Is Ignoring Bad Behaviour the Best Way? Tips from a Speech Therapist

Hey, guys, this is Ming from agentsofspeech.com and today we want to talk about whether ignoring bad behavior is the best way to go. Okay? So I know a lot of therapists, like nearly every therapist that, you know, I've heard of, of, you know, interacting with before, and me included, we would say that, hey, ignore your child when bad behavior happens, okay? And I don't want to take, you know, other therapists, like, advice out of context. I just want to, like, supplement you and make you understand why we're asking you to do that. Okay? So ignoring works wonders when your child's bad behavior is to get your attention. When they have a bad behavior, they're like, they're throwing a tantrum and you give them attention. You're giving them what they want, right? So therefore, in their minds and the little brains, they will think, ah, it's working. I'm going to scream and shout more so that I get more love. If that's the reason why, then ignoring works a lot. But you wouldn't know if your child's tantrum is related to attention seeking if you don't ignore. Why we ask you to ignore is to remove one of the variables to see if, okay, if I ignore, what's going to happen? Does it continue or does it stop or does it increase? If it increases, it still might be that they're seeing for your attention because they're escalating your behavior. Just like, you know when you're going to an elevator and you want it to come faster than and you just press on it faster even if you know that it won't work, right? It's just human nature to try. So therefore your child's gonna do the same when you ignore them. They're gonna, like, they're gonna escalate their tantrum and see if it works or not. Obviously. To continue and make the experiment as best as possible, keep on ignoring even if it escalates. If you escalate and then you give attention, what that means is that he learns a new thing. I need to get to a level 10 just to get my mom's attention or my dad's attention, which is bad. Okay, so keep on ignoring. If that's the case, the tantrum stops, then great. And ignoring is good, right? If it continues, then what you can do is to think about, okay, maybe is not to get my attention. What is it that he wants from me or what is it that he doesn't want from me? Okay, it might be that you are ignore, like annoying him with something or something is annoying him and he wants you to get rid of it. And the most frequent scenario is that he wants something or she wants something really badly. Might be an iPad, might be the TV remote, might be like food or snacks or whatever. He's screaming on top of his lungs to get what he wants, right? So in that case, why we tell you to ignore is actually misunderstood. We don't actually tell you to ignore. We tell you to reduce the level of input, language input. Reduce the amount of questions asked, reduce the amount of tension you give them so that you can free yourself out to observe. Okay? When you observe that he wants something, this is when you can teach them to use some gestures, use some sounds and words to get what he wants. Because, you know, saying words or using gestures is actually easier than throwing a tantrum. So, you know, if you teach them that, it will be much easier. And you might say, dude, this is. This might be too hard for me. And I don't know how to do that. When they're throwing a tantrum, I can't think. And that's cool. Ignore them for a bit. If they come to you, don't let them hug you or whatever or anything. Keep it as neutral as you can so that I can observe what he wants. Okay? And after that, give them what they want. Like once, you know, give them what they want little by little, and then increase the demand for them until they talk. And which we've talked about this before, right? So giving them a replacement of the tantrum works. Okay, but what if they're out of pure frustration? Then you have to find that point of frustration and remove it. Okay? So it might be noises from a certain, like a vacuum cleaner, like a air purifier and all that. You know, some parents would love to, like, say, oh, they hate it. So I'm going to try my best to like, neutralize their fear by showing them that it's okay. No, turn it off. Turn it off first and then slowly, like from the video from last week that we talked about. Face masks. Introduce it slowly to them so that they reduce the fear to the lowest that they feel safe. So should you ignore or not? My stances. Removing that excessive, you know, like screaming, shouting, removing, scolding, removing question and asking or comments, just don't help. Should be done. You shouldn't do that. You should keep as neutral as you can. And the reason is, no matter what you say or do at that time, it won't serve their purpose if they're not attention seeking. Okay? No amount of what do you want or like just say whatever that kind of requesting or like commenting or asking questions won't work. Provide an alternative instead of them throwing a fit, you do it more often. You do it more and more and more like that. They understand that they're safe with you. You will take care of the needs. You will remove anything that frustrates them. You know, they know that when they're calm or whatever, they get more rewards, get more attention from you and therefore it will become a better place at home. Okay. Hopefully you understand why therapists tell you to ignore most more often than not is to reduce the variables, reduce the sounds, reduce all the comments, questions or whatever and for you to silently and neutrally observe what's going on. Okay, so that's it for this video. And if you haven't, you should go check out our checklist of all tools and toys we Recommend. So it's ww.agents of speech.com checklist. Go there, download it and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.