No, They Don’t “Just Want Attention”
You know the terms…attention seeker, drama llama, etc…they relate to the child who we perceive as wanting a lot of attention. We apply the explanation that a child wants attention when they seem to be willfully misbehaving. And yet this explanation is based on some misunderstandings that can send parents and teachers down the wrong path….that can actually be harmful.
Attention Seeking labels lead us down the wrong path
If you have any experience with children, you have heard or said the phrase, “He just wants attention.” This is said if a child is displaying any type of behavior, usually one that is disruptive, annoying or even harmful. For example, if you are a parent and talking/texting on the phone, it's a very common complaint that in this very moment, your child begins talking loudly to you, getting into something they are not supposed to touch or poking you.
Therefore, you reach the conclusion, he just wants my attention. While you might decide you have been on your phone too long and put it away, you are more likely to feel annoyed or manipulated and think…”he just wants attention”, and ignore the child. If you follow the “He just wants attention” assumption, this will lead you to think…”I cannot reinforce this behavior by giving him attention and I need to ignore him.”
However, ignoring him implies that he has the skills to get his needs met appropriately, that he will interpret that your ignoring him means he needs to do something different and that he CAN do that different thing to get his needs met appropriately. Thinking about this more deeply, the child then has pre-emptively planned a behavior like running around your legs, thinking, “This is a great way to get her attention”, then when ignored, he is meant to learn that this was not a good way to get it and instead employ a more effective approach. If the child was this capable of all of this, this would imply that they could have done something more prosocial from the start. Such as mouth to you, “How much longer? I’m only 3 and I can only wait for a few more minutes.” This is clearly not the case.
In fact, ignoring the child may lead to an escalation of behavior or worse, he gives up and walks away unable to get his needs met. The latter may feel like a win…he learned that won’t work. However this is deeply flawed.
When you employ purposeful ignoring, you are not teaching this child the skills they need to connect with others, or get their needs met.
Challenging behavior is a result of a child not having the necessary skills to manage something and the related stress response that gets in the way. Therefore, most challenging behaviors like being loud, getting into something they are not supposed to or poking you are not really as thought out and strategic as we believe. We know that if this child was actually skilled at getting their needs met, they would do so in a much more effective manner. Dr. Ross Greene coined the phrase, “Kids do well if they can, not if they want to.” More specifically,
“Behaviorally challenging kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills to not be challenging.”
― Ross W. Greene, The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children
Consider, if you as an adult needed to talk to someone who was busy on the phone, how would you do it? Wave and ask if they can answer a quick question?, slide them a note, find something else to do while you wait?, look for someone else to talk to?, or get loud and poke and start rummaging through their purse to “get attention”?
Changes are by now, you have the social emotional skills to get your needs met.
And, this brings us to the question of what do you need? What do we mean by getting a need met?
Is it that you simply need attention
What do children really need?
The last time you were waiting for your partner, friend, or adult child to get off their phone, what did you need? Maybe you wanted to connect and feel less alone. Maybe you had a specific question? Maybe you wanted to feel validated for something you had done like the meal you made. Maybe you were feeling anxious that they might be on their phone for the remainder of your evening. Imagine that was classified as you just “wanting attention”.
This would feel really dismissive and hurtful and you would feel misunderstood.
In fact when children are classified as wanting attention, it's just a surface explanation for needing connection, or reassurance, or validation. And children often cannot identify that in themselves, much less express it and get the need met appropriately.
Let's go back to that child who sees the adult on the phone. They might be anxious about how long it will be, and need reassurance that you will be off and able to help them in 5 minutes. They may need connection and feel a bit lonely. They may also need some validation for the fact that they finally were able to go across the monkey bars.
And when you see it this way, your choices are different. Instead of deciding to ignore them, or simply hanging up quickly and maybe feeling manipulated….think…what would it look like if he could express what he needed in a way that is effective?
Your actions that follow from that understanding would likely include helping your child feel understood, and finding a way to get that need met AND set boundaries as well. This is hard to do.
At Mariposa Education, we have courses and workshops to help you understand those challenging moments AND learn specific skills to respond to your child so they do know what to do. Learn what they DO need and how to help them get those needs met, and your own too.
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