How to recognize if your kid is “High Demanding”

High Demanding children are those boys and girls who have difficult temperament and, as its name says, “they demand too much attention”, explains psychotherapist Paulina López Benítez, from R&A psicólogos center.

For Paulina, MD in Psychology and expert therapist in child and adolescents, temper is a characteristic we are born with. It doesn´t have to do with education or the way we are raised, but with the traits of the character and the innate way of being of a person.

Every child demands its parents’ attention, and it is not about labeling them, but recognize that they´re young and they have more needs than other children.

The North American pediatrician William Sears proposed the term “High Demanding Children”, after the birth of his fourth daughter, who has a very difficult temper.

We recommend you to read: All children throw tantrums, and it’s normal.

Characteristics of these Little ones

After a baby is born, its parents or its caretakers will notice if they are in front of a “High Demanding Child”, because some specific characteristics will be very notable at a daily family interaction.

This situation could be exceedingly difficult to handle because, these kids, sometimes are judged as spoiled or without limits.

López Benítez points out that, among the main features of High Demanding Children we could find:

• Ask for more attention from their parents. They need mom or dad attention all the time, practically 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and this could be very exhausting because they insist, pull you, throw a tantrum or thrown themselves on the floor.

• They’re in constant motion. We’re talking about children with a lot of physical activity and need to move all the time. They’re restless! It seems that they can’t sit still five minutes at a time.

• Need a lot of physical contact. They cry if you’re not carrying them, they need to be hugged or patted on the shoulder all the time. “They demand a lot of physical contact”.

• Skin-deep sensibility. They live their emotions very intensely. They’re very sensitive to criticism and assume situations very personally. Also, they have difficult in expressing their emotions.

For his part, psychologist Alberto Soler points out that all children demand attention, so he doesn’t understand the utility of this term, because, “there have always been calmer or easier-tempered babies, and more demanding or more difficult-tempered ones”.

However, the expert recognizes that some babies are more demanding than others, and that there even could be some extreme cases that push their parents to the limit, but, “when this label is used to describe more than half of the babies, I think it loses its raison d’être”.

We recommend you to read: what if my partner doesn’t set limits to our kids?

What to do?

If you have noticed that you have a High Demanding Child, psychologist Paulina López Benítez offers you six strategies to manage this situation:

• Accept your child just the way it is. Before a baby is born, parents already have expectations of how they’d like their child to be. Sometimes the ideals of parents are very rigid. A child is an individual and unique being who will have his own characteristics.

• Never compare your child. This is the most frequent mistake that parents make, and it can impact seriously bad in its self-esteem. Avoid comparisons among brothers, cousins, friends, neighbors.

• Teach your kid to do its activities alone. Try to make your child independent as it grows. Motivate it to make some activities on its own while you’re working.

• Set limits. This implies that there will be consequences due to his/her behavior, which must be consistent and coherent (the consequences). Careful, boundaries are not about being an authoritarian or violent parent.

• Avoid saying the word NO. Instead of overwhelming or limiting your child, give it options among things it can do, and try to negotiate.

• Try that your child does a physical activity, it will bring a lot of benefits in a physical and emotional level. It will help the child to get tired and, when night comes, could easily fall asleep.

This situation could be very difficult to manage because sometimes they are judged as spoiled or limitless kids.

Translated by: Ligia M. Oliver Manrique de Lara

Spanish version: Here

We recomend you to read: Risks of being a “soft” mom or dad.