Why Does My Child Behave This Way?
If you’ve ever searched child behavior at 3 a.m. because you are exhausted, frustrated, and wondering “Why is my child acting like this?” Yyou’re not alone. For example, your child may not get dressed, argue about everything, melt down over small things, or refuse to listen. And when the same things keep happening, it is easy to become focused on stopping the behavior. But parenting isn’t an input-output formula. Indeed, it is a relationship.
What we believe about our child affects what we feel and how we respond; and consequently, what happens between us.
Child Behavior Is Only the Beginning
However, imagine your child refuses to get dressed for school.
As a result, you ask again.
They refuse again.
Consequently, you remind them you’re going to be late.
They still don’t move.
Perhaps one might think:
- She’s doing this on purpose.
- He knows he has to get dressed.
- Why does everything have to be so hard?
- If I let this go, it will only get worse.
- My child needs to learn to listen.
Those thoughts are not the behavior itself.
They are your interpretation of the behavior.
And that interpretation matters.
Because if you believe your child is being intentionally difficult, you are likely to feel very different than if you are thinking:
- Transitions are hard for her.
- Something about getting dressed has become a sticking point.
- He’s overwhelmed.
- We’re caught in a pattern here.
The child hasn’t necessarily changed.
But your experience of the child has.
And that changes the interaction.
The relational chain looks something like this:
Something happens.
↓
You interpret what is happening.
↓
That interpretation creates an emotional response.
↓
Your emotional response shapes how you respond to your child.
↓
You move toward managing and controlling—or reflecting and supporting.
↓
Your child has an experience of themselves, you, and the relationship.
This is why I don’t believe parenting can be reduced to finding the right consequence, script, or parenting technique.
There is always a relationship happening underneath the behavior.
Read more about what’s underneath behavior here, and here.
How Your Child’s Behavior Can Trigger You
Children don’t have to do something objectively terrible to bring up a very big reaction in us.
Sometimes their behavior touches something much older.
Maybe your child is highly anxious, and their anxiety brings up your fear that they won’t be able to handle life.
Maybe your child is refusing to cooperate, and you immediately feel disrespected.
Maybe your child’s sensitivity reminds you of something you learned to dislike or reject in yourself.
Or maybe watching your child struggle is simply unbearable because you desperately want to protect them from discomfort.
In my work with parents, I often see five things underneath particularly strong reactions:
- Something from the parent’s own childhood
- Fear about what the behavior says about the child
- Fear about what the behavior says about the parent
- Fear that the behavior will get worse
- Difficulty tolerating the child’s struggle or discomfort
None of this makes a parent bad.
In fact, most parents I work with are trying incredibly hard to do right by their children.
But sometimes trying harder isn’t what is needed.
Sometimes we need to understand what is happening inside of us.
Child Behavior and the Difference Between Reactionary and Reflective Parenting
I use the word reactionary intentionally.
Reactionary parenting isn’t only yelling, harshness, or punishment.
It is responding primarily from the immediate emotional reaction rather than having enough space to think about what is actually happening.
The child does something.
You decide what it means.
You feel something.
You react.
And when we’re in that state, the goal can quietly become:
Make this stop.
We might threaten.
Punish.
Lecture.
Rescue.
Give consequences.
Or minimize what happened because we don’t want to deal with it.
Reflective parenting creates more space between what your child does and what you do next.
It asks:
What is actually happening here?
You might look at your child:
- What might they be experiencing?
- What skill might be missing?
- What happened right before this?
- What might they be trying to communicate?
You might look at yourself:
- What am I feeling?
- What is this bringing up in me?
- What am I afraid will happen?
- What story am I telling myself about my child?
- What story am I telling myself about myself as a parent?
And you might look at the relationship:
- What is happening between us?
- Have we gotten stuck in a pattern?
- Are most of our interactions directing, correcting, and reminding?
- Am I trying to connect with my child—or control the outcome?
Importantly, reflective parenting doesn’t mean you never get angry.
It doesn’t mean you calmly respond to every situation.
It means you have enough awareness to think about the pattern rather than simply react to the moment.
Reflecting on Child Behavior Can Change What You Do Next
Reflection doesn’t only happen after something goes wrong.
Sometimes the most useful reflection happens beforehand.
Maybe every morning ends with a battle over getting dressed.
Instead of thinking:
Tomorrow I need to find a better consequence.
You might think:
What is happening on my side? What is happening on hers? What part of this pattern belongs to each of us? What could I do differently tomorrow?
Maybe you realize that you start directing the moment your child comes downstairs.
Maybe your child struggles with transitions.
Maybe both of you are already dysregulated by the time you begin talking.
Now you have something to work with.
You aren’t simply trying harder to make your child cooperate.
You’re understanding the pattern and planning differently.
That is one of the reasons reflective parenting is often more proactive than reactive parenting.
You are looking at what happens before the behavior, your own contribution to the interaction, your child’s developmental needs, and what you want the relationship to look like.
(I want to make one small note here that reflective parenting is not about getting it “right” or “perfect.” Read more about the misconceptions of perfectionism in parenting here).
Supporting Child Behavior Is Different From Managing It
This is closely related to something I wrote about last month: the difference between helping and managing.
But there is an important distinction I want to make here.
Last month, we looked more closely at what happens when a parent takes too much responsibility for a child’s problem.
This month, I’m interested in why we feel compelled to take over in the first place.
