Why Kids Misbehave
Living where the wild things are? Here's how to tame your brood
By Dr. Greg Cynaumon

My first five years of fatherhood were undeniably blessed. I had the sweetest, most well-behaved kids on the planet. This was especially true of my 5-year-old angel, Tracy (aka The Princess), who was every dad's dream. She was adorable, compliant, loved Sunday school, and seemed to exist just to adore me. I theorized that my superhero dad status must have been a byproduct of the three parenting books I'd written. Certainly my daughter was living, breathing testimony that a psychologist could indeed raise well-behaved kids.

On the rare occasion when she would misbehave (completely by accident, you understand, and undoubtedly influenced by her mother), all we needed to do was slightly lower the brow followed by an ever-so-subtle horizontal nod. She would freeze whatever it was she was doing, apologize, wax my car, and ask for forgiveness. (Actually, the wax-my-car part was just a fantasy as it would hugely violate child labor laws.)

When it came to the subject of misbehaving children and discipline, my secret theory was that the other 152.5 million parents on the planet were snivelers and whiners. How tough could this parenting thing be if all it takes is a stern look, and every kid within eyesight drops his fruit snack and stops whatever dastardly deed he's doing? My goodness, I could bottle this Stern Look Thing and retire at 40.

Oh how naïve.

That's when God decided he was going to humble me. I clearly fell from parenting grace through the birth and formative years of our second child. Many have known him by his various monikers such as Lucifer, Beelzebub, and the Great Deceiver. In our household, he simply answered to the name Matt.

In the span of a few short months, Matt dismantled everything I had come to believe about the fine art of discipline. Spankings? He would receive a little swat on his behind and just stand there as if to say, "Is that all you got?" And timeouts? Ha! Timeouts were just opportunities for Matt to hone his parent-torturing skills in the privacy of his room. Matt's response to a 15-minute timeout seemed to be, "Fifteen minutes? I'm just warming up! Let's make it an even hour. And while we're at it, how about sending in the cat and the hedge trimmer �?it's mohawk time."

Okay, perhaps I'm guilty of exaggerating my son's misbehaving ways in order to illustrate my point, which is: You can't rely on the discipline skills you developed with one child and expect them to fit the other.

The DQ study
My experiences with my kids and how they required such opposite disciplinary techniques led me on a new clinical journey. As a doctor, my clinical goal became studying and understanding what drives kids to misbehave. In 1999 I commenced a study featuring 147 volunteer families. Each family agreed to let me and my team observe them closely over a 16-month period. The study produced four remarkable discoveries. They were:

Discovery #1 Misbehaviors (things like forgetting chores, not getting dressed on time, bickering with a sibling, etc.) were not the main problem at all, but merely symptoms of the underlying reason for the misbehavior.

Discovery #2 The emergence of three underlying motives which were found to drive 92% of all misbehaviors. They were:

(a) a child feeling insecure.

(b) a child feeling unimportant, discounted, or minimized. It didn't matter if it happened at home, in school, or with a group of friends.

(c) a child's desire for more (more toys, more play time, etc.) exceeding his ability to do the right thing.

Discovery #3 Children ranging in age from 2 to 18 could be divided into four distinct discipline personality types, which we called the DQ Factor (discipline quotient). I call these types Bears, Monkeys, Porcupines, and Lambs. The DQ Factor actually predicted how, why, and when the child would misbehave.

Discovery #4 Once the child's DQ Factor was identified, the parent could apply specific types of disciplinary techniques that were statistically proven to be most effective with that child's DQ Factor.

Motivations for misbehavior
Without a doubt, the most problematic four-letter word for human beings is more. And when it comes to understanding discipline, you simply cannot discount the important role that "more" plays between you and your child.

If you tell a 6-year-old he can't have a cookie before dinner, and yet he sneaks one when you are out of the room, there's no question he has misbehaved. The question then becomes, why? Did he know he wasn't supposed to take a cookie? Of course. Was he capable of following the no-cookie rule? Again, the answer is yes. Did he know that getting caught would certainly bring about consequences? Hopefully, this answer is also yes. Therefore, you must conclude that he simply chose to disobey and challenge your authority by partaking of the forbidden cookie. Somewhere in his 6-year-old brain, he decided the joy (the "more" in this case) that a cookie creates was worth the risk of incurring your anger and any subsequent punishment.

All of us make poor choices on an hourly basis. If you stopped long enough to analyze the reason for these poor choices, you would find the desire for more was likely at the root of the choice. Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit. Why? Because they wanted more wisdom. It would allow them to be more like God. It remains the same today. We still want more. We mistakenly believe that attaining more of whatever it is will make us more significant, important, loved, and therefore happier.

This desire for more often serves as the motivation for misbehavior. But the key to effective discipline is to figure out what it is your child wants more of.

The DQ study led me to put kids into one of four personality types—Bears, Monkeys, Porcupines, and Lambs (see sidebar below). Once a parent knows how to identify each child's type, that parent is most of the way toward knowing why that child misbehaves and how to bring about better behavior.

WHETHER YOU HAVE a Bear, Monkey, Porcupine, or Lamb in your habitat, your goal cannot change—to be the best parent you can be, trusting that God knew what he was doing when he gave you your children.

Adapted from Discovering Your Child's DQ Factor (Integrity) by Dr. Greg Cynaumon. For more information on these personality types and how they impact discipline, please contact Dr. Cynaumon at www.bestsellingbook.net.