Fathers and mothers often complain about the childish tantrums. Also in the bad ways that adolescents sometimes have. They don’t understand them. They look at their sons and daughters and don’t even know who they are. However, the PhD in Clinical Psychology US Mona Delahooke has found the key to understanding these bad behaviors: the neurobiology.
In his new book, Neuroscience for parents How to interpret child behavior (Oberon, 2023), Mona Delahooke applies her neuroscientific knowledge to the education. Thus she manages to open a window to understand the tantrums and bad manners. What he comes to say is that all this is not, in itself, a problem.
Actually, it is a symptom of something that is happening on a neurophysiological level. In this way, it makes it easier to interpret and help correct the behavior of your children, to change their behaviors.
What is neuroscience
Mona Delahooke.
Neuroscience is a scientific discipline that studies the nervous system from all its aspects. The intention is understand how the nervous system works. Thus, emotions, behaviors, thoughts, and even basic bodily functions, such as breathing and heartbeat, are understood and can be regulated. With this, benefits are obtained, for example, in the control of anxiety or fears.
For Mona Delahooke, the term neuroscience “means that when we understand a child’s underlying physiology, it helps us know what to do to help a child develop resilience.” And that development will be key to her happiness and learning to manage her emotions from childhood.
For this reason, Dr. Delahooke decided to write her book “because I feel that most parents, and also child care providers, including pediatricians, They don’t understand how to support children’s emotional development and behavioral issues.”.
Self-regulation and self-care
Understanding how your children’s brains and bodies work helps you interact with them in a better way. But, in addition, when educating them there are two keys that must be worked on, according to the doctor: self-regulation and self-care.
On the one hand, self-regulation is essential for them to learn to manage their emotions, to know how to use and express it. To do this, the psychologist clarifies, “they need an adult to provide them with attunement, attention and co-regulation. So they can develop it themselves.”
Cover of ‘Neuroscience for parents’.
On the other hand, learning self-care from childhood is essential to reaching adulthood and knowing how to take care of yourself. “We will help them take care of themselves depending on how well we take care of them,” warns the doctor. Therefore, knowing their needs is key.
Neuroscience can help them Live your emotions and develop them. “We help them pay attention to the sensations and feelings in their bodies that, one day, can become an emotional experience,” explains the clinical psychologist, who recalls that the first year of life is key to our development.
“This is when the brain is most open to the wiring ‘instructions’ that happen through the relational and environmental experiences they have,” he stresses.
How to deal with a tantrum
Parents are terrified of their children’s tantrums. However, the truth is that they can help child development. The important thing is to understand where they come from, to help them manage them.
“We can think of tantrums as stress responses. Children do not create tantrums, they are passed through the children. This means that the tantrums are not intentional, they are a sign of the activation of the ‘fight or flight’ response of the sympathetic nervous system”, clarifies the expert.
Therefore, the way to deal with tantrums is to understand what is happening to them. It may be due to tiredness, hunger. Because they are very excited or because of emotional stress, because of frustrations or they can also be manipulative. But they all share something: they don’t know how to handle what is happening to them.
For this reason, more than punishing, it is time to understand and teach them. “We know that when a child is having trouble behaving, the behavior may be driven by immature self-regulation. In other words, it moves us away from simple punishment towards a more complete understanding of children’s behaviors,” says Delahooke.
Thus “you will be able to build a happier and more connected relationship with your children and a more harmonious family dynamic.”
Guidelines to help your children grow in harmony
We ask Dr. Mona Delahooke for recommendations to help improve how to educate sons and daughters. These are her suggestions:
Not practicing silence. If a child cries or feels bad, you have to “respond to his distress,” says Mona Delahooke. The worst thing that can be done to educate mentally healthy minors is to punish them with silence.
Meet your demands. In the same way, the doctor encourages them to “pay attention to her need for help”, since the feeling of helplessness is very harmful.
Don’t make them liars. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is the best way to help them not to lie. If you feel that you trust them, they will improve.
Remember that they are small. Bad behavior is usually caused by a child lacking the skills or ability to meet the demands of a situation.
practice self compassion. Very necessary because, as Delahooke recalls, “parenting is very difficult.”
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