Tips for handling challenging behaviour

Children with Sensory Processing Disorder may experience emotional and behavioral challenges because they find themselves overwhelmed and stressed out by their environments. Here are some tips to help make them feel accepted and understood.

Encourage rather than Praise. Praise is an attempt to motivate children with external rewards, and can actually be discouraging. Praise employs words which place value judgements on the child and focus on external evaluation. In a discouraged child, praise may result in a deterioration in behaviour because the child may not believe they are worthy of praise and so feel a need to prove how unworthy they are, or they fear they can never earn praise again, they wonder “what can I do for an encore? I’d better save face by not trying”.

Examples of praise: “Good boy/ girl!”, “You got an A! That’s great!”, “What a good job you did!”, “I’m so proud of you!”

Encouragement is given for effort or improvement, however slight. It attempts to motivate children through internal means. Encouragement teaches children to accept their own inadequacies, have confidence in themselves and to feel useful through contribution.

Try these encouraging phrases:

“I like the way you handled that”

“I’m glad you’re pleased with it”

“That’s a rough one, but I’m sure you’ll work it out”

“Thanks, I really appreciate ___________, because it makes my job much easier”

“It looks as if you spent a lot of time thinking that through”

“Since you’re not satisfied, what do you think you can do so that you will be pleased with it?” 

“It looks as if you enjoyed that”  

“You’ll make it!”  

“I have confidence in your judgement"

“Thanks, that helped a lot” 

"It was thoughtful of you to __________" 

“It looks as if you really worked hard on that” 

"Look at the progress you’ve made” (be specific, tell how)

Printable of encouraging phrases to try

     Use Limit Setting. Limits help a child feel secure in knowing what is expected of them. Use 3 ‘ingredients’ to setting a limit: Acknowledge the child’s feeling or want, State the rule or tell what needs to be done, and Give them an alternative. For example “I can tell you don’t want to leave now, but play time is over. You can hold my hand and walk out with me, or you can walk out on your own”.

   Use Reflective Listening. When listening to your child use ‘open’ comments where you reflect on how you think the child is feeling, such as “you felt lonely when no one played with you at break today”. This helps the child to feel understood and continue communication with you. Try not to ‘close’ the communication down by using comments such as “Don’t worry I’m sure it will work out ok”.

    Use I-messages. Rather than using You-messages which lay blame, such as “you never tidy your toys up, you’re so inconsiderate!”, use an I-message which conveys how your child’s behaviour made you feel, and why. For example “When you don’t tidy up your toys it makes me feel frustrated because there is no space for the family to walk”.

Taken in part from The Parent’s Handbook – Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) by Don Dinkmeyer and Gary McKay

Parent Training in STEP is offered at The Family Life Centre in Parkwood.