The Distraction Method As A Form Of Discipline For Children

The distraction method usually works well as a behavior management tool, especially for young children. Distracting a young child’s interest and attention can help to avoid situations that could lead to behavior we don’t want.

Distraction is an effective strategy when parents anticipate a child’s behavior that may be problematic. For example, it is useful when children are irritable, when they sit for a long time without moving, or when they share or carry out an activity that can become complicated.

The distraction method is easy to apply. It may be enough, for example, to show something interesting or peculiar. Start any simple game, come up with simple elements to play with (like making paper folds), or anything else that might distract or entertain a child. It’s about preventing or cutting down on possible behavior that doesn’t interest us.

Tips for applying the distraction method

As we said before, applying the distraction method is very simple, especially if we keep in mind that a large part of children’s behavior is being guided by what happens in the environment outside them. Their prefrontal lobe is not yet fully developed, so they still don’t effectively control their attentional focus, something we can take advantage of. For that:

• Try to make the child have an alternative to the activity or stimuli they are nurturing and that can lead to unwanted behavior. Introduce a new activity, a new game or play, or even show your child something new they can do with a toy they already have.

• Change the scenery. Position the child to see different things, or move things around.
• It is also good that we have prepared a series of resources for those moments when we are in a limited context to be able to generate a distraction.

In case the behavior problems are of older children, we can use other strategies, such as the following:

• Change the topic of conversation.
• Present a simple game or activity that is interesting enough to catch the child’s attention.
• Suggest something else the child can do when things aren’t going well so that you can help them unblock the thinking or get out of the situation.

distraction and redirection

The distraction method is a corrective method that is related to redirection. Redirection involves focusing children’s attention on other activities or non-dangerous stimuli.

Indirectly, distraction implies reevaluating activities that interest us as a source of good behavior. With them, we will be able to reward children and reinforce their self-esteem. That is, we intelligently place them in contexts where it is easy to get reinforcement, so that those contexts, in your eyes, gain attention.

Be careful not to convert distraction into reinforcement for negative behaviors.

There is something important to remember about using the distraction method. If you offer or plan a favorite or rewarding activity after a time the child has tantrums or fights with someone, what you are doing (even if you don’t intend to) is rewarding that behavior. It is better to use the distraction method to anticipate a behavior, as this will give us more alternatives.

There are times when you may not want to cut a tantrum or challenge so that the child will discover that certain activities are always unacceptable. In these cases, distraction is not the best method of discipline.

In this sense, the ideal is to intelligently combine different educational and disciplinary strategies, so that in each context we achieve, with our intervention, what we are intending. In this sense, the more discipline tools we know about, the better. In fact, the more we depend on one method of discipline, the less effective it becomes.

So when you use the distraction method, pay close attention to the child’s reaction. And don’t forget to be as constant as possible in your application, and be flexible and apply another if you find that method isn’t working.

The method of distraction as an alternative to corporal punishment

A 2010 study by Gershoff and colleagues explains that much of their discipline research has focused on parents’ use of corporal punishment. The most likely reason for this research theme fixation is that corporal punishment is a very controversial way of enforcing discipline.

However, corporal punishment is one of the many parenting techniques that parents use to try to control their children’s negative behavior and promote positive behavior. Although there is a wide variation in its use, some parents use it almost every day, while others don’t use it at all.

Nevertheless, in a longitudinal study published in 2007 on the subject, involving 10 different educational techniques, corporal punishment was one of the three less common techniques used by parents of preschool-age children. The most common were controlling children’s behavior, talking to children, distracting and modeling.