Teach your child to think before acting

How do you teach a child to think before acting? Working on impulse control. Lack of impulse control is often the root of many behavior problems. An impulsive 6-year-old may hit or hit when he doesn’t get his way, but an impulsive 16-year-old may share inappropriate content on social media without thinking about the consequences or bullying other peers without thinking about it. wrong you are doing.

Without proper education, impulsive behaviors can get worse over time. The good news is that you can teach your kids impulse control techniques. These techniques will not only help you improve your behavior, but they will also serve you for a lifetime. The more impulse control your child has, the less likely they are to engage in unacceptable behaviors.

LABEL EMOTIONS

Children who do not understand their emotions are more likely to have impulsive behaviors. A child who cannot say that he is angry may push to show that he is upset. A child who cannot verbalize that he is sad will drop to the ground and scream to show you in some way how he feels.

It is necessary that you teach your children to recognize their feelings so that they know how to identify them, name them and thus understand what exactly happens to them. It begins by teaching the most basic and important emotions such as: joy, anger, sadness or fear. Then talk about the differences between feelings and behavior. It is important that you make sure that he knows that it is okay to feel angry but it is not okay to misbehave about it, because it is not justifiable. When you can talk about your emotions, you will behave better.

TELL YOUR CHILD TO REPEAT THE INSTRUCTIONS

Sometimes children behave impulsively because they do not listen to instructions, so before you finish talking with your child, ask him to repeat what you have said. In this way you will be teaching him to listen to instructions, you can do it by asking things like: ‘what did I just tell you to do?’ When your child can repeat what you said, then let him act freely.

TEACH CONFLICT RESOLUTION SKILLS

Conflict resolution and learning to solve problems can be a very effective control technique. Teach your child that there are many ways to solve a problem and that several potential solutions need to be evaluated before taking action.

For example, if your child wants to fix a math problem or fix a toy, teach him to think of 4 or 5 solutions and then choose the one that may be the most correct in each case. To do this, after identifying possible solutions, help your child assess which solution is most likely to be effective.  With practice, you can get used to thinking before you act.

ANGER CONTROL

Teaching anger management skills is critical to impulse control. Low tolerance for frustration can cause impulsive outbursts. Teach your child how to handle his anger so that he can handle his emotions in a healthy way.

To do this, teach him specific strategies such as deep breathing or going for a walk before doing or saying something. Teach him that sometimes giving ourselves time to think and reflect is necessary before acting.

RULES AT HOME

Children need norms and rules to know what is expected of them at all times. For this reason, you will have to create clear rules at home and explain why these rules exist so that they understand. They should also know that their compliance or non-compliance will have positive consequences in the first case and negative in the second case. In this way they will have some control of the situation and they will decide whether or not to comply with those rules.