(To the tune of: What do we do with a drunken sailor?)
Why is this child crying?
Watch the first 5 seconds of this video, then pause it.
What are 3 possible reasons the child is crying? Think about it, then I’ll tell you what I thought of…
- The child fell down and got hurt.
- Another kid took his toy away.
- The dad said, “It’s time for a nap” and he doesn’t want to take a nap.
We will get back to the video; just humor me for a moment. Unless you know why the child is crying, you don’t know how to react.
- If he got hurt, you should comfort him.
- If another kid took his toy away, you should make the kid give it back.
- If he doesn’t want to do what dad said, you should ignore the crying.
Let’s see how dad reacts to the behavior
Ok. Now watch the rest of the video.
So we don’t actually know why the kid is crying or what exactly precipitated it, but obviously, he wants attention, right? Accordingly, the dad is not paying any mind to the crying. He’s actually having a laugh about the kid’s theatrics.
Applied Behavior Analysis
The cool thing is that there is a whole science to behavior called applied behavior analysis. You already have some intuition about it since you knew that the kid just wanted attention. You could tell that without reading the title of the video, right? When we understand why a kid is doing something, we know how to respond appropriately. This applies to any kid or actually any person, but can be especially useful with kids (with or without special needs) who have challenging behaviors.
Click here to see other blog posts about behavior.
🤔💭 Tell me what you think.
What kind of attention seeking behavior have you seen in kids recently?