Fish

Due to the feedback that you have given me, I would like to revise the fish slide in the Animal School movie so that no hard feelings are generated.

The slide currently reads as follows at the beginning of the movie:

The fish quit school because he was bored. To him, all four subjects were the same, but nobody understood that because they had never seen a fish.

And at the end of the movie:

The fish is a child who really requires full special education and should not be in the regular classroom.

Please keep your suggestions to approximately the same length, so that the music need not be re-looped!

Many Thanks!

{EDIT Sept 12, 06}   Scroll down to comment #318 for the updated fish slide!  (You may need to hit “control F5″ on your keyboard after the movie begins to clear your cache and view the updated Animal School.)

Giving Your Child Effective Attention!

As an Early Childhood educator, I have learned that ATTENTION is a survival need- not a manipulation of adults.

After World War II, orphans living in a clean, hygienic and basically attentive facility did not thrive. In fact, almost half of infants died, despite apparently having all basic needs met. It turned out that the infants needed a meaningful relationship with a caring, and involved adult in order to survive, grow and thrive. Since then, we have learned that Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is released in a manner directly proportional to the amount of caring attention the child receives.

How many times have you said, “Oh, s/he just wants attention!”

YES!

S/he does just want attention and s/he legitimately needs it.

The power of the attention children get is that whatever you pay attention to is a behavior that is reinforced – that is, behavior the adult notices and responds to is more likely to be repeated again than ignored or unnoticed behaviors.

Be honest … when do you give the most attention and the most focused and intense attention?

When children are acting out or showing MIS-behaviors – right? So, each time your child does something you DON’T want to see again, you reinforce the behavior by strongly reacting to it, right?

Oops! Did you ever realize this? I didn’t as a parent. I heard myself yelling,

“How many times have I told you … ?”

Well, the more times I noticed that behavior and responded strongly, the more likely my children were to repeat it. I was a busy mom. I worked, ran the household, had friends, and the easiest people to ignore [at times] and the most annoying [at times] were my little children.

The odd thing, hard for adults to remember is that giving unpleasant or negative attention will NOT eliminate the behavior. Rather, it strengthens it. The intensity of reaction and the reliable immediate response are the most effective in making behavior occur again because – back to the top – children legitimately need attention to survive.

Nature has equipped children to do statistics and a quick analysis of their own experiences. When do they ‘bug’ you most?

When you are on the phone?

When you want to focus on shopping?

When you are chatting with another adult?

Ahhh – yes, when they don’t have your attention.

So, what does this mean? It means that you DO have to give strong focused attention when something has happened that you like and want to see again. Catch them doing what you want! Make meaningful, descriptive statements about their efforts – not outcomes, when they are engaged in constructive, creative, artistic endeavors. Make meaningful descriptive statements about cooperation, about helping others, about being able to spend a few minutes alone without interrupting your phone call.

Create those quality moments or better yet, minutes of just attending to your child or focusing on what s/he wants following WANTED BEHAVIOR.

If you do this consistently for a few days you will begin to see changes. Children want nothing more than your approval. If you show that approval by giving focused and meaningful attention to constructive behaviors, they will repeat those behaviors.

There are a few things happening when you do this. Children are reassured that you ‘see’ them–really see them–and what they are doing. It forces you to pay attention to specifically what they are doing and to think enough about it to make an intelligent comment about it.

The comments help children to think in more complex ways about their activity and capability and may even enlarge their vocabulary. When they get the attention they need, they will give back by lowering the demand that comes out of feelings of neglect.

Notice that I have used the phrase: descriptive feedback above. This is NOT PRAISE!

Saying “Good Job” without saying what you are approving leads to two conclusions by the child:

1) you really are not paying attention, you are just getting me off your back;

2) something I did was a ‘good job’, but I don’t know what, so I will have to do a number of things I did recently to test which one was ‘good’.

Descriptive feedback shows that you actually paid attention to what the child did. It means you noticed the effort or time spent and commented on the effort rather than judged the outcome.

How do I do this, you ask?

Really pay attention to what the child did and avoid using judgment words like: good, great, beautiful, bad, ugly, etc. In my Early Childhood Development classes, students are not allowed to use the words “good” or “bad”. This is the rule to force them to use more descriptive language that has shared meaning. What does ‘good’ mean? What does ‘bad’ mean? We all have different values and ideas regarding those ideas.

If the child has made a drawing or painting, you can say:

“Wow, I see that you put a lot of time into that art. I can count five different colors in the one painting. I wonder what you were thinking when you combined those two colors?”

OR

“You did that painting really fast. There are some famous artists that also use mostly one color just like you did here. Is that color special to you in some way?”

If the child has been kind to someone else:

“I feel so proud of you when you are patient with your sister/brother. I know he/she can be annoying sometimes, but I see you are getting more patient now.”
Etc., etc., etc.

