ABSTRACT
Children’s behaviour problems, like tantrums, hitting, spitting, swearing and running away, are simple and easy to learn and are very common, particularly during children’s early years. Waiting, taking turns, sticking at something or recognising that other people want something different are hard to learn and depend, to a large extent, on children’s ability to use language to understand other people and to manage their own behaviour. Importantly they can also, increasingly, use their thinking skills to manage their own behaviour when they become frustrated or are faced with problems. A problem behaviour may get attention, but it might also occur because the child cannot avoid the problem because the alternative is developmentally beyond them or may not have been learned. This is why it is important to look at each situation where problems occur, because each different situation may need to be dealt with in different ways. The same behaviour problem occurs for different reasons in different children.
