Why do kids behave “badly”? (Here, “badly” could mean almost any behavior that most adults find objectionable).
Of course, there are multiple reasons. Sometimes they are doing what their peers do – but they have some choice in who their peers are. Other times they are reacting to stress. Nearly all people, kids or adults, react badly to high levels of stress. But with LD kids, the stress is often hidden or from sources that don’t seem that stressful to most people and that aren’t that stressful for most kids.
For many LD kids life is stressful. People are always misunderstanding you; mistreating you; confusing you; berating you or bullying you and it can all be extremely confusing. Confusion is stressful.
So, if you want to deal with a kid’s bad behavior, the first thing to do is to figure out the cause. Then you can try to deal with the cause. If you only treat the symptoms, they will just re-appear in another (and possibly worse) form.
I often misunderstood my son’s behavior. If we talked, it often was so logical! Nine times out of 10 it made sense. Too many people judge first, ask questions later.
Ends up, he is about 1/10th the rebel I was, thank God. My poor mother.