Addressing Behavior Concerns
at School

As a parent, you may find yourself hoping that your child’s behavior would magically improve on its own. Children can act out from time to time making parenting challenging at times. While occasional acting out or defiance can be expected from any child, chronic negative behavior can be cause for concern. This can be particularly concerning if these behaviors are also happening at school.

You may find yourself worrying that misbehavior in school may seriously impact your child’s learning and performance, affecting their long-term success. You aren’t alone, therapy can help.

Behavioral Concerns at School

According to Empowering Parents, learning and behavioral concerns at school may take several forms: acting out at school, declining grades, skipping school, and/or “hating their teachers” or someone else in the school. Your child may also engage in other troubling activities to express their emotions or thoughts resulting in frustration and even embarrassment.

More than anything, these behaviors can affect your child and their relationships with their peers and school authorities as well as impacting their thoughts, feelings, perspectives and their future. For these reasons, you may find yourself at loss on how to effectively discipline your child to lead to healthy changes. This is where counseling can help.

Discipline and Consequences

Discipline can help in addressing your child’s learning and behavior concerns, if it is used appropriately. According to Pediatrics and Child Health, “discipline means to impart knowledge and skill—to teach.” Often, however, it is “equated with punishment and control.” Positive discipline is not harsh and is not meant to negatively impact your relationship with your child. It “does not instill shame, guilt, a sense of abandonment or a loss of trust.” Rather, “it instills a sense of greater trust,” reaffirming and reinforcing your connection with your child. For discipline to be effective, it has to guide and teach a child to become conscious of what is healthy and what is unacceptable.

The goal of discipline is to keep children safe and to foster positive behavior by helping them effectively adjust to the world. This can become the backbone of your child’s self-discipline and decision making. The successful use of discipline can help your child succeed in attaining their own objectives and being happy in the process.

Discipline can, therefore, help in addressing your child’s learning and behavior concerns at school, but it can be most effective to find out what is behind misbehavior. If learning difficulties and behavioral concerns are triggered by a learning disability or a behavioral/emotional condition, it may be best addressed with a professional.

How Can Counseling Help with Behavioral Concerns?

It is possible to practice discipline with understanding and compassion. The National Institute of Mental Health says that improper discipline can make your child cooperate only temporarily and perhaps even misbehave more. Finding ways to intervene and utilize discipline effectively can be difficult, let a therapist contracted with Carolina Counseling Services — Pinehurst, NC help.

Difficult behaviors can be an indicator of something more, such as anxiety, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The idea of this can be overwhelming, you are not alone, help is available. A professional counselor with Carolina Counseling Services — Pinehurst, NC, can assess your child’s symptoms and create a treatment plan specifically tailored to them and their unique needs. Call today to schedule your first appointment.

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