Well, for all you parents looking for the secret to raising a well-behaved child, scientists in the US have finally figured it out.
According to a study conducted by a team from the States’ National University, the key to getting a child to behave is to reason with them.
As part of the study, the team asked over a hundred parents how they dealt with ‘toddler noncompliance’ (or naughtiness) on five different occasions. Through this feedback, they determined that reasoning was the most effective way of dealing with ‘mild misbehaviour’ (identified in the study as whining).
In cases of ‘oppositional misbehaviour’ (defiance, hitting, etc.), while punishments were most effective to begin with, the team found that reasoning was most effective after two months, when the children knew what was coming.
Commenting on the findings, the team admitted to being surprised by the results, writing: “We thought that the compliance of most oppositional children had to improve to typical levels before they could be positively influenced by reasoning. Otherwise, we thought they would just tune parents out.”
