Hi, Dana here. What to do when your child misbehaves in public? That’s a common question I get asked and one that is very near and dear to my heart.

And let me tell you why, because what I see when I’m out in public is that most people are doing nothing when their child misbehaves in public. And I get it because they don’t know what to do, and it is embarrassing. I can remember I felt like crawling under the dinner table when I was out with my kids and they were misbehaving in a restaurant. You know, I understand it’s attracting a lot of attention and it feels awkward and uncomfortable but doing nothing actually just makes a problem worse. It makes people around you uncomfortable because you’re not responding to this child’s behavior, and it also teaches your child that rules don’t really apply when we’re out, right? I don’t have to behave when I’m out because nothing happens.

So lemme give you a few tips on how to handle it, because I understand and I was there and I know how you’re feeling. But the first thing I always do when a child is misbehaving in public, and it depends, what is the misbehavior? You know, we need to analyze that too. Are they acting out aggressively to other children? And if that’s the case, then what could have led up to that? I always like to kind of look at like what set the stage for this behavior. And there’s a couple of things that usually provoke that kind of aggressive behavior and one would be over tiredness.

So if your child is not on a good sleep schedule, not getting enough nighttime or daytime sleep, then that is the problem that you need to fix and urgently. The second thing would be hunger. Hunger tends to send a lot of children into aggression. So when was the last time they had a snack? Could too much of time pass by before they got some sort of food? And the third thing is, is it an attention getting strategy? So are you spending enough quality time with your child one-to-one?

And enough, it’s not a lot. You know, I know everyone’s got a busy life and it’s really tough to squeeze in quality one-on-one time with our kids. But even half an hour a day is helpful, and it can really alleviate a lot of this attention seeking behavior that comes negatively, you know, in this sort of situation. So look at the precursors. What set the stage for the behavior and can you curb it, so these kind of things, these outbursts happen a little bit less? That can be helpful.

Prevention is always better than trying to manage the situation after the fact. But let’s say, you know, you missed the window or whatever happened and your children’s misbehaving, you know, in the grocery store or pitching a fit, you know, in the aisle or acting out in the restaurant. Give a warning, right? It’s not okay to behave this way. I’m gonna ask you to stop crying, stop whining, stop yelling and see how your child responds. If you’ve used this approach before the warning, the one warning, it works pretty well. It certainly starts to work the more you use it. So start now giving the one warning, only one, only one, and give them a, you know, give them a minute or two to see if they’re gonna pull themselves together, if they can regulate and, you know, curb the behavior, they will within that minute or two.

But if they don’t, maybe they’ve gone too far the tantrums and fall out tantrum, it’s very hard for a child to grab control within a couple of minutes if they’re in a full-blown, you know, tantrum. And so after the warning, then we move to a consequence. And my favorite consequence is removal. You know, just flat out we’re leaving. Yeah, I’ve left my groceries cart right in the aisle before and left. I’ve left the playground, I’ve left the restaurant, I’ve left the birthday party, and I get it, that’s not fun. I don’t want to, you know, leave the groceries, leave the party, leave my dinner, but I have to do it to show my child that that sort of behavior is not appropriate and that there will be a consequence to it.

Now, here’s a little kind of softer road for you. You don’t have to leave forever, just leave for a few minutes. So if your child’s misbehaving in the restaurant, you know, throwing food, standing up, yelling after the warning, we take them to the car and they sit in the car for a couple of minutes as a timeout. And once those minutes are over, then we go back and we try again. And now, you know, we’ve kind of done a reset on it. And we’re gonna go back and see if you can have better behavior as we walk back into the situation. I like to do it based on how old the child is.

So if we’re talking about a four year old, I’m gonna give him four minutes in the car to see if we can do a reset and go in and try again. When the minutes are over, you don’t need to go over it a hundred times, you don’t need to scold him any further or get crossed. You’ve already consequenced the behavior. It’s time for a reset. Let’s go in and try again. And having a conversation about what you do expect when you go into a situation is also helpful at the beginning and after the timeout. So if we were in the car with our kids about to go into a restaurant, I would say, in the parking lot, let’s review the rules for good behavior, good restaurant behavior. Keep your voices quiet. Say please and thanks. Sit in your chair, eat your dinner. Those are the rules for eating out.

So I wanna make sure that I’m reinforcing what I expect to occur, what I want to occur in the event and then see how my kids do with that. After the timeout, I would also just really calmly say, we’re gonna go back in, you’re gonna have calm behavior, you’re gonna say your please and thank yous, you’re gonna sit in your chair, whatever it is that you’d like to see your child do when you go back into the situation. But that’s, you know, those are my best tips for dealing with that kind of outbursts in public.

Again, it’s never fun, but the more you do this and this is true with everything parenting, the more you do it and the more consistently you do it, your child begins to understand what the expectations are. And so this does get easier and easier as you continue through. So you’ll get to a place where you really only have to give your warning and the course correct and the child corrects the behavior. You don’t have to keep going.

You know, at first, it’s hard work, and you’re gonna have to go out to the car a lot of times but it does get easier that I can assure you of and promise you. If you’re consistent, it gets easier.

Thanks so much for watching today. Sleep well.