These are basic needs.

Despite what you may have experienced in your own upbringing, I just want to remind you that a child’s basic needs should not be removed from them as a punishment. This is a form of manipulation in order to control children, and was previously though to be a good behaviour management tool.

In the same vain, a child’s basic needs should not be used as rewards, only given for the behaviour we want to see.

In reality, making a child’s food, freedom, connection, attention or affection CONDITIONAL in order to show them your frustration or teach them a lesson just makes your child feel uneasy and unsafe. When a parent habitually removes affection or freedom from their child as a means of making them behave, it can affect a child’s attachment style and even make them misbehave more.

It becomes a vicious cycle:
Child acts out. We become overwhelmed. They sense our exhaustion. They feel like a nuisance. They act out more. We become frustrated by the acting out. We reduce the amount of attention and affection we show them because they have made us feel angry. They sense our withdrawal. They become MORE desperate for affection and attention. We become more frustrated. Their behavior becomes worse. And repeat.

Let’s support each other to aim to meet our children’s needs rather than making them conditional on good behaviour.

We’ve got this.