Some interesting ideas regarding child behavior in U.S. News & World Report. Apparently, it's natural that kids are "impulsive...don't follow rules, don't stay on task.Also, according to a psych and neurology professor, "young children act a lot like brain-damaged adults." Sometimes as a parent I feel like a brain-damaged adult, so I guess that puts me on equal footing with my kids.
But the reason kids can't stop thinking about, say, that bowl of Halloween candy is also why kids are considered "such amazing learners and discoverers" — as well as occasional major pains in the ass, I'm guessing.
A researcher and author of The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life says that dealing with kids is like handling adult frontal-lobe patients (examples are in the article).
The problem we've had in the past, particularly with Jackson, was when he was in daycare and his behavior was judged by the standards of adults with fully functional frontal lobes. As the article suggests, "Don't expect a small child to be good at focused tasks," so expecting a 3-year-old to sit still for 20 minutes during something called "circle time" was probably a pretty tall order.
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