Raising Children Network: the Australian parenting website
  • Suitable for 1-8Years

About 'Tools to encourage good behaviour'

By Raising Children Network
 
 

Every parent will face times when their children’s behaviour perplexes, stuns, confuses, angers or frustrates them. It is times like these when having a range of options up your sleeve can be invaluable.

A better understanding

Dealing with children’s behaviour is one of the most challenging aspects of parenting. Trying to work out the reason for your child’s behaviour is the first step in meeting the challenge. The content in this section of the website is designed to give you information about common behavioural issues and the factors that cause them.

Tools and strategies

Parents, however, can also benefit from having a range of behaviour-guidance tools in their parenting toolkit. In this toolkit, we have brought together a number of research-based ideas and strategies you can use to deal with your child’s behaviour in positive and constructive ways. These strategies are based on the science of human learning and have been tested over and over again in many practical situations involving children.

Sharpening your skills

You will find that you have heard many of these ideas and are using many of the strategies in this section naturally. In each toolkit piece we provide ‘how to’ information and tips that you can use to refine your skills in this area. Sometimes small adjustments can make a strategy much more effective.

Choosing tools that are right for you

It’s worth keeping in mind that no single strategy will fix everything. Some strategies may work better than others for your family and situation. You will probably have to use a few strategies in combination, and we’ve given you tips on how to do this.

More than behaviour management

Finally, strategies in the behaviour toolkit cannot be expected to work in a vacuum. Attempts to guide your child’s behaviour will always work best when you are investing significant time and effort in building a positive atmosphere in your home and strengthening your relationship with affection and communication. See our sections on Connecting and Communicating for more ideas.

Read more about the different tools by using the links in the left hand menu.

 
 
 
  • Last reviewed16-05-2006