Adults often feel they don’t have the time to slow down and focus on the child. However, it is when you have the least time that it is most important. If you provide that 15 minutes of quality, focused attention –sometimes called ‘want-nothing-time’ by experts like Magda Gerber – you will earn half an hour without interruption following that 15 minutes. If you do this regularly, the rare times you cannot pay attention will pass almost unnoticed by your child because he/she is not hungry for attention.

Be sure to tell your child, “WOW, you let me focus on my project/work/phone call for a long time. I really appreciate that you are able to wait now. That is an important skill for people as they get older and it looks like you are learning it.”

Don’t forget that children always do the best they can, just like you try to do. When they do something wrong it is more likely because they lack the specific skills to do it right than to annoy you. Giving descriptive feedback to children of any age or capability becomes a ‘teachable moment’ rather than an argument or power struggle.

Discipline means to teach. Teach them the skills by demonstrating them. Patience with their challenges and belief in their ability to learn will result in cooperation, motivation and high self-esteem.

By Kathy Kelley

Kathy is an Early Childhood Development Instructor at Chabot Community College in Hayward, California. She has three children and even the baby is off to college – she always wishes she had some of that childhood time back again.  Kathy can be reached at kkelley AT samplehead DOT com

Bedtime!

No other time of the day in our child’s life is as emotionally charged as bedtime!

Bedtime can be considered a significant ‘trunk’ of your child’s ‘tree’- from where many other ‘branches’ – or issues – emerge.

Well-rested children will perform better scholastically, be in a happier frame of mind, and generally more cooperative than their tired and irritable counterparts. (I know, that’s not news to you!)

By breaking down the bigger picture of “bedtime” into smaller bite-sized pieces, we can help our children have a good night’s rest on a regular basis.

There are three factors that can hinder a smooth bedtime: Inborn tendencies, habits, and environment. Let’s examine each aspect and outline some ideas to move toward calmer evenings for your family.

Inborn tendencies: Some people are truly born to be “night people”. That is not to say that they cannot get to sleep at a reasonable hour, it simply means that additional strategies will be required to do so.

If your child is a “night child” sleep experts recommend that you help him out by adhering to a consistent wake-up schedule, even during weekends and vacations.

Realize that you cannot change his nature, and if he gets a “second-wind” during the evening, you will fight a losing battle by attempting to squash his nocturnal energy. You want to recognize his tendencies and manipulate the family’s habits and environment to be more conducive to helping him settle down during bedtime.

Habits: Some children are more prone to reactions of stimulating foods than others. Experts recommend that you limit stimulating foods such as sugar and caffeine at least three hours prior to going to sleep.

Many children are sensitive to stimulating activities, so take note of your child to see if he is able to go to sleep more easily when you avoid energetic activities after dinner-time. Make the conscious effort to incorporate board games, puzzles, arts-and-crafts projects, and reading books into your child’s evening routine, rather than playing ball, jumping on the trampoline, or other sports.

Environment: Take careful note of your home’s evening environment. If there’s lots of noise, activities, and interesting things happening, your child will understandably be reluctant to go to bed calmly. A small home, or several children with varying bedtimes sharing a room, will compound the issue and deserves additional strategies and ideas.

We used a white-noise machine for Joey when he was younger, and a very sensitive sleeper. The small investment at the Sharper Image provided valuable hours of quiet time, and that machine was worth its weight in gold!  You can check it out here:

Children are keenly aware of their parents’ moods, and will virtually always pick up on stress and worry their parents are experiencing- even without it having been verbally expressed. This is a good time to remind yourself that you are doing your family a favor, not just you, by addressing your personal needs, so that you can maintain a relaxed atmosphere.

You can engage your child in a discussion of which environmental factors are hindering his ability to settle down, and brainstorm together for methods of reducing or eliminating some of these factors. Perhaps your child can fall asleep in a different room and be moved later, you may want to acquire a white-noise machine, or change the timing of noisy activities or appliances being run.

An additional benefit of parents identifying the environmental reasons for bedtime issues is that it will switch the problem from being a lack of discipline on the part of the child, to outside, environmental factors. Once the child is no longer being blamed for bedtime battles, the stage is set for a renewed atmosphere of cooperation between parent and child.

Professional sleep counselors also advise a warm bath prior to bedtime, as it will generally induce a state of drowsiness.

Bedtime, in its calm glory, can be an ideal bonding time for you and your child. It can be a source of comfort for your child to have several minutes of attention at the end of the day, without interruptions, where he can tell you about his day, his plans for tomorrow, and his dreams. When the child values “hugs and kisses time” (that’s how we refer to it here!) then if it gets forfeited due to misbehavior, he will feel compelled to get to bed properly the next evening, so that the bedtime ritual can be made up the following night.

I hope that these suggestions will help you to have smoother and happier bedtimes!

Sweet dreams!