How to Help Kids Break Bad Habits Formed During The Pandemic (And Create New Positive Ones That Will Aid Their Growth and Development)

Understanding the psychological processes involved in forming new habits is important. It goes a long way in helping children break unhelpful habits and develop new positive ones.

As the global pandemic eases, I’ve resumed in person training with schools for my Visible Wellbeing program. Part of the program involves running parent nights with tips to help improve the wellbeing of their kids. During those sessions, I encourage parents to ask me questions and a common question I’m getting at the moment:

“How do I break the bad habits my kids have formed during the pandemic?”

With all the changes to our daily routines and the disruptions we’ve experienced in the past few years, it’s understandable that kids developed some habits that we parents are less thrilled about. Increased screen time, social avoidance, disorganisation, messiness, and bad sleep habits are some of the pandemic-related habits parents tell me about - and I’ve seen in my own 2 kids ;) Naturally, as parents, we’re concerned about these because if the habits continue, they could negatively impact our child’s future. For some parents, breaking these bad habits may seem impossible because they’ve tried many things that didn’t work. Maybe you feel the same way?

But the truth is that it’s possible to break habits.

And it starts by understanding the psychology behind habit formation. Once you do that, you can help your child intentionally form new positive habits that will aid their growth and development. In this article, we’ll go into detail about how habits are formed and what you can do to help your child replace their bad habits with good ones.

The Habit Cycle

Habits are automatic actions, decisions, and things that we do when we are presented with certain situations or choices. They start as intentional thoughts (i.e. cognitive actions) that we do deliberately. But with time and repeated action, our brains tend to make adjustments so that those actions can stick and become easier for us to enact. That’s why the more we practice a habit, the more automatic it becomes. That said, every habit has three key elements:

1. A cue. This acts as the trigger for the habitual action. A cue could be a time of day, a location, a person, a smell/sound, or other actions.

2. An action. This is the habit itself. The action could be binge-watching Netflix, scrolling social media on your phone, eating chocolate, flossing your teeth, exercising, and so on.

3. A reward. Habits form because we derive some kind of reward from enacting them. For instance, eating chocolate tastes good and scrolling social media on your phone ‘zones’ you out, which is a reward because it helps you temporarily escape the feeling of time pressure (but then, ironically, it increases your time pressure because you've wasted time scrolling), flossing makes your teeth feel smooth, and exercise gives you endorphins.

Those three elements form the habit cycle, and this loop governs any habit. Understanding this is instrumental in hacking the habit cycle. It makes it easier for parents to help their kids – and even themselves – break habits and form new positive ones.

Hacking The Habit Cycle

To break a habit, you first need to identify the three key elements that form the habit’s loop. Once that’s done, the next course of action is to change one or more of those elements. This makes it easier to regain conscious control of those automatic behaviours and make them work in your favour. Here’s an exercise you can do to help your kids break bad habits and form new positive ones:

Consider what their current habit cycle looks like. What are the cues, actions, and rewards involved in a particular habit? Once you have those elements figured out, write down two options for changing one or more of those elements. Let’s say you want to break the habit of too much screen time. If the cue for watching is boredom, you can encourage your kids to engage in other activities like playing board games whenever they feel bored. You can also reduce the reward they derive from too much screen time – the feeling of being entertained – by rewarding when they are off their screen time. This helps them in breaking the habit. A simple strategy is to have your kids dock their screen in the loungroom at night time so they are not receiving the ‘cue’ of looking at their phone when they hop into bed. You can do this for yourself too!

You can also help your kids start a new habit by creating a new habit loop. To do that, find a cue to trigger the new habit, engage in the action, and reward them after executing it. This will train the brain to create a way of doing something new. You can then integrate this action into their daily lives until it becomes a habit. Additionally, forming new habits is easier if you can identify a current routine that is associated with it that you can tack it on. For instance, if you want to make flossing a habit, you can tack it onto brushing your teeth. This activity is an associated cue that provides an enabling environment for the habit of flossing. After all, it’s easier to build a flossing habit after you’ve brushed your teeth than after you’ve had a shower,  which is a ‘non-associated cue’.

How Long Does It Take to Form a New Habit?

The conventional belief is that it takes an average of 21 days for people to form new habits. This belief stems from a study done in the 1950s by Dr. Maxwell Matlz, a plastic surgeon. His study revealed that it takes plastic surgery patients an average of 21 days to adjust and embrace their new image. However, the reality is that adjusting to one’s new look and forming new habits are two different things. As such, the notion that one forms a new habit in about 21 days is a fallacy. A more recent study has revealed that it takes much longer than 21 days for people to form new habits. The study involved 96 students who were asked to form new habits around exercising, drinking water, and engaging in healthier eating. The researchers then tracked how long it took each student to form those new habits. The results showed that habit formation depends on the habit itself and also differs from one person to another. Some of the students formed new habits in as few as 18 days. Meanwhile, it took 256 days for other students. This study revealed that, on average, it took students  66 days to form a new habit. Thinking about this in your own family, we can expect a habit to change over one school term. Also, the researchers discovered that the bigger the reward the students derive from a habit, the faster they form those habits. Additionally, the longer they practice a new habit, the more likely they are to develop the habit. Hence, children can develop a new habit quicker if they enjoy the rewards for engaging in the habit and if they practice that new habit for longer.

You Can Help Your Kids Create New Positive Habits

The global pandemic brought about several disruptions to our daily lives. And the changes in routines have often caused children and even us, their parents, to develop new habits – some of which we may not like. To help our children stop engaging in bad habits, we first need to understand the three key elements involved in forming a habit – a cue, the action, and the reward. Then, we can change at least one of those elements to break their bad habits and form new positive ones. This way, we can guide our kids onto the right paths and help them form habits that will aid their growth and development. Would you like to learn more about improving the quality of life of your children? Download my free SEARCH for Family Guide. Click here