Weird Parenting Trick For “Bad” Behavior

I’ve got a little secret to share with you today that will help you have the best-behaved child on the block.

And — like many of my very favorite parenting “tricks” — it works by basically doing the opposite of what many other people recommend!

Ok, suppose your child has a habit of misbehaving at restaurants. Instead of sitting politely and eating like a civilized person, she flops around in her seat, climbs under the table, throws food around, and so on.

If you’ve eaten out lately, you’ll know this is a pretty common situation.

In fact, I used to have this problem with my middle son.

At first, I did what everyone else does…

We’d go to a restaurant, he’d misbehave, and I’d say things like “If you don’t sit up straight, you’ll go outside for a time out!”

He’d crawl under the table, and then I’d be forced to either:

a) ignore him

b) threaten him with something else (like “no dessert”)

c) drag him (and my 2 other kids) outside for a 5 minute time out.

The first two are “bad parenting.”

The last one is a huge pain in the butt.

So what’s the better way?

Here’s what I came up with:

The next time I went out for dinner, I decided to ONLY comment on my child’s GOOD behavior.

When he climbed under the table, I completely ignored him.

When he stood up on his chair, I completely ignored him.

He was kind of weirded out by this. My husband and I carried on a normal conversation with each other and our other two children, but basically pretended like our middle son was invisible.

I still remember… We were talking about what everyone did at school that day, and he finally sat down and said, “Oh, I had something funny happen at school today!”

In an VERY exaggerated way, I said to him:

“You DID? That’s GREAT! Can you please tell us all about it?”

He told us the funny thing (something about his friend’s dolphin puppet), and then I told him:

“Wow, that’s REALLY funny! I love how you were taking part in the conversation with us! I love it when you sit nicely and tell us about things like that!”

Now, he promptly started playing with his food and making a bit of a mess, but — sticking to my guns — I ignored him.

When he stopped fooling around and asked if his brother could pass him the ketchup, my husband made another ridiculously big deal:

“Oh, I LOVED the way you asked him SO politely to pass the ketchup! That’s really great! What a POLITE guy you’re turning into!”

We kept this up. At the kitchen table or out at restaurants, we would all reinforce his good behavior — and ignore the bad.

Pretty soon, he was a little angel at the dinner table no matter where we were eating. A dramatic transformation indeed!

Give this a try with a behavior you’d like to change in your child. Completely ignore the “bad” — and go overboard with praise on the “good.”

And if you’re looking for a more detailed, step-by-step guide to dealing with common behavior problems in kids ages 2 – 12, head over to Kids: The Manual. For the next couple of days, there’s a really great offer being made available! Click here to check it out!