One Mindset Trick That Works When Toddlers and 2's Misbehave

Welcome to your place of support. We want to make things easier for you today. After all, if you spend a significant amount of time with young children, you are heavily involved in creating the architecture of their brains.

What job could be more important?

Or more difficult and confusing?

You deserve some help that's straightforward and clear.

Over five decades of teaching and studying very young children, I've developed some very helpful mindset tricks. Here's one that I'm happy to share today.

Humans are goal-oriented. When a child misbehaves, they might not be trying to be "bad" or trying to get you angry. They may be simply trying out new behaviors. Sometimes those behaviors help them reach their goals, and sometimes they miss, causing "misbehavior".

The goal of the adult is not to punish, but to teach.

For example, a young child tries to learn about the properties of dirt and how gravity works, so she makes a mess of a potted plant. Noticing her goal of learning, the adult could stop the child from making a mess using an "I" message and plan some sandbox time shortly. That 'I" message may sound like this:

I want you to stop taking dirt out of the plant. Do you want to start cleaning it up yourself or should we work together?

The goal of the adult is not to punish or blame, but to teach. Looking at our feelings when a child misbehaves can tell us a lot about how we should behave to correct the behavior. Here's a chart based on the work of Rudolph Dreikurs that's helped me in the past.

I hope this helps you in some small way. Thanks for caring!

Nanci J Bradley is an early childhood and family educator, author, teacher, family aerobics instructor, and an all-around fun-loving person. She believes in the power of sleep, healthy eating, lifelong learning, and most of all, PLAY!  She studied early childhood ed at Triton College and received her BS in education in 1986 from NIU. She received her MA in human development from Pacific Oaks College in 2011. She lives and teaches in Madison WI.