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How to help my son

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nobtiba
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How to help my son

my son is 7 years old and his brother is 4 years old. Although same parents and family but they both have different characteristics, while his brother showing that he can following rules and policy well and can behave on his own but my first son is never listen to his teacher, often reluctant to following orders given to him by anyone.

While we often teach him to think right but I observed that he has some thinking make me feel that I need to have serious care to help him change, such as:

- He likes money a lot, he think money is more important than anything

- But at the same time, he doesn't want to work or difficulties to earn money but he wants money falling from the sky

- Sometimes I feel he has little empathy in some actions, he wants to win and does not care so much about the feeling of others. He want to win over his small brothers or cheating to win

- He can push the smaller boy while playing football to get the advantages

- He also has some difficulties in control his emotions, if he loose or the game doesn't go his way, he very quickly become angry, frustrated and cry. His emotion can easily come to the extreme side of the bar.

- He is fast learner, all his teachers said that he is quite smart, and I also believe he also has no difficulty to understand what is right and wrong but he does not always do what is right. I means even he know something is wrong he still can do it without being supervised.

- I want to let him do more works and practicing to help him growth but he also has small threshold for trying. He can easily give up.

- Basically he like lazy life, everything come easy. He loves junk food (like mentioned above he knows it is not good but he still like it).

- He has exercises from school he will says he doesn't have it so he doesn't have to do it.

- He can eat fast but he always dragging, never sit properly and talk and finish meal very slow. After school he come back also never keep his stuffs and got distracted easily by anything on his way.

 

His teachers always call me to complain about his problem on discipline at school. I have tried few different ways to talk with him, understand him, use stories and other tactics to help him understand the consequences and reasoning but looks like it does very little help. Sometimes I feel like I run out of solution because I also do not be the same with him when I am young so I don't know what he thinks and what can work on him. Actually I would expect the school is where they know more type of students and more methods than I do, but seems like they rely on me.

 

I am not trying to draw a picture of a bad boy about my son. I still observed some good things from him like sometimes I teach him helping friends is good or making people happy is good then if he does something like that he will tell me. He also often showing love on me when he is small which is very cute. Some other points as well.

But above are some critical issues that I think if he cannot change it will makes a lot of trouble for his life, including:

- Cannot take responsiblities for his own activities, need people to follow and remind everytime

- Lazy, like things come easy, don't want to give efforts or challenges

- Lack of empathy, sympathy, hard to understand what people feel, just care about his own emotions

- Don't do what he know it is right.

 

How could I help a child with this type of issues ? Beside actions from parents I think friends are very important factors to form his thinking and behaviour, how could I find children with better understanding then how could I help them to be friends and have activities? (using medium like Zoom ?)


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Active scribe
nobtiba
Solution

Re: How to help my son

Hi Philipa,

 

Tks or showing me the more appropriate place to looking for information, I will check it out.

Regarding your questions:

Unfortunately the form teacher at the school doesn't offer me any solution but more on showing the disappointed and giving up. 

I also raise a questions whether my son is the unique child that have that kind of behaviour or is it something common that can find on other children at his age ? From my son I know that there are other friends of him also get the same issues (and get punishment from the teacher) but the teacher did not show that point to me. Also I asked if any teacher that he will scare of or following instruction well, she mentioned there is one teacher. So I know that there is someone who know a method that could work on my son. 

On the bright side also, there is also one of his teachers taking care very well of his progress and often give me feedback in the constructive way, which she also trying with me to looking for a solution. While she also quite unsure which way can work with him but she did encourage me to be more patient and try out different methods.

 I do have other parents of my son's friends to talk and exchange ideas. But looks like their children are a little more "well behaviour" than mine. But I am sure they also have different approaches of teaching too, so the only thing that we share is the age of our children. But I will also try to exchange more ideas with parents. Thanks for your suggestions !

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Star contributor
TOM-RO

Re: How to help my son

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Hey @nobtiba ,

 

Thank you for reaching out. It sounds like you’re feeling concerned about certain traits and characteristics of your son. In reading about the things you’ve raised, I wanted to reflect back with you and want to ask what you think. It sounds like your son is going through a range of emotional presentations. It can be a normal part as they learn to adapt their behaviours. Do you feel like as they grow that they might fine-tune a bit better?

I’m sorry to hear that it feels like the schools comes to you for support. I know you feel that they should have more of the answers, but management of behaviours and emotions of a 7-year-old aren’t very simple. What kind of strategies have you found have worked for rewarding good behaviour?

