OVERACTIVE CHILD
We all have different levels of energy output, there are
some children who are given to sufficiently excessive activity to cause some
alarm. The very first step in
considering this problem is to determine whether it really exists. There are parents who consider their children
to be overactive without at all making a comparison with other children. Some of us, without being aware of the needs
of childhood, find the activity and noise of children oppressive. We make irritable attempts to restrict their
behavior and find that, in the long run, it has just the opposite effect. In fact, this is one of the typical ways in
which over activity is created in children.
The truly overactive child will also manifest other signs of
tension which push him into over activity.
Temper tantrums, thumb-sucking, nail-biting, poor sleeping habits,
bed-wetting, are some of the signs. Any
combination of these suggest that the child is essentially being driven to over
activity for want of a more satisfying way of resolving the tension he feels.
This tension may be the result of any one of several things in his experience.
He may feel the pressure of exceptionally high goals his parents set for him.
Ideally, the best way to treat over activity in children is
to direct our efforts to the source of the difficulty. Short of this, the best
we can do is to treat the allied signs. This means doing the right thing about
temper tantrums, thumb-sucking, etc. providing the child with opportunities for
active physical play sometimes helps drain off the child’s continued need for
activity. Making bargains and grandiose promises of rewards for remaining quiet
at critical times represents one of the worst things we can do. The child then recognizes the value of
his own symptoms and tends to
reinforce them as a result.
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