Teaching Your Child Skills

Child Therapists underline that often times, when one sibling is not yet able to do something that another sibling can, this can spark some sibling rivalry between the siblings. In order to balance things out & make it fair, it can help for parents to step in & help teach the skill where possible.

Behaviour Therapists point out that, when parents are teaching a child new skills that involve a sequence of actions such as brushing their teeth, washing their hands, getting dressed, etc. then it can help to list out what each step is before teaching them:

For example: Teaching A Child To Brush Their Teeth

List Of Actions:

– Get toothbrush
– Wet toothbrush
– Get toothpaste
– Squeeze toothpaste on to toothbrush
– Brush teeth
– Rinse mouth
– Rinse toothbrush
– Put toothbrush away.

Once you have the sequence of actions listed, focus on teaching your child the first step while prompting/guiding them through the steps after that.

When they are able to complete the first step with ease, then encourage them to do the first two steps, & then prompting them with the remaining steps.

Continue on like this until your child’s behaviour is showing that they can successfully & independently complete the entire task independently.

Depending on what task it is that you are teaching them, some steps, they will grasp very quickly, whereas some will take more practice. Be patient & give plenty of praise & encouragement.

Behaviour Analysts highlight that this method is useful for so many different tasks & helps to break the task down & simplify it. This in turn, makes parenting a lot easier, as it reduces the chance of behaviour challenges, such as the parent having to help the child with managing anger, & reduces the chance of tantrums or of the child displaying negative attention-seeking behaviour out of frustration due to not being able to grasp how to do it.

Studies in the field of Behaviour Analysis show, that this strategy promotes the child’s independence, & gives them an overall feeling of achievement & accomplishment.