Around what you can do, in the most simplistic terms, it can be important to consider your responses to when they do things you don’t feel are appropriate. There’s psychology involved around something called operant conditioning, in that we observe a behaviour, and we respond to it, either positively or negatively. For example, if they do something you don’t approve of, what do you do? Do you punish and take away a privilege (called negative punishment)? How do they respond to you? Do they go to their room yelling at you or are they silent? It can help to be reflective on what their experience is like when you approve/disapprove of a behaviour. In responding to you, I found a super helpful article that might shed some light into your son’s behaviour. Feel free to have a look. If you’re still finding things are really complex, there’s avenues of getting professional support through things like psychologists or family therapists.

Around finding friends on a medium like Zoom, I’m not too sure myself as to what kind of things exist for that age-bracket, so I hope someone else can chip in and support you there.

It can be a really challenging time trying to reinforce the right behaviours, but be patient both with yourself and your son. We’re trying to maintain their trust in us. There’s still lots of time to figure things out.

Contributor
Philippa-RO

Re: How to help my son

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@nobtiba I just wanted to follow up on your post to let you know that you might find some helpful resources on the Raising Children's Network, as their information is more suited to your children's ages (ReachOut is aimed more at parents of teenagers). 

In terms of your son's behaviours, many of them can be typical for a young child, so I guess it's hard to judge from reading whether there is more to it. 

 

When you say the school has contacted you - are they worried about his behaviour, or do they think it's fairly average for a child his age?

If they're worried about him, have they offered any suggestions on ways to work with him - for example, are there any workers or services that might be able to offer your son or your family some support and guidance? 

 

As you mention, it can be really hard to know as parents what is okay and what's not - especially with a first child when you don't have anyone to compare them to.

Do you have any family or friends with children of similar ages who you could talk to to see what they think about whether your son's behaviour is typical for his age?

Active scribe
nobtiba

Re: How to help my son

Hi Tom-Ro,

 

Currently I am not very sure which will be an effective way to solve the issue, that's why I am looking for help. However, in the mean time I also think that when I do not know the right solution then the right solution would be any simple immediate steps that I think it could be beneficial to my son, such as spending more time with him to play and being friend with him, from there feeding him with some good info and also get to understand him better. So I have tried to arranged my work to sleep early, wake up early and go to school with him, play sport with him or even attending some online class with him. At least it could help me to observe him better and might be can slowly help me to understand what he is feeling.

Thanks a lot for your reference link, I think it is a great read and bring me very good perspective to some issues. I also find out they use the tactics of breaking difficult problem into small, very simple ones that we can handle and from there, can build a good momentum and confident. I will definitely apply more of this !

Active scribe
nobtiba
Solution

Re: How to help my son

Hi Philipa,

 

Tks or showing me the more appropriate place to looking for information, I will check it out.

Regarding your questions:

Unfortunately the form teacher at the school doesn't offer me any solution but more on showing the disappointed and giving up. 

I also raise a questions whether my son is the unique child that have that kind of behaviour or is it something common that can find on other children at his age ? From my son I know that there are other friends of him also get the same issues (and get punishment from the teacher) but the teacher did not show that point to me. Also I asked if any teacher that he will scare of or following instruction well, she mentioned there is one teacher. So I know that there is someone who know a method that could work on my son. 

On the bright side also, there is also one of his teachers taking care very well of his progress and often give me feedback in the constructive way, which she also trying with me to looking for a solution. While she also quite unsure which way can work with him but she did encourage me to be more patient and try out different methods.

 I do have other parents of my son's friends to talk and exchange ideas. But looks like their children are a little more "well behaviour" than mine. But I am sure they also have different approaches of teaching too, so the only thing that we share is the age of our children. But I will also try to exchange more ideas with parents. Thanks for your suggestions !

Contributor
Philippa-RO

Re: How to help my son

Hi @nobtiba I'm glad the responses were helpful.

It sounds like you've made a lot of really positive changes to spend more quality time with your son - do you feel like that's helping?

I'm glad that your son has a supportive teacher who is able to offer some constructive feedback - that sounds really helpful too.

It's a hard situation - it can also be even harder if people judge you or make you feel self-conscious - but it really does sound like you're a very caring parent who's doing your best for your son. 

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Active scribe
nobtiba

Re: How to help my son

Thank you Philipa for your compliments ! 

I will try what I can and since it is a complex matter for me for now, the best way is to invest more time on it.

All your inputs is valuable for me, appreciate that !