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will be responsible for some amount of money. This cre-
ates trust.
- Love your child, and if he/she has stolen something,
punish him/her, but show that you love him/her.
- Explain to your child that theft is wrong. Explain to him/
her that there will be no trust in this situation. If someone
steals his/her toy, he/she will not like it either.
Behaviour types demonstrated by pre-school age chil-
dren
Psychologists Irwin Wagner and David Elkind have iden-
tified four types of behaviour:
1. Adulatory - show too much care to prove that they are
nice. Trying to earn friends through flattery.
2. Clown - ready to do everything so that adults pay at-
tention and praise him/her. He/she would even tolerate in-
sults and physical pain for this. For this child making ev-
eryone laugh is the most important goal.
3. Adult-like - children who are not accepted by their
peers. As a result they try to build communication with
adults. They become favourites of adults. Adults, on the
other hand, see these children as smart, obedient, respect-
ful towards adults, well behaved, taking every given task
seriously etc. But in reality these children do not succeed in
20
Psychology
making friends with their peers. That is what they are not
successful in.
4. Mischievous hooligans - make friends with younger
and weaker children to subordinate them. They cannot over-
come the strength of their peers, hence they dictate to chil-
dren with weak personalities and who are scared of them.
Usually hooligan makes friends with adulatory child which
creates a really bad friendship.
W hat to do if your child shows one of the above
behaviours? If you demand that your adult-like child keeps
away from adults you deprive him/her from the only source
of social success he/she has in life.
Adulatory child is scared to lose friends.
If mischievous hooligan rejects the claim that he/she
threatened someone and you try to prove this with all
your efforts you are complicating the situation even fur-
ther.
In these situations you need to understand that your child
needs professional help to restore social relationships. Pa-
tiently improve your child's communication skills by using
all methods that develop child's self-esteem, get rid of
negativities on his/her personality and help communicate
with other children.