What child’s behaviours does your child exhibit? How often do you pay attention to your child’s behaviour?.. What are the behaviours in your children that you shouldn’t ignore?
Being a parent is awesome! Those who have children know that it takes a quality amount of time and effort to ensure that they grow up well behaved, educated, and adapted to life. It’s your duty as parents to ensure that your child grows healthy and in good shape both medically and psychologically. This can be done mostly by observing your child’s behaviour. It’s because if you see these behaviours, repeatedly, your child may be going through a lot of changes. But don’t worry, at the end of this article, I’m also going to share with you some tips about what you can do to help them.
What Are These Child’s Behaviour You Shouldn’t Ignore
Taking note of your child’s behaviour is as important as proper dieting, here are some signs and behaviours you should look out for in your child;
- Mental Stress
First, for you to know if your child is undergoing mental stress you need to understand what your child has been through in the last couple of months.
Okay, now let’s take a look at it from your child’s perspective. There are certain activities which could make your child stressed mentally, in some situations it could be family issues, personal interest or even lack of socialisation. It is necessary for you as a parent to take note of these activities that may be causing mental stress to your child and resolve it.
Let’s take a situation where a child is faced with the need to make friends and play with other children and he’s been deprived of this social need. Continuous deprivation could make such a child feel bad and watching other children play could keep your child in a state of mental stress. Now it is important for you as a parent to find ways to keep your child active by satisfying this social need which includes socialisation.
Research has also shown that children who experience violence and physical abuse at home suffer from a high level of mental stress and such child behaviour can be harmful to your child’s mental health.
Signs that Your Child Is Going Through Mental Stress
So what are these child behaviours that you should be watching out for to see whether your child is undergoing mental stress or not?
Some things you must look out for in your child to know if your child is going through stress are:
- Changes in sleep patterns: When your child’s bedtime comes you know if your child fears bedtime, doesn’t want to go to bed alone or wakes up with nightmares. Those are signs of stress.
- Changes in emotion: Suppose they become more clingy, or you know, increase temper tantrums or anger or sadness, you can see that something has changed them and then changes in appetite. Yeah, so they’re not eating enough. So these kinds of changes you should look out for.
- Regression: Now you know that your child is stressed if they start regressing. regressing means your child starts to display withdrawal behaviours. And you know, if they’ve already outgrown Bedwetting, and then suddenly they start bed-wetting again, or they may start to suck their thumb. Even, you know, children who undergo stress may start to talk like a baby and act like a baby, they might want you to pretend that they are a baby. So this means that they’re going through stress.
- Physical Ailments: This behaviour is a major sign you should look out for. Now they may develop stomach aches, coughs or even headaches. Watch out for these. Ailments in children may not be visible so it’s also important to give extra attention to your children so as to take note of these ailments. It is also necessary to take note of allergies your child may have things that may be a trigger to such allergies.
- Breathing Sound: the breathing sound of your child is very important, as a parent it is very necessary that you keep close attention to the breathing sounds of your child or children. This is because your child’s breathing determines if your child could be suffering from a respiratory illness such as pneumonia, lung infection or even being overweight. Most times, when a child is overweight fat tends to cluster in vital organs of the body including the lungs and heart and as such immediate medical attention is needed to solve such issues.
- Playing behaviour: This is a very important child behaviour which most parents pay less attention to. Psychologically, early playing behaviour is very important in controlling the aggressive behaviour of children that may manifest in adulthood. When a child plays roughly with friends and fights during play this is a sign that your child may be developing a level of aggression and this should be corrected by a little scolding, acts like pinching and scratching during play should be stopped by parents to their children to avoid becoming aggressive child behaviour when even when older.
- Toilet behaviour: Apart from the outdoor and physical behaviour of your children it is important for parents to also take note of the toilet behaviours of their children. Most times what your child does well in the bathroom has a lot to do with the health of your child. For example, if your child goes to the restroom frequently more than normal this could be a sign of a bad stomach infection or runny stomach as a result of diarrhoea, also when a child does not go to the restroom as frequent as normally needed, it is necessary to consult your child care specialist for help.
How To Know When Your Child Exhibits a Behaviour Change
At every stage of your child’s life, they may develop new habits like biting their nails, or eating a lot, when they used to never do that before. Now in addition to this, you may also notice that their concentration levels drop, and some children also start to withdraw, they suddenly become very quiet. Now, all that I mentioned, if you see them once in your child, they’re nothing to be worried about. It is when these behaviours are repeatedly happening, that you will need to pay more attention to their behaviour. Now, what should you do?
- The first thing I suggest is that you listen to your child. Now, we are always on the go. Parents are always doing things on the go, go, whether it’s housework, whether it’s any work, so stop and just listen to them. Listen attentively, they need that special time and attention, and you will know what is worrying them. Yeah.
- Give them more love, hugs and kisses and cuddles. That is very important for children, they will feel safer, and they will feel out, it is a good feeling for them.
- Speak to them very kindly, don’t order them around, speak to them as you would talk to your best friend.
- Play with your child. Yeah, you read it right…, play with them. Now play is very, very important for a child’s mental health. Children who do not play enough get even more anxious. They also have a lesser attention span and concentration. Play is highly therapeutic for you and your child. Now, through play, children express the feelings and emotions that they learn and make sense of the world around them.
Playing will help them relax, and will also help build their concentration level. Playing with your child will help you build a better relationship with them.
Now, many parents do not know how to play with their children.. How do you play with your child? You’re just so used to just being a parent So it’s very difficult for them to understand how to play with their child, if you are one of those parents, my advice is just to tell your child, “let’s play what you like to play”, and then let them take the lead and then you follow. Just follow your child’s lead. And just enjoy and have fun. That is the best way to play. And
- Do not give your child too many things to do. In order to keep children busy and out of the way, Many parents create a full schedule for their children, so there’s one thing to do after the other, do your homework. Now you have to eat, now you have to sleep, now you have done this like a non-stop schedule still awaits. These activities don’t let your child have a lot of free playtimes. Free Play has to be at least 90 minutes where you’re not interfering with them or telling them what to do. Yeah, they need that space as well.
- Now last but not least, avoid the media. Avoid media exposure at all costs. Avoid your children from watching certain types of media content that aren’t suitable for their age, make use of viewer age restrictions for violent content. To child your child’s behaviour it’s important to allow them to view children’s shows and child cartoons for learning.
- Give your child proper medical attention periodically
CONCLUSION
Parents, your child’s behaviour is so simple and easy to understand If you pay attention and you observe them. They tell you different things with body language, even when they’re playing, you will see things come up over there and you will really get to understand what’s worrying them. Now you are the rock and they look up to you. So with your attention and your love and the time that you spend with them. You will be able to do wonders for your children and help them be emotionally strong. So keep calm and take every note of your child’s behaviour.
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