Teaching Your Child Good Behavior

Every parent wants children who are well behaved and polite, but teaching them these important lessons can be a challenge. Children are impulsive and emotional, and often fail to consider the ramifications of their actions or think before they speak. While some of this will simply improve with time and maturity, there are some things you can do from a young age to encourage good behavior in your child.

“I want parents to understand that although they’re not necessarily responsible for whatever behavior problems their child might have, there is much they can do to develop the behavior they do want.”

Dr. Alan Kazdin, head of the Yale Parenting Center explains. There are a few tried and true methods for encouraging the good behavior, and lessening incidents of poor behavior will follow right along.

A simple but effective method is to be sure to catch your child when they are behaving well and praise or reward them for it. Too often, the focus falls on bad behavior, because that is when parents feel the need to step in. “Positive reinforcement is not only good to motivate defiant children and encourage good behavior, but it also helps them see their own positive behaviors,” says Dr. Jeffrey Bernstein, licensed psychologist and family therapist. Children who recognize good behavior are more likely to repeat it in order to receive the positive attention from a parent. Poor behavior is often attention-seeking; when the attention is given for good behavior instead, it becomes unnecessary.

Another one of the simplest methods of teaching good behavior is to remember to model it. Parents often think that their children should differentiate between appropriate behavior for adults and behaviors that are ok for them to emulate. The problem is, they don’t see that difference, and the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude simply doesn’t teach much of anything. Model the behavior you want to see in your children, and you will be rewarded with better behavior.

Simple steps to better behaved children:
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Start teaching good behavior from an early age before bad habits can form

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Recognize and reward good behavior when it occurs naturally

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Be a model of good behavior for your child


There will always be challenges in your child’s behavior, but setting good standards from the start can make a parent’s job easier. When you provide a good model of the right behavior and use positive reinforcement to encourage good behavior in your child, you are setting the stage for a lifetime of better behavior

Brian facts

Abused Children Have Smaller Brains

Parts of the brain of a severely abused and neglected child can be substantially smaller than that of a healthy child.

Babies Lose Half their Neurons at Birth


It is estimated that a baby loses about half their neurons before they are born. This process is sometimes referred to as pruning and may eliminate neurons that do not receive sufficient input from other neurons.

Baby Talk Increases Vocabulary

A study showed that when mothers frequently spoke to their infants, their children learned about 300 more words by age two than did children whose mothers rarely spoke to them.

Birdsong Similar to Human Speech
Birdsong and human speech have similar characteristics. Birds, like humans, learn their complex vocalizations early in life and imitate their adult counterparts to acquire these skills. These two species have evolved a complex hierarchy of specialized forebrain areas where motor and auditory areas interact continuously in order to produce detailed vocalizations.

Brain Measurements Are Revealing

Electroencephalogram, or EEG, is a non-invasive technique used to record small changes of electrical activity in the brain with surface electrodes on the scalp. Scientists who study sleep find EEG especially useful. The tiny fluctuations detected with EEG are clear indicators of whether a person is asleep, aroused, or somewhere in between.

Brain Uses 20 Percent of Blood

Approximately 20% of the blood flowing from the heart is pumped to the brain. The brain needs constant blood flow in order to keep up with the heavy metabolic demands of the neurons. Brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) rely on this relationship between neural activity and blood flow to produce images of deduced brain activity.

Brain Uses 20% of Oxygen Breathed

Although the brain accounts for only 2% of the whole body's mass, it uses 20% of all the oxygen we breathe. A continuous supply of oxygen is necessary for survival. A loss of oxygen for 10 minutes can result in significant neural damage.

Child Brain Development

Measures of brain activity show that during the second half of a child's first year, the prefrontal cortex, the seat of forethought and logic, forms synapses at such a rate that it consumes twice as much energy as an adult brain. That furious pace continues for the child's first decade of life.

Early Brain Growth

During the first month of life, the number of connections or synapses, dramatically increases from 50 trillion to 1 quadrillion. If an infant's body grew at a comparable rate, his weight would increase from 8.5 pounds at birth to 170 pounds at one month old.