By: Gabriela Córdova Olguín (psychologist)

Since the beginning of time, family exerts an enormous influence in the development of a child, because children depend on the family to get food, protection and security for their own good.

There are a lot of important changes when children are born. Families must reorganize that they have new tasks, and it becomes necessary the elaboration of new rules.

During the first years of life, children try to put into force their own ideas, exercise their preferences and make their own decisions. This behavior is shown through negativism, tendencies to shout NO! as a form of resistance against authority. Nevertheless it is important to take into consideration that almost every child expresses a certain degree of negativism and that is not enough reason to think that they have disobedience problems.

It is important to remark that a normal development not necessarily follows a course free of difficulties, when a great percentage of the children have conduct “problems”, it is necessary to take into consideration the possibility of changing the situation in order to overcome the difficulty. On the other hand it would be interesting to pose the following questions: Is the child’s conduct normal among children of the same age? Are there real difficulties in the child environment that are causing the problem? Has a radical change occurred in the child’s conduct? How long has this symptom lasted?

Many behavioral problems decrease or increase with the age of children or when there are important changes inside the family, also when they enter a new school, move into another house, or when there are new members in the family. Both, parents and teachers must be attentive to the children’s behavior and if it persists, some measures must have to be taken to solve the problem.

Children need to be guided gradually towards independence; they need personal approval to reward their efforts and this will help to increase their self-esteem. Establishing firm and well-defined limits is very useful to stop some conducts that could be aggressive or risky.

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