Archive for the 'Behavior Problems' Category

Adolescents may have more in common with their smoking parents than previously thought, a new study conducted by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital finds.

These adolescents may also share a tendency to act impulsively, a trait that could be linked to a decision to become a smoker.

The study may help identify behavioral risk factors for adolescent smoking – risk factors that could increase some teens’ chance of addiction even before they pick up their first cigarette.

Brady Reynolds, PhD, the study’s lead author has focused much of his work on the connection between smoking and impulsivity, or more specifically, delay discounting.

Delay discounting describes a person’s preference for a smaller, more immediate reward over a larger reward that is delayed for a period of time. It also has been shown to play an important role in the behavior of cigarette smoking.

Reynolds’ recent manuscript found that cigarette smoking mothers chose the immediate reward (discounted) significantly more than nonsmoking mothers.

Similarly, children of mothers who smoked discounted significantly more than children of nonsmokers. These results parallel findings between adult addicted and non-addicted populations.

Read more at ScienceDaily

Your teenaged daughter has just answered you rudely, when all you did was ask her where she was off to, wearing the skimpy clothes.

You are trying your best to control your temper, because you do not want to make things worse than they are already, but you really don’t know what to do, and you wouldn’t mind a few tips to help you deal with this typically teenaged behavior.

Read on, you will find helpful hints on the behavioral problems of a teenager.

Adolescence, turbulence! Adolescence [Adolescence behavior] is a period of time in your child’s life when she goes through rapid changes, both physically and mentally, and she doesn’t understand them herself.

Furthermore, she has her newly developed ‘image’ to maintain with her peers, and this is also the time when her friends become more important to her than her family and you.

This is a part of separating and individualizing, crucial aspects of a teenager’s life, and it is your duty to stand by her, no matter what, even if you feel hurt and rejected and would like to do the same to him.

While parents often dream and fantasize about the personality, talent and characteristics of their children, they often build wonderful expectations for their children which is completely at odds with their natural traits.

This is most prevalent in children who have an introverted nature.

Because society tends to cater to the majority, who are extroverts, parents often get concerned when their child leans towards introversion. The truth is there’s nothing wrong with a child who is an introvert.

Because only 10-30 percent of the population starts out as introverted children, their self-image is often damaged because the other 70 percent of extroverts do not understand them.

Introversion is an ordinary behavioral feature characterized by an aversion to mingling with others, going to parties, new places, or getting involved in new things. In essence, it is a preoccupation with one’s self-thoughts and beliefs.

In general, introverted children stay away from lights, noise, motion and people. As a parent, it is your duty to learn more about the nature of introverted children and help them develop a good understanding of themselves and a positive sense of self.

The following characteristics will help you identify whether your child is introverted:

Moving from parenting a child to parenting a teenager can sometimes be a pretty scary adaptation, it often seems like the child has grown up suddenly overnight into a completely peculiar and hard-to-get-along-with entity.

Any parent will tell you that parenting teen girls today is an increasingly tough challenge and requires much patience, courage, determination, willingness and responsiveness.

While it is hardly surprising, teenage hood is a period of more developmental changes than any other stage. Together with physical, sexual, mental, behavioral and emotional developmental changes, comes confusion and uncertainty.

Teenage years for girls are an especially dangerous period. Risky behavior, drug/alcohol abuse, depression, pregnancy or suicide is more acceptable, and can result in devastating lifetime consequences.

So, strong guidance from parents is more essential than ever to help teen girls go through the hurdles and stressful experiences of life.

However, parents of teenage girls often face difficulty in recognizing their child’s new behaviors and changed attitudes. And the underlying reason is even worse than dangerous behavior: lack of communication, which is common among many parents who do not talk openly to their children about the risks they face.

If your child is spoiled, you are also included in spoiling your child.

As a parent, try to know where you are going wrong with which your child is spoiled.

Parents play an important role in raising the children with good manners.

For that, you need to spend time with children and teach them what is good and what is bad.

It is common that every parent enjoys their children and thinks that other people also enjoy your child, but some children are not bearable and enjoyable around and they are called spoiled children.

The parents indirectly create a spoiled child. Once if you start satisfying their whims and their demands, they will expect the same all the time. By this, the needs and wishes will increase day by day.

Being parents, it is your duty to fulfill their needs and wishes, but don’t make it as a habit for your children. If it becomes a habit, then the frequency of whims and requests will grow and they expect more from you.

At any point, if you are unable to give them what they need, then these requests will convert into demand. They even start to threaten you if they do not get what they want.

