I went to another parenting seminar tonight, courtesy of our preschool. We had another fabulous speaker, and I wanted to share some of his focus with you.
When your preschooler hits another child, or when your preschooler forgets to pick up her toys or tracks dirt through the house for the umpteenth time, what do you do? Grumble inwardly? Check. Grumble outwardly? Likely. Send your child for a time out or other form of discipline? Quite possibly.
When your preschooler shares with another child, or when your preschooler is kind and shows concern over another child’s injury, what do you do? Feel relieved that all is well, and head off to the kitchen to do the dishes? Yep, guilty over here.
Tonight’s speaker had a good point. Our children remember what we focus on, and the activities that we focus on are rarely the ones that we wish to see. When one child slaps another, you bet that gets our attention. When two children are playing well together, we breathe a sigh of relief and decide to quietly step away from the situation, afraid to touch it and happy that we can get some work done.
This means that we are unconsciously focusing our child’s attention on the behavior that we do not want to see. When we focus on disciplining a child who hits and ignore the fact that a child is sharing, the child learns that hitting brings a lot of attention and sharing does not. Preschoolers love adult attention. No, they are not planning the hitting in their minds, thinking that hitting will yield more attention, but they are being conditioned to hit when we focus on that behavior.
The speaker’s idea? Focus on the behavior that we want to see, and set up an environment that discourages the behavior that we do not want to see. Pavlovian? Sure, but I know that when I focus on the positives, they certainly appear a lot more often.