Saturday, November 22, 2008

Creating a Climate of Support

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Unconditional Positive Regard
Parents and caregivers can get so caught up in trying to help their children succeed, that they can unintentionally give them the message that their value is based upon their actions and abilities. Every discipline technique in the world will not help a child who does not feel valued and appreciated. Negative behaviors will be met with consequences, and positive behaviors with encouragement, but children should always be reminded that they are valued no matter what their actions are.

Mutual Respect
Children are much more likely to treat adults with respect when they themselves feel respected. Adults have a tendency to want children to view them as all knowing and all powerful, but by acting that way they only create a larger gap between themselves and the children they care for. When adults are willing to listen, empathize, and admit when they have been wrong, children feel respected, and reassured that they are in a safe space for sharing their own ideas, feelings, and blunders.

Building On Strengths
Every child has strengths which can help him or her to succeed. It is common among human beings to be self-critical, and to pinpoint their own misgivings more quickly and easily than their strengths. Adults can help children to build their self-confidence and problem-solving skills by pointing out their talents, abilities and positive qualities, and helping them discover how they can use those strengths to problem solve.

Encouragement V. Praise
There is a fine line between encouraging children and praising them, and this can be difficult for some adults, because they have seen the positive outcome of praising children. The difference between praise and encouragement is that praise is a positive judgement placed on a child himself, (ex: “good girl,” “good boy”) while encouragement addresses the child’s actions, and inspires him to keep up the good work (ex: “You worked really hard on that.”) Praise can be tricky because children can get discouraged if they don’t get enough of it, or they can become reliant on the opinions of others in order to feel that they have value and that they are doing things the “right” way (ex: “You did that perfectly.”) Encouragement, on the other hand, recognizes the work that went into accomplishing an outcome, and motivates children to evaluate their own thoughts and feelings about what they have done (ex: “How do you feel about what you have accomplished?”) Encouragement allows children to own and take responsibility for their own achievement. For example, instead of saying, “I’m proud of you for getting an A on your paper,” a parent could say, “That A reflects the hard work that you put into writing that paper.”

Active Listening
When a child shares a problem, an adult may have the automatic response of lecturing the child about her behavior, or immediately offering solutions. A more positive alternative for the adult is active listening, which involves avoiding judgement and interruptions, and giving the child feedback regarding the feelings that they heard being expressed. These will help the child to feel cared for and respected, and give her a starting point for formulating her own solutions to the problem. For example, saying “You didn’t understand the word problems, and you got so frustrated that you did not finish the assignment,” will make the child feel validated, and therefore motivated to come up with solutions for getting homework done.

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