If your child is misbehaving, you may conclude that he is simply doing it to make your life more difficult. What you need to understand, however, is that every time your child misbehaves, he is doing it for a reason that you may have overlooked. Digging deeper to get to the root of the bad behavior is the best way for you to solve the underlying problem and hopefully prevent it from coming up again in the future.
Attention
Your child has begun to understand behaviors that reward her with attention, positive or negative. For example, doing well in school usually means she receives praise from a parent or teacher. She also knows that being disruptive in class or purposefully and blatantly disobeying your rules can earn your attention if she somehow feels that she isn't getting enough positive attention. You may notice your child acting out for attention if a new baby has usurped some of the attention you used to give her, or if your life is hectic in any other way and you haven't been able to spend the same amount of time with her.
Powerlessness
Your child's bad behavior may be a defense mechanism if he feels threatened. If he feels insecure about his own capabilities in the classroom or on the sports field, for example, he may overcompensate by bullying other children. If he feels as though he has no say about the way his life is run, he may intentionally defy house rules (e.g. refusing to eat dinner, ignoring bed time), to assert his own willpower.
Experimentation
Your child may exhibit bad behavior to test you. If, for example, you threaten to punish her if she continues to hit another child, she may look at you as she does it one more time. It's her way of saying, "Do you really mean what you say?" Children who are used to receiving empty threats are more likely to continue this behavior, and children of consistent parents are more likely to give up after the results of their experiments come in loud and clear.
Forming Independence
Your child's bad behavior may be a signal that he is growing and distancing himself from you. Teen defiance is a good example of bad behavior based on a desire to form independence. A teen may think his mother is simply giving him rules to put him in a cage, not because she actually thinks she is looking out for his best interest. His defiance may simply be his way of saying, "I'm old enough to think it through and I know what's good for me."
Inexperience vs. Bad Behavior
Adults who have generally learned "right" and "wrong" may misinterpret ignorance as bad behavior. However, if a young child doesn't have the knowledge or experience to understand that a certain action is widely considered inappropriate, he won't hesitate to behave in that manner. It is only after he is consistently taught about appropriate versus inappropriate behaviors that he can consciously misbehave.
