Understanding and supporting your child’s behaviour

As you follow your child’s journey in the app, you will find lots of activities, tips and information linked to supporting their behaviour. We thought it might be helpful to have a bit of an overview of the skills involved in ‘learning how to behave’.  

Social, emotional and cognitive skills and ‘learning how to behave’ 

The first thing to think about is what people mean when they talk about, ‘learning how to behave’. When you think about your own behaviour, you probably adapt your behaviour in different settings and with different people.  

You might behave differently at work, when out with friends or when visiting relatives, and you can ‘read the room’ and adapt in the moment to a situation. In these situations, you are using your social skills.  

You have learnt in familiar situations how people behave and what is considered acceptable or not. In new situations, you have the skills to recognise and respond to social cues and look at others to help you judge what is expected.  

You also have a sense of what is right and will usually be able to think about how to respond in a situation. You can control your response and regulate your emotions most of the time. Controlling your responses involves inhibitory control, which is one of our executive function skills.  

These skills involve the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain which continues to develop into adulthood. You also use cognitive skills to think through what is right or wrong in a situation. You understand your own beliefs and values, which inform this reasoning.  

Emotional self-regulation involves recognising and regulating your emotional responses. You might know you feel upset or angry about a situation, but you are able to regulate your emotional response which allows you to use your cognitive skills to think about how to respond.  

This is a simplified explanation, but you can see that ‘learning how to behave’ is not as simple as it sounds. So how do you help your child to develop these skills?  

Show them 

Babies are born ready to learn about the people around them. Your baby will be interested in people and will watch how people interact with each other, behave in different situations and respond to disappointment or conflict. This means your child learns a lot about behavioural expectations by watching the people around them, and as they develop their social skills you will notice they copy what they have seen and heard. So, think about what your baby or child sees, and behave towards them and other people in the way you would like them to behave.  

Co-regulate 

Co-regulation is important for young children and is something that can help us all at times. Developing the emotional and cognitive skills to regulate our emotions and control our responses takes time and practice. Your child will need lots of support to regulate their emotions before they can do this themselves, and this is something they will need at times beyond their first five years. 

Co-regulation is simply about regulating emotions with your child or ‘sharing your calm’. When your child is upset, angry, frustrated or really excited, they might need you to help them regulate. You will probably work out together the best way of doing this for your child. It might be that just being calm and close is all they need, or they might want a hug or to move. 

It can help to think about some of the ways you regulate your emotions and think whether they might help your child. Do you like going for a walk or run? Do you find a warm bath helps? Maybe you call a friend when you need support.  

Balance boundaries and choices 

Think about boundaries and choices. Young children are developing their cognitive skills and learning about situations which might be risky or dangerous. There will be situations where you need to have a clear boundary to ensure your child is safe. Explaining that clearly and simply will help your child to understand those boundaries. In some situations, they might be able to have some choice about what happens or, as their skills develop, they could be involved in agreeing boundaries.  

Other boundaries or rules might be linked to behavioural expectations in a situation or your own beliefs about what is right or wrong. Explaining these clearly and involving your child when you can will support them to think about these rules in the future. 

It might seem a long way in the future, but there will be times when your child needs to decide what is the right thing to do. Involving them in decisions and supporting them to make choices will help them to develop the skills to make these decisions.  

The executive function skills needed to control inhibitions develop more slowly than other skills and you might find your child does something and then is immediately upset or sorry. This shows they are beginning to understand the boundaries but are still developing the skills to control their response, which often takes a little longer.  

Be curious and solve problems 

Think about how you show curiosity about your child’s behaviour and how you support them to solve problems. As your child’s language and cognitive skills develop, they will be able to explain why they responded as they did or might begin to be able to tell you why they are upset or angry. This can be really helpful. Your child might be able to explain why a situation upset them or made them angry, and together you could agree a different approach.  

We often think about what is happening at the time when our child behaves in a way that feels difficult, but sometimes it helps to think about other things that are happening during their day. Have they just started a new school or nursery? Have you been busy and had less time to play? Have some of your routines changed recently? Have you felt more tired recently and perhaps a little less able to co-regulate with your child?  

Sometimes, there are other things happening that we cannot change but thinking about other aspects of their day might help you to think about how you support your child. It could be making sure you have a bit of time to rest will help or changing your routine to spend five or ten minutes each day with your child, doing something they enjoy.  

It might help to think about your child’s behaviour alongside what you know about their development. Your child will be developing many social and cognitive skills that will support them to regulate their emotions and control their responses but that takes time and practice. You will coach and guide them to think about their responses. Sometimes, thinking about the skills they are still developing can help you when you are supporting them with behaviour that feels difficult.  

Be aware of your emotions, take care of yourself and ask for help when you need it 

Finally, don’t forget you are human too, and just as your child needs support to regulate their emotions, you might need this too. We all find it more difficult to respond calmly when we are tired or stressed. We often experience a whole range of emotions that we are trying to regulate when we are supporting our children with their behaviour. So, remember if you need time to calm that is important too. If you respond in one way and afterwards wish you hadn’t, talk about that in an appropriate way with your child.  

Sometimes, someone else taking over for a while can help. You could have an agreed phrase you use with other adults that means, “Can you take over?” If both you and your child feel emotional it can be difficult to co-regulate. If there is another adult around who has not been involved, swapping places might calm the situation.