Adolescent [Adolescent behavior] girls who go through puberty early and have parents who do not nurture them, communicate with them or have knowledge of their activities appear more likely to display aggressive behavior, according to a report.

Early puberty in girls is related to conduct problems, delinquency and substance use.

Many of these problems persist through adolescence and into early adulthood.

“As adults, early-maturing girls demonstrate lower academic and occupational achievement and report lower relationship quality and life satisfaction.

It is thus important to identify protective factors that may mitigate negative effects of early maturation on girls’ adjustment.

Sylvie Mrug, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues interviewed 330 fifth-grade girls (average age 11) and their parents from three metropolitan areas.

The girls reported how often they engaged in aggressive behavior, such as hitting, teasing and spreading rumors to hurt others; whether they displayed delinquency (fighting at school, getting injured in a fight or inflicting injuries); how often their mother was affectionate and how often they did things together; whether their parents had talked to them about violence, tobacco and sex; and whether and when they had started their periods.

If your child is aggressive, he tends to pinch others. It senses like a shock when a baby pinches.

Did you ever try to know the reason why your baby pinched you?

Actually, when your baby reaches the milestone of 6-9 months, she/he becomes stronger and can able to manage the body.

The baby can bite [toddler biting], pinch, tug, grab, and reach, but the baby is not so aggressive that she/he feels to hurt others.

When the baby reaches the milestone of 9-12 months, the baby will have angry feelings that can change from time to time.

During this period, they can show their real anger. It is true that when the children are discouraged, they behave inappropriately.

For example, when the parents ignore them from other activities, they become aggressive because they believe that you are paying attention to something or someone else and they need immediate attention towards them.

When you still say the children to go away, then this aggressive behavior worsens, but if you pay attention the result will be completely different.

Also, when you grab anything from them or if they do not get anything, which they would like to have, then you can see the real anger in their faces.

Aggression in toddlers is normal and healthy. However, some toddlers are so aggressive that they often become angry and bites, hits, kicks, punches, pulls the hair, pinches, etc without any obvious reason.

Toddlers who are very aggressive-likes need special concentration and consideration.

Every parent knows about his or her kids and the times when they become aggressive.

The toddlers try to become independent and they become aggressive because they have immature impulse control.

Some amount of hitting and biting of toddlers is natural, so there is nothing to worry for the parents if their toddlers are aggressive.

Toddlers usually do not know that they are hurting you with hitting and biting and they do not know their strength. Even though this behavior is normal, parents should limit the aggressive behavior in toddlers.

How to prevent aggressive behavior in toddlers?

When your kid is showing aggressive behavior, first you have to stay calm. Take your child out from that aggressive situation and make your kid comfortable for sometime, then you just talk to your kid and explain about the way he/she did and how much it hurts. You should also tell the aggressive kid about what he/she did and that the behavior is not appropriate.

Handling the kids is one of the biggest tasks for parents. In that, if your kid is stubborn, then it is the most challenging task.

They will definitely do the thing if they decided to do regardless of your threatening them.

For example, a kid locks himself in a room where he needs to take an injection from the doctor.

Some kids show more stubborn behavior than other kids. Of course, every kid will exhibit the stubborn behavior one day or the other.

Here, the spontaneous reaction for every parent is anger.

This stubborn behavior in kids is thought to be a negative feature by the parents.

If you, as a parent, change your thought and take it in a positive way, then you can see that stubbornness is the manner of demonstrating that your kid can think himself and can declare his thoughts and beliefs.

Nonetheless, the stubbornness will vary from unreasonable fears to resistance to alter or just a simple attack of revolution.

Tips to manage stubborn kid

The most important thing is to identify the problem and seek a solution by involving your kid. By doing like this, your kid will not treat you as an enemy.

The way mothers interact with their babies in the first year of life is strongly related to how children behave later on.

According to Benjamin Lahey and his team from the University of Chicago in the US, both a mother’s parenting style and an infant’s temperament reliably predict challenging behavior in later childhood.

The researchers looked at whether an infant’s temperament and his mother’s parenting skills during the first year of life might predict behavioral problems, in just over 1,800 children aged 4-13 years.

Measures of infant temperament included activity levels, how fearful, predictable and fussy the babies were, as well as whether they had a generally happy disposition.

The researchers looked at how much mothers stimulated their baby intellectually, how responsive they were to the child’s demands, and the use of spanking or physical restraint.

Child conduct problems in later childhood included cheating, telling lies, trouble getting on with teachers, being disobedient at home and/or at school, bullying and showing no remorse after misbehaving.

More information at News Medical