What to do about it:

What To Do About an Attention-Seeking Child

1. Children who are attention-seeking have a legitimate need. It’s our job to teach them how to get it in a legitimate way.
2. Catch them being good. Give attention for appropriate behavior.
3. Ignore the misbehavior but not the child.
4. Be consistent.
5. Repeat.

Here are some practical suggestions to reduce your children’s attention-seeking behaviors.

1. Remember the rule. Attention is a reward.
2. Ignore the small stuff.
3. Children must be taught.
4. Eliminate the threat.
5. Pump-up the praise ratio.
6. Don’t ignore what you can’t ignore.

1. Distract, distract, distract. Make walking fun — play games (“Can you hop over all the cracks in the sidewalk?”), point out interesting sights (“Look at that squirrel carrying a nut”) or sing songs as you go.
2. Make your toddler feel important.
3. Provide eye contact.
4. Don’t rush.
5. Skip the scolding.

Parentification creates a state of chronic stress and relational trauma. Moreover, it is a form of parental neglect. As a result, it has both short- and long-term effects on a child’s life. And the earlier the caregiving begins, the more negative the consequences for the child.

In a 2007 article, Burton provides a standard definition of adultification that is not dehumanizing: “adultification comprises contextual, social, and developmental processes in which youth are prematurely, and often inappropriately, exposed to adult knowledge and assume extensive adult roles and responsibilities …

Factors that contribute to adultification bias include racism, sexism, and poverty. Adults have less empathy for black girls than their white peers.

Childhood adultification involves contextual, social, and developmental processes in which youth are prematurely, and often inappropriately, exposed to adult knowledge and assume extensive adult roles and responsibilities within their family networks.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Parentification is the process of role reversal whereby a child is obliged to act as parent to their own parent or sibling. In extreme cases, the child is used to fill the void of the alienating parent’s emotional life.

A legal parent includes a biological or adoptive parent, or a person that the state has determined to be your parent (for example, when a state allows another person’s name to be listed as a parent on a birth certificate).

A child’s legal mother is: the woman who gave birth to the child. the co-mother (duomoeder) who has automatically become the child’s parent, or has acknowledged the child, or has been declared the child’s parent by a court.

Generally speaking, a mother cannot refuse a paternity test, as there is no good reason for her to do so. That said, if ordered by the courts, it is not wise for any alleged father to refuse a test, either.

Legally, the term child may refer to anyone below the age of majority or some other age limit. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as “a human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”.