📩 31/10/2023 16:04
Expert Clinical Psychologist Fulya Tepret gave important information on the subject. The developmental period includes all the physical, mental, emotional and social changes that a human child experiences while growing up. Children go through various developmental periods as they grow. The child acquires a skill during each developmental period. Every new skill a child acquires may also cause some difficulties. Problems during developmental periods are normal and temporary. For this reason, knowing the developmental periods that children go through and the difficulties they bring is very important in the parent-child relationship. While the child is growing up, if he cannot receive sufficient support and positive emotions from his parents during these difficulties, some emotional difficulties may arise in the child. For example, a child who developmentally needs to say "no" and feel like an individual at the age of 2-3 is constantly controlled by his parents and begins to react emotionally if this developmental need is not met. Sometimes this may be anger that is increasing in frequency, or sometimes it may be other problems such as poop retention. These negative reactions shown by the child are called "behavioral disorders". Behaviors such as irritability, irritability, stubbornness, swearing and stealing are considered behavioral problems. Although behavioral disorders may be perceived as if the child has a problem, they basically mean that the child has a need. The child expresses his unmet emotional needs into behavior. He may bite his nails if he is anxious, he may hold poop if he has very controlling parents, or he may develop shyness if he has very protective parents. To give more examples, if the child is constantly left alone at an age when he/she should spend time with his peers due to his social-emotional development, he may become an introvert child and adult in the future. While the child is developmentally capable of dressing and eating on his own, he may have self-confidence problems if he grows up with an overly protective attitude from the family and everything is done instead. At the other extreme, anxiety problems may also be seen in children of families with overly disciplined and strict parental attitudes. Sometimes children experience some problems in their social relationships at school. He may hit his friends, spit on them, or insult them. Children with such behavioral problems can sometimes grow up in an environment where there is violence at home and carry this to school.
In the preschool period, problem behaviors can be observed in sleeping, cleaning and eating habits. In addition, behaviors such as disobedience, stubbornness, jealousy, shyness and aggression can sometimes be seen as problems. As I mentioned above, under every situation that is seen as behavioral problems, there are actually signals about the attitudes of the parents. Families of children with these behavioral problems usually bring their children to therapy because they are having difficulties, but working on this difficulty will actually benefit the child. Entering the therapy process regarding this situation will meet the child's unmet emotional needs and develop the child socially-emotionally.
Adolescence is the most beautiful and energetic but also the most difficult period of life. The reason for this difficulty is that the adolescent is neither a child nor an adult. He feels like an adult because he is no longer a child, he is growing up, but he also feels like a child because he still needs rules and boundaries. For this reason, adolescence is a period in which crises, depressions and conflicts with parents occur very frequently. Although the problems experienced during adolescence vary depending on gender, when we look at the basic context, we see that the adolescent is a bomb ready to explode at any moment. Mostly, it is a state of dissatisfaction with the environment, momentary emotional changes, inability to regulate one's reactions, being offensive to others from time to time, always wanting to spend time with friends, wanting to be alone, Characteristics such as keeping a distance from parents are some of the characteristics of adolescence, but when these are too many and intense, we can talk about a behavioral problem. Again, underlying this behavioral problem, there is actually a need of the adolescent and this is highly related to the attitudes of the parents. Adolescents try to adapt to physical, mental and emotional changes as they transition from childhood to adulthood. They build their own identities, but sometimes, while trying to build their own identities, they look for quick and shortcuts to become adults, such as starting to smoke. A teenager who challenges everyone with what he does, saying "I exist in the world and I am strong", sometimes starts a job with a very simple curiosity, but this can turn into a show of power. With all this, while parents try to protect their children from doing wrong things, adolescents perceive this as excessive pressure and may turn more towards the outside world. Consequently, behavioral problems such as excessive aggression and sudden outbursts of anger may occur. Here, parents should not immediately blame the adolescent for the behavioral problems experienced by the adolescent, they should pay attention to his thoughts and listen to him. The child should not be made to feel like an untrustworthy potential criminal. Mothers and fathers who behave in this way cannot establish a healthy relationship with their children. As parents, we must trust our children. Trying to control the adolescent by intimidation or intimidation is also very wrong in a relational context. This may cause the adolescent to do some behaviors secretly from you. In short, we can say that the adolescent has a lot of difficulty in his inner world, and if there are parents who do not understand him, the adolescent will be thrown into the void and behavioral problems may increase. Therefore, parents should choose to find a solution instead of conflicting with the child or escalating the conflict, and should not shy away from asking for the necessary help.
Expert Clinical Psychologist Fulya Tepret said, “To sum up, behavioral disorders are one of the most important problems seen in child and adolescent mental health. "A multifaceted approach in which cooperation between families, educators, school guidance units and experts is ensured is important in improving this problem in these years, which are the most important periods of life in terms of psychosocial development." said.