Managing means becoming very tied to the outcome:
- You need the homework completed.
- You need your child to stop being anxious.
- You need the sibling conflict resolved.
- You need your child to succeed.
- You need everyone to behave.
And because you are attached to the outcome, you may begin monitoring, reminding, rescuing, negotiating, or intervening more and more.
Supporting is different.
Supporting means the child owns the problem while the parent remains present:
- You provide the container.
- You provide the structure.
- You provide boundaries.
- You provide emotional safety.
But you don’t automatically take over.
You might say:
“I know this is hard. I’m here.”
Or:
“You don’t have to like this, but you do have to keep your hands to yourself.”
Or:
“I’m not going to do that for you, but I’ll stay nearby while you figure it out.”
Sometimes supporting requires more parenting, not less.
You have to tolerate watching your child struggle.
You have to tolerate uncertainty.
And you have to let go of an outcome you desperately want.
Because the goal isn’t simply to get your child through the problem.
It is also to give them opportunities to discover:
I can handle hard things.
I can figure things out.
My parent will be there without taking over.
Child Behavior Can Be Addressed Without Shame
Understanding your child’s behavior does not mean excusing it.
This is one of the places parents sometimes worry that curiosity will turn into permissiveness.
It doesn’t have to.
Accountability can begin very simply.
Think of yourself as a sports caster for a moment.
Instead of:
“Why would you do that? How many times have I told you?”
you might say:
“You grabbed the toy out of his hand.”
“He was playing with it, and now he’s crying.”
You’re describing what happened.
You’re not calling your child selfish.
You’re not telling them they’re bad.
You’re not immediately demanding an explanation.
You’re helping them see what happened.
Then, when everyone is calm, you can get curious:
- What was happening right before that?
- What were you thinking?
- What were you feeling?
- What did you want to happen?
- What could you do differently next time?
Sometimes what you discover underneath the behavior is very different from what you assumed.
Maybe your child wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
Maybe they were frustrated.
Maybe they didn’t know how to get a turn.
Maybe they lost control of an impulse.
Now you have something you can actually teach.
And there is another important piece of accountability:
The parent can be accountable, too.
Maybe you yelled.
Maybe you threatened.
Maybe your frustration added fuel to the fire.
You can say:
“I was really frustrated and I yelled. That didn’t help. I’m sorry.”
That doesn’t undermine your authority.
Instead, it models what you’re asking your child to learn:
We can look honestly at what happened, take responsibility for our part, and make it better.
This is called repair and in this blog I talked about what it is and why it’s so important.
What Children Learn When We Support Instead of Control
Over time, these everyday interactions teach children more than whether they followed a direction.
They teach children something about who they are.
When a parent continually manages a child’s problems, the child may begin to experience:
- I can’t handle this.
- Someone else needs to fix things.
- Mistakes are dangerous.
- My parent needs to make sure everything works out.
But when a parent supports without taking over, the message can become:
- You have more inside of you than you think.
- You can make mistakes and still be a good person.
- You can experience difficult emotions without being controlled by them.
- You are responsible for your part.
- I trust you to grow.
And perhaps most importantly:
You know yourself.
That matters.
I want children to develop such a strong sense of themselves that they can listen to other people’s perspectives without automatically allowing those people to define who they are.
That begins with having a relationship in which they are known, understood, held accountable, and trusted.
Research on child development consistently emphasizes the importance of responsive relationships between children and caring adults. These back-and-forth interactions are part of the developmental environment in which children grow. This process is called “serve and return” and it is hugely important for brain development. Read more about it here.
You Don’t Have to Get Child Behavior Right Every Time
Reflective parenting does not mean you will always catch yourself before you react.
You won’t.
There will be mornings when you yell.
There will be moments when your child’s behavior hits exactly the wrong nerve.
There will be times when you respond from frustration, fear, or exhaustion.
What matters is what happens next.
When everyone is calm, you can repair.
You can say:
“I was really frustrated and I yelled. I wish I had handled that differently.”
Then you can listen.
You can understand.
You can talk about what happened.
You can figure out what each of you might do differently next time.
Repair is not evidence that you failed at gentle or positive parenting. Repair is part of positive parenting.
The goal isn’t to become a parent who never loses their temper.
The goal is to create a relationship where difficult moments can be understood, repaired, and learned from.
A Different Way to Think About Child Behavior
When you find yourself asking:
“How do I get my child to stop doing this?”
Try creating a little space and asking:
“What is happening here?”
Then ask yourself:
1. What’s happening?
What am I actually observing, without adding my interpretation yet?
2. What’s underneath the behavior?
What might my child be experiencing, needing, or struggling with?
3. What is this bringing up in me?
What am I feeling? What am I afraid of? What beliefs or experiences might be shaping my response?
4. Whose problem is this?
What belongs to my child? What belongs to me? Where am I supporting—and where might I be taking over?
5. What do I want my child to learn?
Not just, How do I make this stop? but What do I want my child to understand about themselves, other people, responsibility, and their ability to handle hard things?
These questions won’t make parenting easy.
But they can change the question you’re asking.
And sometimes changing the question changes the relationship.
Because parenting isn’t an input-output formula.
It is a relationship.
Your child doesn’t need you to control every outcome.
They need a parent who can provide the container and the structure while still believing:
You have more inside of you than I can give you.
And I will be here without taking over.
