Skill 3: Working against impulse
The third skill that children need to master is one of the most difficult. They need to find a way to do what they’re supposed to do, even though they may have a powerful urge to do otherwise. They may need to wait in line to take their turn on the slide, but they’d prefer to just push the other children out of the way and go down the slide. They may need to put their laundry all the way in the hamper, but they’d prefer to throw it on the floor because it’s quicker. And plenty of other examples.
Some of this is developmental. The ability to control oneself is something that is developed as a person gets older. It is used for things like learning to use the toilet regularly and learning to sit at the dinner table through a whole dinner. There are many reasons that children are very happy to control their own bodies. It helps them do specific physical activities that they couldn’t do when they were younger and many other things. They want to gain control over their actions so that they can be more independent and achieve more things.
When a child cannot do a behavior repeatedly first consider whether it’s beyond them developmentally. Children can’t really understand the larger reasons that people do self-limiting things in society, so they feel that whatever they really want to do is the best thing to do.
I have a tough time with my six year old who feels his desires very strongly. Whenever he wants or doesn’t want something it seems to be extraordinarily important to him and he has a hard time doing anything different from what he wants. We talk about how he needs to do what others want so that he can get some of what he wants.
The other day, I asked him to go with me to do a short errand. He said no, so we couldn’t go. I just bit my tongue and waited. Soon he wanted me to put batteries in one of his toys. I told him that since he didn’t want to do what I wanted him to do, I didn’t feel like putting batteries in his toy. He agreed to go on the errand and I put batteries in his toy. Later that evening I asked him to clean up something and he did quickly (much to my surprise). He got the idea that he wants to do what I want if he wants me to do all the extras for him. (This only lasted a day. I’ve had to repeat the lesson regularly). It’s very difficult for him to put his own impulses on hold, but he’s starting to see how it benefits him in the long-run.
Teaching children how to recognize and basically put aside or ignore their impulses is difficult, but necessary. It requires a lot of repetition and explanation about how it can benefit them. It’s human to want to do exactly what you want, so simply consequencing or punishing a child out of them might work, but it might feel (to the child) that those impulses are just boiling up underneath, waiting for when they can be free to express themselves.
Children should be taught how to control their own impulses for their own gains. It takes a long time and there will remain times at most ages where parents will just have to find a short-term way to stop their child from following their impulses. The thing to remember is that this is short-term. A child may learn that a certain behavior is wrong, but they may still see it as all positive to themselves. They need to find ways to recognize how controlling themselves gives them more skills and abilities in the future.
The best way to help children deal with going against their own impulses is a two-fold approach to teaching them what you want them to do and how it will benefit them and being patient and waiting until their developmental stage allows them more control over whatever impulse they’re working against.
