How a missing sense of importance influences behavior
"Everyone is frustrated with Joey," his mother lamented. "He can hardly walk past another student in his class without hitting or disturbing them in some way."
Joey began life as a normal, loveable child who interacted normally with other children. However, shortly after entering Kindergarten, he began hitting and otherwise disturbing his classmates.
Actually, Joey's behavior is pretty common. In fact, most kids play out some variation on this theme as they grow up, if only for a short time.
So, let's look behind the scenes to see what influences such inappropriate activity.
First, everyone needs to feel significant. In fact, the idea of significance is part of all five basic human needs identified by psychologist, Abraham Maslow, and dominates the top three - Belonging, Esteem and Self-actualization. (Motivation and Personality, 1987)
Next, how a child works out his identity is unique to his personality and circumstances. In other words, each child will experiment with and then repeat behaviors that have 'worked' for him.
What a child sees as 'working' may result in either a negative or a positive response from other people. In either case, the fact that he has created a reaction in another person proves his significance in his eyes.
Not surprisingly, children do 'wrong' things, even though they know that they are inappropriate. In fact, as he sees it, the more reaction he generates with his 'wrong' doing, the more significance he achieves.
However, to simply recognize those realities is not enough. The goal is to do something with that knowledge that will benefit the child. Let's begin with some mutual understandings:
How you respond to such behaviors, is largely determined by what you 'see' going on inside the child in the first place.
Many underlying experiences chip away at a child's sense of significance, leading to inappropriate choices. These can range from what is seen on TV to insensitive correction.
Finally, such behaviors are used, even though the child already knows they are wrong or that he may be punished for them. That's how important significance is to most children.
In the next article, we'll look at what is happening inside the child's brain and how to help Joey achieve significance in appropriate ways.
