Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Keep it positive

I don't know if it's just late-summer impatience or what, but lately I've been hearing a lot of "Stop doing that" from parents out and about with their children. Of course if your child is doing something that needs to stop you need to tell them, but to keep on telling them to stop whatever they're doing is annoying to them and to everyone else within earshot.

Just for one example, yesterday I was in the grocery store and a mom with three children was trying to shop. It was morning, and the kids weren't tired or hungry (a perfectly good reason for meltdowns and tantrums), they were just bored while she was picking out the stuff she needed. Naturally, the older boy was bugging the younger one, just for something to do, and the little girl was touching everything. The mom kept telling them to stop-- stop making noise and stop bothering each other and touching things-- and telling them that now they wouldn't get a treat, or go somewhere, or whatever the distant prize was going to be. All negative.

Now, we've all been in situations where our baby is screaming or our toddler won't get off the bus or on the bus or whatever, and no one but us knows what created the problem or what's really going on. But all these kids in the grocery store needed was something to DO. I don't know the kids, so I don't know what that something would be-- something they could have brought with them to do? Or an easy or difficult assignment like finding one green apple, or finding the exact product that the mom wants next, or sorting what she has in the cart already or answering questions she might ask them or some other thing. They were bright, normal kids who just needed an assigment, any assignment. Something to DO instead of NOT DO.

One suggestion, for times when there seems like nothing at all to assign to a child to do, is to suggest that you do the thing you're doing with the child really fast. I've never met a child who didn't like the excitement of doing things fast or being timed. Even if their assignment is to count while you pick out what you need speedo-quick-like, it's something.

Next time you feel like saying "Stop" or "Don't" more than once, think of what behavior you'd like to see, and ask for that instead.

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