Me and my 21month old bub Ayden :)

In Chapter 2, McCready explains which principles influenced her strategies and also introduce Toolbox No.1 to help parents to start of her strategy. The Toolbox No.1 will be shared in another post (Part 2)

Basically, McCready is influenced by Alfred Adler’s principles. There are generally 3 premises to a child’s behavior:-

Premise 1

Other than their basic needs (food & shelter), the children needs a sense of BELONGING and SIGNIFICANCE. Belonging means they need to know how he fits in the family and how is he emotionally connected to each of the members. Significance means feeling capable that he is able to contribute into the family (sense of power)

Premise 2

Actually all their behavior is goal oriented. According to this premise, all those “misbehaviors” are not random and are not purposely done to make your like miserable. It actually means they are in a process of learning about belonging and significance. All those misbehavior is actually a symptom of a deeper issue

Premise 3

A misbehaving child is a discouraged child. This premise means that children misbehave because they are lacking the sense of belonging and significance. Those tantrums and being clingy over you actually means he needs more of those which he does not even know. Children will try few ways to get what they need and this includes undue attention (whines and plead for help even when they can do it themselves), power (challenges and provoke parents so that he can win the battle) and revenge (when he feels he cannot achieve it, he will inflict physical pain or emotional harm)

Adler also categorized children according to their birth orders and feels it makes a difference (I can relate to that and am sure my siblings felt it too growing up). Generally, the older child feels a high sense of belonging and significance because all the attention was given to him at least the first one to two years of his life. But this will change once a younger sibling arrives. The middle child normally have low sense of belonging or significance because attention is normally given to the older child (given more power) and the younger child (given more attention) and the youngest child feels the highest belonging but the least significance in the family (attention given but power rarely falls to the youngest sibling).

As for being the only child, most likely their sense of belonging and significance are high. However, lots of parents do everything for their only child and this may make the child to have low significance.