Everyday schools are dealing with the problem of mouthy, rude children. Notes are being sent home to parents. Loss of lunch, sitting out of recess, and staying for detention are some of the school’s ways of handle the mouthy kid. However, the cycle still continues. You may have noticed a mouthy 2 year old quickly accelerates to a mouthy 5 years old and then mouthy five year old to a mouthy eight year old. The truth is that schools are really begging the families to help. They need the parents to train the child to control their mouth.
The best way to handle the mouthy, disrespect is to deal with the child when they are just two years old. However, if it too late for that, its okay. Here are some suggestions that may help you with your mouthy child.
Remove Sarcasm:
The home is the place to teach respect of others. Mouthy replies to authority or even other children show a lack of respect for others in your child. Respect is not something that your children will just catch in today’s society. In fact, if you watch TV from the 80s you can begin to see a downward spiral as sitcoms began to portray sarcastic humor in children for entertainment. For example, Give Me A Break, was one of our favorite shows. The children were sarcastic and we all laughed and enjoyed it. Then we began to watch Roseanne, and we laughed at their sarcastic disrespect for one another. And the cycle of entertainment continued. The number one way to deal with mouthiness is to deal with sarcastic humor.
Take a few days to listen to your way of communicating with your family and others. If you notice that you are sarcastic frequently. Sarcastic is a twist on the truth or a negative humor. Begin to talk kinder to your family and children. When you are upset calm yourself down and speak respectfully to your children, your spouse, your co-workers, and others in every day settings. Teach your child to do the same.
Remove Negative Speech About Others:
Do not talk negatively about others. If you are talking to someone and then when you hang up the phone you share a negative opinion of that person you are training your child to speak to you one way and walk away with his own negative opinion of you. That negative opinion will begin to manifest in every day settings. You will see that your child will show that opinion of you through his/her facial expression, murmuring under the breath and eventually mouthy back talk.
Follow up:
Once you remove the above behaviors from your behavior then you can help your child remove them from his/hers.
If you do not practice any of the above and your child is mouthy then simply begin to calmly address each of the above in their lives on a daily basis.
Steps To Take With Your Child:
Sit them down and talk to them about sarcasm. Remove sarcastic TV shows from their every day viewing. Remove disrespectful music from their ipods or cd players.
Talk to your child about how to speak calmly. Talk to them about waiting until later to express their concerns if they are too upset at the time.
Talk to your child about talking about people behind their backs and about having negative opinions about others. Encourage them to forgive and be forgiving on a daily basis.
You will see a change take place in your child. Your consistent daily training and encouragement will reap the reward of a child who can control their mouth.
