The Basics Of Child Behavior

What is "child behavior"?

One of the skills that parents learn in the classes is to understand a child's behavior. Because if you think about the metaphor of an iceberg floating in the ocean, the part that you see that is above water, that is visible, and you can actually have an experience with, isn't indicative of what's in the invisible below the water. So 8/9ths of an iceberg is below the water in the invisible. That is a great metaphor for understanding human behavior. What you see is on the surface. What you don't see and never have seen is a thought, a feeling or a need. You don't see those. You only see behavior. So from the behavior we have a tendency to interpret what we think the person is thinking, what we think the person is needing, what we think the person is feeling. But we could be off by miles if we're just guessing. Yes, we get to know people and we can anticipate what their behavior means, but many times parents don't know what the child's behavior means. So in the old-fashioned authoritarian, it didn't matter. As long as the behavior was consistent with what I (the boss) wanted we were okay. So the thoughts, feelings and needs didn't matter. Now, a modern parent is very considerate of what is the child thinking? What is the child feeling here? and what is the child needing?