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If your child tells you s/he is not able to cope with school, you can check her/his social and academic skills, suggests child psychologist rediffGURU Aruna Agarwal.
Are you struggling to manage your child's behaviour?
Is s/he not eating well?
Is s/he unable to communicate and mingle with his/her peers or family members?
rediffGURU Aruna Agarwal offers some solutions.
She is a child psychologist and behaviour therapist with over 20 years of experience.
Aruna focuses on children between the ages of two to 10 years who face challenges related to behaviour, language development or attention issues and helps provide them with the right life skills.
Anonymous: My child often misbehaves in public, throws a tantrum.
He is fine at home. I don't know how to handle it gently.
I feel like a failed parent. How can I be stern?
You can show some visuals of how to behave before going out with your child.
Give her/him some rules before and reinforce the right behaviour by verbal praise.
Normally, one tries to manage the behaviour after it has occurred but one needs to do it before it occurs. Use visuals to explain if needed.
Deepak: Hello Aruna Madam, My daughter is 12 years old. She is studying in 7th standard, she doesn't focus on her studies, also her handwriting is poor.
I try to motivate her daily, but she doesn't care. Sometimes I think I should leave her on her own.
She goes to school irregularly. She said, 'I am not able to cope with school.'
She does not talk properly with her same-age girls/boys. She is comfortable with younger children.
She is interested in drawing. Is there any school for children interested in drawing?
If the child is telling you about not being able to cope with school, you can check her social skills, academic skills and if there is some kind of lack of comprehension of language.
There can be various reasons for this, hence you can check the skill sets she has currently.
Anonymous: My son (3rd grade) is good at most things including studies, sports, etc, but he is a little aggressive so he beats and fights at school. He tells me they do something to me so I do.
I do not want to suppress him by beating or scaring him.
What could be the best way I can handle him?
Currently, I am talking to him by telling consequences of doing such things.
Check if he can accept the word 'No' and if he has waiting skills.
By waiting skills, what I mean is: Is he willing to wait for things or wait for his turn in a social group?
You can check this by counting to a variable count slowly and seeing if your son is willing to wait. If he is not, then you can start with working on it. Give him things but delay it.
If he cannot adjust to a group, it can be due to various reasons. For this, we need to have a detailed observation of the child in the group to check if his language has developed adequately to help him interact with his peers and whether he is able to share and wait for his turn.
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