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1. Prevent it from happening

Are there any precursors to throwing? You gotta observe and see what are the things that happen before the throwing happens. 9 times out of 10, there will be some signs before your child actually decides to throw something on the floor. Look for it, so that you can actually prevent your child from doing it!

Keep your hand on high-risk items. Are there specific things that your child would throw in a heart-beat or have a history of throwing? Do not let you hand off those items, because you'd be asking for it... Ask a family member to look after it if you're busy.

Behaviour is reinforced every time it’s done. Remember that for every time your child gets to do something, the chance of your child repeating that action would actually increase. So prevent at all costs, because it'll help the behaviour die off.

2. Find out why?

Is there a lack of play skills? If your child loves throwing, it might be because he/she thinks it's fun... We've observed that children who are speech and language delayed have a tendency to throw things when they don't know how to actually play that toy. So if that's the case, you better teach play skills before anything else!

Your child might like your reaction. Be careful with your reaction when your child does something naughty, especially if their language isn't age-appropriate, your negative reaction might actually be fun to them! So keep calm and use a neutral tone when reacting.

Is your child expressing something? This is where you can actually teach your child to use gestures and sounds to get across what they want. Sometimes, when a child throws something it might be because they do not know how to tell you what they want. And they actually use throwing as a method to tell you what's going on. So once you understand the message, teach a better way to communicate the same message effectively instead of making a ruckus.

3. Consequences

Try removing something your child likes. To better communicate that you're upset about a situation, sometimes it might be smart to use punishment as a consequence. We do not like punish at Agents of Speech, the only one that we use is the removal of something desirable. It makes sense for children who are speech and language delayed/disordered when you remove something that they like when they do something "bad". You can remove food, toys, and even your affection. Not forever, but depending on the degree of "bad behaviour".

Time outs are a popular way to punish children. However, it doesn't work well with children who have a language delay and toddlers. Simply because it's difficult to understand and a nightmare to put them in one place. It's just a bad experience for everyone.

Punishment doesn’t really work that well. In previous videos, we talked about praising and rewarding as the best way to change behaviour. This hasn't changed. We have to be very careful when using punishment and to use to correctly and effectively is a whole topic of its own. So as a parent teaching your child at home, it's far easier to stick to rewards and praises.