subject: My Child Has Compensatory Behavior - What Parents Should Know [print this page] As a parent, raising your kid is both a fulfilling yet stressful task. Sure we do have lots of benefits from being mums and dads but there are also the down sides that come along with being a parent. Having kids is one thing, but having kids with bad, abusive or inappropriate behavior is a whole other story. You might have experienced the occasional shouting war, or getting blamed at for things, or even just feel like you are their most wanted public enemy. There's just too much problems when you have difficult kids.
The facts are that a lot of unrelenting disputes between parents and their children have turned many homes into veritable combat zones. Parents sometimes order their children to clean their rooms, do their homework, or be in bed by a certain hour. But chances are, most children with behavioral problems or learning problems would seethe with resentment or, worse yet, would openly defy their parents! Defiance is one of the rational yet illogical excuses most parents make mistakes about when their child display bad, abusive or inappropriate behavior. But taking a closer look, children with behavioral problems or learning problems more often than not unconsciously exhibit a thing called compensatory behavior.
Kids experience lots of things in their childhood. They have lots of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. They react in different ways to different situations. But parents often only see the bad behavior that their children exhibit.
When children are experiencing difficulty or anxiety they tend to find outlets or physically manifest methods of venting out their reactions to these conditions and situations. This is where compensatory behavior in children comes into the fore. Children who get anxious and disturbed because of difficult situations react in ways that they think would compensate for the uneasy feelings they experience. Children develop and cultivate these reactions in order to compensate for these feelings and perceptions of difficulty, anxiety or uneasiness. Thus, we may call it compensatory behavior in children.
For example, when a kid is nervous or anxious about a certain activity what he might do is start running around the living room or jumping on the furniture in order to compensate those feelings of unrest. But to the parents' point of view, this behavior might come out as defiance. What most parents don't realize or notice instantly is that they tend to see the behavior of these children as immediately defiant. This puts the children in a disadvantageous situation, bringing out more stress and uneasiness which in turn begets more inappropriate responses in the eyes of the parent.
Parents need to be more open-minded in these situations. You, as a parent, should think first that maybe your child is just doing this because he/she wants to compensate the feelings of anxiety or unrest. You shouldn't immediately look at them as bad behavior. Children don't know how to handle these feelings properly so they just compensate for these feelings of anxiety or fear.
by: Katherine Thompson
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