Why tired children are naughty | Integrated Learning Therapy

We all know the feeling of being tired. Basically, it results in a lack of strength which happens after we have worked hard either physically, intellectually or emotionally. We can also feel tired as a result of boredom, unhappiness, disappointment or annoyance.

The effect of being tired on our behaviour is also apparent and we find it harder to control ourselves when fatigued. Children especially tend to behave ‘badly’ when they are tired, as we know. But why is this?

David Bueno I Torrens explains this to The Conversation by looking at how the brain works.

Behavioral control is handled specifically by an area called the prefrontal cortex, located just behind the forehead. This area is responsible for all executive functions, like planning, making decisions, reasoning and managing our emotional state. In addition, it is responsible for our working memory and the brain’s ability to adapt our behaviour and thinking to changing situations or concepts.

These (and other) functions take a great deal of the energy available to the brain. When we are tired, the prefrontal cortex is depleted of the fuel needed to think, plan, decide, manage emotions and store and handle information.

In other words, we find it harder to think, plan, decide, manage emotions and store and handle information because the prefrontal cortex has less fuel to function. This also makes our thoughts less flexible and more rigid. As a consequence, we lose the ability to control our behaviour.

The same is true of tired children. Without sufficient brain energy to work efficiently, they might do things that they usually wouldn’t do, say things they know are hurtful, and generally ‘misbehave.’

Boredom has a similar effect to tiredness

Interestingly, when we are bored, disappointed or angry, something similar happens; although the reason is slightly different.

When we are demotivated, the brain also receives less energy, meaning that the prefrontal cortex cannot function at full capacity. Or, to put it the other way round, motivation increases the blood flow to the brain and, with it, the available energy, which in general improves the functionality of executive functions.

That is why, when we are motivated we usually think, plan and decide better, and can manage our emotions much better.

Provided by The Conversation

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.