are allowed. You also want to make sure that you keep your lines of communication open with your spouse.

Children with behavior problems do not just have a hard time at home, but they also act up in school. Rather than waiting until it is too late you can take action now to help make school a tolerable place for your child by working with their teachers and the administrators. Here are five things that you can do to help deal with the behavior problems at school.

Number one: Volunteer
Just being present at your child's school has numerous benefits, for both you and your child. For one it helps you and the administration get to know one another in a non-adversarial context. Volunteering also lets your child know that school is important to you and it is somewhere that you want to be. This also allows you to observe what is going on at the school, including how the teachers handle your child to how your child is acting at school. If you cannot volunteer during the day, you should make sure that you attend every meeting that your school has for your child, including Back to School night and teacher conferences. Showing that you are an involved and interested parent can sometimes help you turn the school personnel into your ally when behavior problems come up.

Number two: Listen to your child
Most kids who avoid answering the question about how their day at school was tend to do this because they know that their parents only want to hear good news. What you need to do is remember what it actually felt like to be in school, how the work was too easy or too hard, the teachers sometimes just didn't care, and all of the other problems that you faced going through school. Then ask you child about their feelings towards school and then listen to what they have to say, don't judge them or offer them a quick pat on the back. By listening to them, you might diffuse some of the frustration that can later cause behavior problems to escalate, and you might be able to lessen your child's emotional burden or help them to lessen it.

Number three: Be realistic
Sometimes pushing and motivating kids to do well in school cause depression and anxiety, this can lead to further behavior problems. With school, your child has no choice but to continue going to school, nor can they demand better working conditions. Therefore, what kids do to deal with the stress of doing what their parents want in school is to act out their anger and despair. You need to realize what your child can do and accept that. If your child has special needs you need to be honest about the type of support that your child will need in school, but also learn what type of classroom they need to be in to learn the best.

Number four: Be respectful of authority yourself
Dealing with kids who have behavior problems means that you are going to have to fight for your kid, and be their advocate. In this fight you might come across teachers and administrators that you do not feel are worth your respect, not to mention that their judgment is in doubt. No matter how much you think that some teachers and even administrators at your child's school are not worth your respect, you need to be careful with how you treat them and talk about them with your child. The reason for this is that you can end up sending the wrong message to your child. For example, you want to send the message to your child that sometimes grown-ups can be wrong, and you will always stick up for your child, and that even if people criticize your child they should still value themselves. However, your child receives the message as that it is okay to be disrespectful towards the teachers, that the rules do not apply to them, and that you will clean up any mess that they make. You do not want to teach a child to question authority, so if you are going to do it make sure that you do it away from your child.

Number five: Request an FBA
If your child's school is constantly sending home complaints about your child's behavior and expecting you to be the only one who does something to correct the behavior, you should request a Functional Behavior Assessment. Doing this will make the school think about your child's behavior rather than just reacting to it. The FBA is going to look at what comes before the bad behavior and what the consequences are for the bad behavior. It is also going to look at what possible function the behavior could serve for the child, as well as what things could be setting your child off. Conducting an FBA and writing a behavior plan is the best way to head off discipline problems with children who have behavior problems.

Identifying your child's behavior problems

In order to handle your child's behavior problems you first need to figure out what kind of behavior problems they are having. One way that you can track your child's behavior is to use something called a behavior scale.

A behavior scale has three sections to it, day, overall behavior range, and a note section for target behavior and circumstances. In the overall behavior range you will have a number line going from 10 down to 1, where 10 is the best and 1 is the worst. You can find this chart online for you to print at http://childparenting.about.com/library/weekly/nbehaviorchart.htm

Here are the steps you will need to follow to use a behavior scale.

Step one:
Begin in the upper left corner. Write down how your child is behaving when they are on their best behavior. You want to include what they are doing, how they are felling, and what they are saying. This is the top of the chart and is considered the highest rating, which is a 10.

Step two:
Move to the right of the line section. Here you want to make notes about your child's environment during these times. Where they are at, who they are with, if certain stressors are relieved, how adults interact with them, and any other clues to their good behavior. You are doing this to help spot the positive behaviors so that you can make changes to your child's environment to help encourage behavior that is more positive.

Step three:
In the lower left corner, you are going to write down the specific actions, words, and emotions that your child is expressing during the worst times. This can be any kind of behavior such as crying spells, temper tantrums, lying, aggression, or whatever behavior problem is concerning you the most.

Step four:
Move to the right of the line and fill in notes about your child's environment when these episodes occur.

Step five:
Look at how much time your child spends at 10 and how much time they spend at 1, you should realize that most of the time they are going to fall somewhere in between. The problem behavior usually starts to happen once they have gotten down to a 6; the best way to prevent this problem behavior is at 6 because it is the teachable moment. This is where you want to plan for good behavior and make changes to their environment so they do not spiral down to a 1.