It’s week two of 8 Weeks To A Well-behaved child. Last week’s homework was to spend time monitoring the critical remarks and negative statements we make to our kids. How’d you do? Me? Well, I found out that I give Tyler lots of positive praise for all his good behavior but it’s the seemingly harmless statements I sometimes make, that I need to work on. Yes, I found myself saying stuff like, “you’re not trying,” and “stop acting like a baby,” and “when are your going to start listening to me.”
These seemingly harmless statements are in fact very harmful to a child over time. By the end of the week I was more conscious of every statement I made and hopefully over time I will eliminate all critical statements.
Now, on to week two. In week two we’ll work on learning to give praise and attention.
The first thing we need to do is to reinforce the desired behavior as soon as it happens. The author points out that a behavior is reinforced when we pay attention to it. This of course works for undesired behaviors as well. Parents can reinforce good behaviors by verbally describing a behavior. When kids receive recognition they are more likely to repeat the behavior in order to get more recognition. As an example, the author talks about how when our kids are very young we praise their every everyday accomplishments. We are fascinated by their every coo, poop, attempt to walk, scribble, etc. Our kids hear our comments, flattery and compliments and they learn to feel very proud of what they have done. All we are really doing is describing what our kids have done but they are still encouraged to repeat the action. Using descriptive remarks is a great way to show our kids that we are paying attention to them. Examples include:
“You put away your crayons.”
“You finished all your breakfast.”
“You remembered to wash your face.”
“You straightened the house up all by yourself.”
In part two, we’ll talk about adding praise to descriptive remarks.
See also:
8 Weeks To a Well-behaved Child Week One