1 of 103

Parents

Write now Article Tools

All children behave badly on occasion, and when a generally well behaved child commits one of those out-of-character offenses parents are usually not to blame. The two-year-old boy who loses his cool is just being a two-year-old. The five-year-old who decides to pocket a candy bar at the store may just be being a five-year-old (no matter how objectionable such an act is to parents). An otherwise kind ten-year-old girl who joins with friends to gossip about a friend is just being a ten-year-old girl.

There may be the thirteen-year-old who tries smoking cigarettes, the sixteen-year-old who decides to try "mouthing off" at a parent, or the seventeen-year-old who drinks at a party one night. Any of these examples could be kids who usually behave well and are otherwise good, kind, respectful, sensible people.

It would be an extremely rare normal child who got through childhood without ever doing something that would be considered, "behaving badly". Being a kid is about learning how to be a person, that's not a simple and easy subject for even adults to master. Kids are going to fail a few quizzes along the way; and sometimes when they do it is actually a sign that their parents have done a good job. (The adolescent who refuses to tell the truth about some misdeed his friend has committed has learned about loyalty to a friend. That adolescent probably has great parents.)

So, it would be unrealistic to think that generally well behaved children will never misbehave and misguided to blame parents on those occasional times when they do. Good parenting means having a good amount of control over the actions of the youngest children and gradually relinquishing that control as children grow. As that control is gradually relinquished, however, good parents replace it with increasingly sophisticated talk and guidance as a way of empowering children to use that new found control over their own choices wisely.

Then, though, there are kids who are extremely poorly behaved. They may be preschoolers who don't know how to act "like human beings" at home or in public. They may elementary-school aged children who are always getting in trouble. They may be teens who either once behaved well and no longer do or teens who have always gotten into trouble. Placing blame for the behavior in cases of generally poorly behaved kids is usually most reasonably done by asking the age of the children and the degree of control parents should have over children of that age.

When children are very

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about If children behave badly, who's to blame: Parents or child??
We want to hear your view. Write now!