Child Psychology

Have you ever seen a child behave in manner that you did not understand? Did you ask yourself why that child behaved in that particular way? I asked myself these two questions when my two year old nephew started behaving in an unusual manner. Recently, my nephew has adopted the behavior of spitting to people whenever they come to his house. He does not spit to any of the family members but he does spit to the friends of the family. His grandparents were very concern and embarrass with the new behavior of their grandson and they did not want anyone to think that the child had learned this behavior in their home.

I asked my aunt and uncle if they had notice when the behavior started and they said that it begun when his grandfather started the tutoring classes in the house. My causing thought that the child was miss behaving and that people were going to think that we had the rudest two year old in our family. I on the other hand, thought that my nephew’s behavior was just his way of expressing discontentment. Before he started spitting, he had the attention of all the household members and specially the grandfather’s attention. When he no longer had the attention, he begun spitting other people and in this way he expressed to the adults that he was not a happy camper and that he did not like to be ignored. We started correcting the bad behavior of my nephew by praising him when he would not spit and by ignoring his behavior of spitting when he would do it. We have to understand that children will adopt all source of behaviors in order to get attention; therefore, we need to learn how to lovingly modify and correct the bad habits in our children.